The idea of autonomous drones is understandably alarming to many, especially in making life or death decisions to drop bombs. The military's strategy to make the Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk systems more efficient and less costly is to replace human beings with greater autonomy in how drones operate. For the Global Hawk spy drone, as many as three hundred personnel are required for a CAP. This breaks down to roughly 30 percent with the mission control element, or pilots and sensor operators to control from a distant site via satellite communications, coordinators, and maintenance or administrative personnel 30 percent in the launch recovery element, or pilots and sensor operators to control from the launch site via line-of-sight communications, and maintenance or administrative personnel and 40 percent in processing, exploitation, and dissemination, or the video and signals intelligence analysts, and maintenance or administrative personnel. For example, Predator or Reaper strike drones require between 168 and 190 people to maintain one combat air patrol (CAP), or the ability to sustain twenty-four-hour coverage of a specific area. Presently, a constraining factor in how they are used is that they require more people to man unmanned aircraft than most people realize. Unlike manned aircraft, or special operations raids, MALE drones can hover directly over hostile territory for between fourteen and forty hours (depending on their weapons and sensor payloads) without placing pilots or ground troops at risk of injury, capture, or death.
Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones-like the Predator, Reaper, and Global Hawk-for spying on potential adversaries and attacking suspected militants has made them the default counterterrorism tools for the Obama administration. MORE FROM THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
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