The MQ-9 Reaper, a drone armed with Hellfire missiles, has been a workhorse in Washington's forever wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, but its days could be numbered.
According to Air Force Magazine, that service "has grown skeptical that the Reaper could hold its own against advanced nations like Russia and China, which could shoot the non-stealthy aircraft down or jam its transmissions." While more advanced drones may be coming, however, the Reaper's still where it's at. Not so surprisingly, then, that plane is now being repurposed to use not just against Afghans or
Iranians or Iraqis or Somalis, but the Chinese.
That fits with the Pentagon's urge to leave those forever wars behind (as
TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of
All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change, has been
writing at this site for a surprisingly long time). Its top strategists would prefer instead to focus on recreating a nostalgia-filled twenty-first-century version of the Cold War. One sign of this: in recent naval exercises off the California coast in which three Reapers "performed airstrikes during [a] simulated amphibious assault on San Clemente Island," the military unit responsible for those planes sported a dramatic new
shoulder patch. It displayed a Reaper over a silhouetted all-red map of... well, yes, I guess it must still be "Red China."
And if you don't consider that ominous, then check out Klare's piece today on the nuclearization -- such a term should exist, if it doesn't already -- of American "diplomacy."
Tom****
Comment: Was WaPo hack David Ignatius dreaming of a Pulitzer when he took delivery of Steele's steaming pile of bar room talk?