The fleet of MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones are no match for aircraft that can fly higher and faster, like those employed by the most basic of air defenses around the world, Gen. Mike Hostage, chief of the air service's Air Combat Command, said at an Air Force Association conference.
"Predators and Reapers are useless in a contested environment," Hostage said, as quoted by Foreign Policy.
"Today...I couldn't put [a Predator or Reaper] into the Strait of Hormuz without having to put airplanes there to protect it," he added.
The Air Force revealed this week that an F-22 intercepted an Iranian F-4 Phantom jet fleet closing in on a US Predator over the strait earlier this year. In late 2012, Iranian jets fired on and missed a Predator drone in the strait.
The Pentagon had previously ordered MQ-1s and MQ-9s to fly up to 65 four-drone Combat Air Patrols (CAPs) around the world by 2013, but the Air Force was skeptical of the need for the low-capability aircraft.
"We're trying to convince [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] that the 65 challenge - while [it] made sense to the people who gave it to us when it was given, and we dutifully went after it - is not the force structure the nation needs or can afford" in situations where opposing aircraft have advanced operations to counter US aircraft, said Hostage.
Hostage admitted the drones will be used to monitor targets in the future, but that US military planners "want it in a contested environment and we can't do it currently."
Another Air Force official echoed Hostage, saying that once the US is out of Afghanistan - where drones can easily roam in US-controlled skies - he'd like the Air Force to replace the Predators and Reapers with more stealth.
"My argument would be we can't afford to keep all of this capability so we're going to have to bring some of it down," said Air Force intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Bob Otto. He wants to use the freed funds to invest in drones with more and better capabilities against well-defended targets.
Hostage also said the Air Force needs new reconnaissance planes by the early 2020s in order to stay ahead of rivals like China and Russia who are creating - and likely exporting - advanced stealth aircraft.
This is a no brainer, the only thing they are designed to do is to create terror. That is "Terror" manufactured by the PTB against an innocent population of normal humanity.
Let's face it, and this is well documented, the US services, seek out young individuals that have a certain affinity for video games, they spend there days in a container or some other room isolated from the rest of humanity working a 24/7 operation, if they get lucky, they do the day shift where they go home to there family, eat supper and go out to a movie, some spend time with there kids with after school activities and basically, what would be called a normal life.
Mean while, thousands of innocent people in various parts of the globe are slaughtered, by there actions, they have no understanding of the culture or the people they are killing. They do not understand a wedding celebration or a funeral from a culture other than there own. They no longer understand a social gathering unless it is in some kind of gathering in a "bar situation" that they can relate to. Normal people congregate together simply by the desire that they wish to share a human experience with like minded people, something that the psychopathic mind will never understand
Of course this has no implementation in battle field strategy, why would it, everyone knows that once the arena of a battlefield is entered, soldiers can expect to die. There is no "Terror" it is expected. It's all a programme to inflict as much human suffering
by the PTB, to obtain compliance so they can instill into the minds of normal people "Why they need us" to protect us from the bogey man that is not in the mind of humanity but in the mind of the psychopath, they have implanted this fear and separation in our minds for there own ends, control, control, and more control.