Episode 5: War Against Terror

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The Hand Behind Unmanned

Hoover Institution

8 episodes

2 days ago

The Hand Behind Unmanned is a podcast about the people who design, direct, and deploy America’s arsenal of unmanned weapons. The limited series podcast tells stories about their beliefs, identities, and the ways in which human ideas about warfare created and continue to shape today’s drone revolution. It is a history of US investment in mines, torpedoes, missiles, satellites, bombs, and drones from the point of view of the generals, admirals, career bureaucrats, academicians, politicians, and entrepreneurs that guided, dictated, and sometimes manipulated technology to create autonomous systems

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Episode 5: War Against Terror – The Predator Age

The Hand Behind Unmanned

42 minutes 56 seconds

5 months ago

Episode 5: War Against Terror – The Predator Age

The episode looks at unmanned systems and the global war on terror, focusing on the rise of the Predator and Reaper.

On September 11th, everything changed. James Roche, then secretary of the Air Force, cut all remaining bureaucratic tape and armed General Atomic’s MQ-1 Predator. Over the next two decades and combat in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the Horn of Africa, the US would fight for the hearts and minds of foreign publics with an increasingly prolific arsenal of remotely piloted armed aircraft providing persistent and pervasive intelligence over insurgents and terrorists across the world. The Air Force, the service of pilots, led the adoption of these systems. But while this was a golden age for unmanned platforms like the Predators, Reapers, or space-based satellites, other unmanned systems stagnated: strategic missiles atrophied, tactical missile inventories dwindled, and anti-ship and anti-submarine munitions were de-prioritized.