Around this time the CIA brought in a top-secret stealth drone known as the RQ-170 Sentinel that was jet propelled, shaped like a mini B2 bomber, and built to avoid radar. It was not armed but had the ability to penetrate undetected deep into Pakistani airspace to Abbottabad, a sensitive military town located near the Pakistani capital.111 Soon after the mysterious compound was discovered, the drone was deployed to Abbottabad. According to the Washington Post, “Using unmanned planes designed to evade radar detection and operate at high altitudes, the agency conducted clandestine flights over the compound for months before the May 2 assault in an effort to capture high-resolution video that satellites could not provide. The aircraft allowed the CIA to glide undetected beyond the boundaries that Pakistan has long imposed on other U.S. drones, including the Predators and Reapers that routinely carry out strikes against militants near the border with Afghanistan.”112
Having reached a 60–80 percent certainty that bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound, the Obama administration, the CIA, and JSOC needed to formulate a plan to get him.113 This was no easy task because the compound was a well-built concrete structure located both deep in the Islamabad Defense Intercept Zone and adjacent to a Pakistan military base. The slow-moving Reaper drones were only allowed to operate in “kill boxes” in the FATA and were not allowed to fly into Pakistan proper. Even if they had had a larger flight radius, their Paveway guided bombs were not strong enough to destroy bin Laden’s compound. In addition, if the slow-moving, propeller-driven drones tried to penetrate the Islamabad security zone, they would be noticed by Pakistani radar and shot down. For these reasons, Obama and Gen. Bill McRaven, the head of JSOC, decided to use a dangerous helicopter-borne ground raid on the compound on the night of May 1–2, 2011.
As the SEALs from the JSOC based in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, penetrated Pakistani airspace in stealth versions of the Black Hawk helicopter and two larger Chinooks, RQ-170 drones flew overhead, monitoring the compound. When the helicopters arrived below, the drones provided high-resolution night-vision imagery of the SEALs landing at the compound and attacking. This imagery was sent to President Obama and national security team members, who were watching the events in Pakistan unfold on screen in the White House Situation Room. The stealth drones also used their eavesdropping equipment to monitor electronic transmissions among the Pakistanis, who had not been notified of the incursion.
Despite the odds against it, the deep raid into Pakistan was successful, and the SEALs managed to kill bin Laden and return to Afghanistan with his body.114 Although the Pakistanis did launch fighter jets at the last minute to intercept the invaders, they were too late; the Americans had already retreated to Afghanistan in their stealth helicopters.
The Pakistani military and intelligence communities were humiliated when they realized that bin Laden had been living close to one of their bases (no evidence has emerged to show the bin Laden worked with the Pakistanis) and that they had been unable to protect their airspace from deep incursion. Relations between the Pakistanis and the Americans once again soured, and in a special session of the Pakistani parliament, ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha denounced the American raid. The Pakistanis promised to reevaluate their relationship with the Americans and subsequently closed down the drone air base at Shamsi and ordered U.S. personnel to leave it. (American personnel returned to the base soon thereafter.) Pakistan’s parliament also passed a resolution declaring that the drone strikes were a violation of sovereignty equivalent to the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.115
But much good came out of the raid as well. The cache of information found in bin Laden’s computers enabled the CIA to use a drone to track and kill Atiyah abd al Rahman, the man who was promoted to al Qaeda’s number-two spot following bin Laden’s death.116 In fact there was a blitz of drone strikes in the FATA in the days and weeks after bin Laden’s death as the CIA exploited information found in the slain terrorist’s computers to strike at al Qaeda hideouts in the region.117
DRONES HELP HUNT DOWN GADDAFI IN LIBYA
American drones also played a major role in the 2011 air war against the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In the winter and spring of that year Libyan citizens joined the so-called Arab Spring, a region-wide movement that was toppling Middle Eastern dictators, and began to openly resist Gaddafi’s rule. In response, the dictator launched his troops on the rebels and promised to hunt them down like “rats.” Alarmed by the prospect of a mass slaughter of civilians, President Obama, with the aid of the British and French, decided to wage an air campaign to assist the outgunned anti-Gaddafi rebels. U.S. and NATO aircraft began targeting Gaddafi positions to bolster the popular uprising and prevent a massacre. This was to be a unique airborne war that the Obama administration could claim did not “involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious risk thereof.”118
Not surprisingly, the United States made considerable use of drones in support of the insurgents. According to Global Security’s John Pike, “The US had neither the support nor the means to invade Libya. It would’ve been both a political and military blunder. So we had robots do the work for us—and it worked, perfectly. Qaddafi’s air defenses and armor were obliterated from control rooms a world away.”119 The drones took out antiaircraft defenses, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, and truck-mounted weapons. In fact, twice as many drone strikes were carried out in the 2011 Libyan campaign (146) as in Pakistan that year.120 More than 140 Hellfire missiles were fired by U.S. drones that were based in Sicily and flown from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and elsewhere.121
The drones’ most important strike occurred on October 20. On that day Gaddafi, who had been largely defeated and encircled by rebels in the town of Sirte, was spotted by high-flying drones. According to the Telegraph, the drones “built up a normal pattern of life picture so that when something unusual happened this morning such as a large group of vehicles gathering together, that came across as highly unusual activity and the decision was taken to follow them and prosecute an attack.” As Gaddafi broke from cover and tried to escape in an eighty vehicle convoy, a drone spotted vehicles, tracked their movements, and relayed them to nearby French fighter jets. The drone then attacked the convoy with its missiles, bringing it to a halt whereupon it was attacked by the French jets. A bloodied Gaddafi survived the attack, but as he attempted to escape from the burning convoy, he was found in a nearby drainage ditch and executed by vengeful rebels.122
SENTINEL DOWN: THE CIA LOSES A TOP-SECRET SPY DRONE OVER IRAN
In 2009 a grainy photo of a mysterious jet drone taking off from the runway at a U.S. air base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, was leaked to the press. Technology wonks described the aircraft as the “Beast of Kandahar.” Later the public learned that the top-secret stealth drone was the RQ-170 Sentinel, designed and built by Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works,” the company’s supersecret division that built the U2 spy plane, F-22 jet fighter, and F-117 Nighthawk. Speculation about the RQ-170’s purpose abounded. Why would the CIA deploy a radar-proof stealth drone to a region where the Taliban tribesmen had no radar or antiaircraft capabilities?