Iran claims to have shot down US drone RQ-170 that had intruded in to its territory from Afghanistan last week. There are various interpretations on what may have occurred. US has admitted its drone was missing. On the other hand, Iran claims cyber attack brought down the unmanned drone, which US thinks is literally impossible because of the use of advance encryption. Nonetheless, US is worried about the loss of such advanced technology that could be used to understand the vulnerabilities of such weapons.

RQ-170 has also been used for surveillance mission in Pakistan, especially for tracking Osama bin Laden and during operation Geronimo. A stealth version of the Black Hawk (H-60) helicopter had crashed during that operation and later returned to US. Pakistan has been under public pressure to stop armed drones that operate in FATA.

US is increasingly using covert operations and stealth technologies against extremists and adversaries in South and Central Asia and Middle East.

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The United States has flown its drone aircrafts into Somalia to pursue the Islamic militant group al-Shabab. The US military has said it has begun to fly its unmanned drones from its base in Arba Minch, Ethiopia into neighboring Somalia. The drones were flown out of a million dollar airport with the aircrafts being equipped with missiles and satellite guided bombs.

The move is part of Washington’s counter terrorism policy in the region. It aims to drive out groups linked to Al Qaeda. The US government has however insisted the drones will only be used for surveillance and will not be engaging in airstrikes.

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The United States has flown its drone aircrafts into Somalia to pursue the Islamic militant group al-Shabab. The US military has said it has begun to fly its unmanned drones from its base in Arba Minch, Ethiopia into neighboring Somalia. The drones were flown out of a million dollar airport with the aircrafts being equipped with missiles and satellite guided bombs.

The move is part of Washington’s counter terrorism policy in the region. It aims to drive out groups linked to Al Qaeda. The US government has however insisted the drones will only be used for surveillance and will not be engaging in airstrikes.

The post USAID Freezes Funding For 400 Schools In Punjab appeared first on Politact.

Media reports indicate that the US military’s unmanned drones, the Predator and Reaper, have been infected by key logging virus. Rob Densmore, a former US navy airman told Al Jazeera that the infection was a common keystroke logging virus – which registers the keystrokes pilots use to control the unmanned drones from afar. It is feared that the virus can potentially allow hackers to gain access into the system. Officials are still figuring out how the systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada became infected. The drones despite the virus are continuing to fly in overseas missions, although military drone units at other US Air Force bases have been instructed to stop. The virus despite multiple efforts has not yet been removed from the main base system.

The US flies close to 60 unmanned drones in its international missions.

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China on Tuesday launched its module for a space station. The Tiangong-1 module was launched from the Jiquan launch center located near the Gobi Desert abroad a Long March 2F11 rocket. Tiangong-1, which translates to Heavenly Palace-1, will stay aloft for two years. Two experimental modules will be launched in three sections between 2020 and 2022. The module will survey Chinese farmlands using cameras. Beijing has also announced plans of launching an unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft which will undertake remote-controlled docking maneuvers. Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. said that China had the advantage of not starting at the bottom of the learning curve in its human spaceflight program.

China’s experimental module highlights the country’s desire for international prestige and its ambitions to become a major space power.

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China launched an orbiter into space Wednesday at around 5.45 am Beijing Time, as part of its satellite positioning and navigation network called Beidou (compass system), sources at the launch center announced. The orbiter, which was launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was boosted into a geostationary orbit by the Long March-3A carrier rocket. Beijing started developing its own satellite navigation system in 2000 to end reliance on the American Global Positioning System (GPS).

The post China Launches Ninth Orbiter for International Navigation appeared first on Politact.

China has stepped up its research in the field of drone technology and is developing jet-propelled, armed unmanned aircraft, which it will sell to countries such as Pakistan and those in the Middle East and Africa. Although much of the project remains covert, the large number of drone aircrafts at recent exhibitions highlights Beijing’s commitment to making steady progress in the sector by developing equivalents to the top US surveillance and combat models- the Global Hawk and the Predator. But, unlike the US, China is not only trying to develop state-of-the-art drones but is also eyeing the global market.

The post China Developing Drones, Eyes Pakistan, Arab Nations for Sales appeared first on Politact.

Context
The drone attacks by the United States in the tribal areas (FATA) have become increasingly controversial in Pakistan. The U.S. argues that these attacks have been instrumental in targeting key Al-Qaeda leaders hidden in the tribal areas, as well as other terrorist groups using this area as a safe heaven to launch attacks on NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan. The U.S. further maintains that these drone attacks present the best possible alternative to ground-based (boots on the ground) incursions. Moreover, both unofficially and via media reports, the U.S. maintains that the attacks are carried out under a secret tacit agreement with the government of Pakistan. Senator Diane Feinstein(D-California) went so far as to claim that the drones are actually based in Pakistan and are launched from there against their targets; recent media reports suggest that the Pakistan conducts the groundwork for selection of the targets and then pass it on to the U.S.

Analysis

Pakistan has denied – publicly and vehemently – the existence of any such agreement with the U.S. The country’s official position is that the drone attacks are counterproductive and do not achieve the coalition’s goal of winning the hearts and minds of the local people; that in fact they encourage the recruitment of more extremists. Recently, the Pakistani Taliban, based in South and North Waziristan, have begun assailing civilian and military targets, threatening that these will continue until the drone attacks cease. The Pakistani Taliban believes it likely that their government is implicated in planning and conducting the attacks is some way and thus view it as collaborating with the enemy. So in order to change the perception that its national sovereignty is being compromised, the government of Pakistan has requested the U.S. to transfer its drone technology to Pakistan instead.

