Not Ready for War Drones

http://watchingamerica.com/News/205648/not-ready-for-war-drones/

Not Ready for War Drones
ZEIT, Germany
By Thomas Wiegold
Translated By Tania Struetzel
30 April 2013
Edited by Bora Mici

Unmanned armed aircraft, also called war drones or killer drones depending on the political context, are a controversial topic in Germany. This is why the announcement that the U.S. has approved the sale of Reaper drones to the German armed forces will foment an intense debate. Yet, a small misunderstanding in this debate is knowingly being tolerated: The consent of the U.S. Congress to deliver war drones to an ally is by far not the same as a German decision to actually purchase them.

Even if Lieutenant General Karl Müllner, commander of the German Air Force, would like to have Reapers with their Hellfire rockets in his arsenal, officers in aircraft uniform do not decide whether he gets them. Only a few years ago, Müllner's predecessor Klaus-Peter Stieglitz wanted to buy the Reaper’s predecessor model Predator drones — at that point still unmanned — for the Afghanistan operation from the U.S. Despite the unanimous opinion of experts at the Air Force and the Ministry of Defense, politics yielded a different result: Germany leased the control system type Heron from an Israeli producer, not least because certain German companies were involved in the deal.

When a decision has to be made soon about the Heron successor, a U.S. model will be competing against an Israeli drone again. And again, the German Air Force favors U.S. systems. The outcome of this decision, however, will now be determined by a completely different problem: Rather than military officials, the aviation regulatory authority, which sets high standards before it approves departures and landings outside no-fly zones in Europe — and by the way also in the U.S. — will determine where these drones are allowed to fly outside of war and crisis zones.

To approve of an aircraft without a pilot, the authorities want to know many details, which they do not receive from U.S. drone manufacturers. U.S. companies rarely allow foreigners insight into the black box — the heart of the control system. Even the Heron recon drone, which is used by the German armed forces in northern Afghanistan, would not be allowed to fly over Germany.