American and Pakistani intelligence agencies are increasingly at odds over how to approach this thorny situation. Pakistan desires more intelligence collaboration with the Unites States, which in turn alleges that on those occasions where it shared intelligence with the Pakistan, it was leaked to the people being targeted.

At the end of the day, the issues are the lack of trust and clarity of intentions of the parties involved; the difficulties in distinguishing friend from foe. In the past, Pakistan has entered into peace agreements with the Taliban and other radical groups with alleged involvement in cross border activities. According to the terms of these agreements, the radicals will desist from attacking the Pakistan Army or civilian targets. These agreements, however, usually didn’t address the issue of cross border activities, so that in the eyes of the U.S. and the West, they provide the respite the radical elements need to gather strength and launch attacks against NATO and the coalition forces in Afghanistan. Thus, America and the West have the following questions:

• Why does Pakistan enter into agreements with these radicals?Why does the country fail to follow through with forceful actions that substantiate its claim that these extremists are their enemies as well?
• Could Pakistan in fact be using these militants as proxies, as India and Afghanistan claim?
• Which elements in Pakistan are sympathetic to radical groups? How can this be changed?
• What is the real nature of public opinion in Pakistan regarding these Islamic radicals and militants?

In attempting to answer these questions, Western observers stress what they perceive as Pakistan’s unwillingness to part with these radical groups, due to both past associations and perceived future strategic utility. They argue that the public and private faces of the Pakistan government are at odds with each other; what the government shares with Americans in private contradicts what it wants to convey to its public and to the extremist elements.

In contrast, Pakistan claims that the problem lies not in any lack of resolve on their country’s part, but in its capacity. There is also a fear of history repeating itself: when as a colonial power, Great Britain arrived on the Sub-Continent, it exploited the Sunni-Shiite Muslim divide in the region. If the British did not have the help of the progressive Nizams of Hyderabad, they would not have been able to defeat Tipu Sultan. Once Tipu was eliminated, the Moguls, weakened by Ahmad Shah Abdali’s relentless attacks from the West, were no match for the British. Other global powers besides Britain have been inclined to leave the region in a rush, once weakened by tussles of other major players in international power struggles, without making any serious attempt to arrange a transition. In short, Pakistan is doubtful about the intentions and stamina of western powers while dealing with problems of the region.

The drone attacks present a number of domestic scenarios for Pakistan.

• First, they could expose the dichotomy of the Pakistan’s official position and force a change in its makeup, particularly in the military.
• Second, they could trigger the rage of radical groups towards Pakistan’s military, which will almost certainly react by doing everything in its power to defend itself.
• Third, they might lead the Pakistani Taliban to switch its focus from Afghanistan to Pakistan. If Pakistani Taliban have to protect their own turf then there chances of supporting Afghan Taliban diminish substantially. Furthermore, this helps to divide the radical forces of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mullah Omar has recently asserted on all Taliban’s to focus on Afghanistan and wants Pakistani Taliban to stop attacks on the its military, since that distracts from the mission of getting foreign forces out of Afghanistan.
• Fourth, they might force the Pakistan’s public to question the motives and risk/reward calculus of the its Army and associated strategic planning circles, simultaneously weakening the credibility of the present civilian government and heightening the historic tensions between progressives and Islamic revivalists. According to some, stronger Pakistan has traditionally destabilized Afghanistan. By this logic, by weakening Pakistan perhaps Afghanistan can be stabilized.
• Fifth, they might reawaken Pakistan’s old anxieties regarding ethnic strife and civil war, as well fears of Pincer style aggression from India and Afghanistan.

But drone attacks have both regional and global ramifications as well. For Pakistan the fear is that drone attacks can provide precedence for India in how to deal with Kashmiri Jihadis. A prospect which is very much alive in the aftermath of Mumbai attacks. The unmanned drone attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan are also a signal to Iran, nervous because of the presence of American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia. Furthermore, drone attacks provide a plausible pretext for countries like Israel to launch long distance attacks on adversaries, as it recently is alleged to have done in Sudan. It has been reported that a supply convoy intended for Hamas was targeted there. Realizing the utility of unmanned platforms in last year’s Georgia conflict, Russia recently concluded a $50 Million deal with Israel to purchase drones.

There is another consequence of the drone attacks in Pakistan, perhaps all the more dangerous for being less obvious. It is claimed, the attacks have succeeded in pushing militants away from the border and deeper into the settled and urban areas of Pakistan; as a result, these extremists will almost certainly come into contact with the Kashmiri Jihadis and Punjabi Taliban – if they haven’t already – resulting in a fusion of the radical and Islamic revivalist forces of Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Regarding India in particular, where Muslim discontent is at an all time high, this prospect is not as far-fetched as it sounds. After all, it should be remembered that adherents of the Taliban believe in the same Deobandi school of thought that originated in India and then spread elsewhere. This joining of forces could intensify Shitte-Sunni tensions in the Middle East and Central and Southern Asia, with Al-Qaeda as the mastermind. This is not a prospect that progressive forces of Pakistan or United Sates look forward to.

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