For the first time, the federal government has allowed military drones to utilize a commercial airport.
At
dusk I stood on a residential street with trim lawns and watched planes
approach a runway along the other side of a chain-link fence. Just a
few dozen yards away, a JetBlue airliner landed. Then a United plane
followed. But the next aircraft looked different. It was a bit smaller
and had no markings or taillights. A propeller whirled at the back. And
instead of the high-pitched screech of a jet, the sound was more like...
a drone.
 |
| Patrick Fallon / Reuters |
During
the next half-hour I saw three touch-and-go swoops by drones, their
wheels scarcely reaching the runaway before climbing back above
Syracuse’s commercial airport. Nearby, pilots were at the controls in
front of Air Force computers, learning how to operate the MQ-9 Reaper
drone that is now a key weapon of U.S. warfare from Afghanistan to the
Middle East to Africa.
Since
last summer the Defense Department has been using the runway and
airspace at the Syracuse Hancock International Airport to train drone
operators, who work at the adjoining Air National Guard base. Officials
say it’s the first time that the federal government has allowed military
drones to utilize a commercial airport. It won’t be the last time.
No
longer will the pilots who steer drones and fire missiles while staring
at computer screens be confined to remote areas like the Nevada desert.
With scant public information or debate, sizable American communities
are becoming enmeshed in drone warfare on other continents. Along the
way, how deeply will we understand — in human terms — what the drone war
is doing to people far away? And to us?
*** *** ***
The
takeoffs and landings of military drones at the Syracuse airport get
little attention in New York’s fifth-largest city. Already routine, the
maneuvers are hardly noticed. In an elevator at a hotel near the
airport, I mentioned the Reaper drone exercises to an American Airlines
flight attendant who had just landed on the same runway as the drones.
“I had no idea,” she said.
The
Reaper drones using the Syracuse runway are unarmed, the Air Force
says. But when trainees go operational, their computer work includes
aiming and launching Hellfire missiles at targets many thousands of
miles away.
Despite the official claims that drone strikes rarely hit civilians, some evidence says otherwise. For example, leaked classified documents (obtained by The Intercept)
shed light on a series of U.S. airstrikes codenamed Operation Haymaker.
From January 2012 to February 2013, those drone attacks in northeast
Afghanistan killed more than 200 people, but only about one-sixth of
them were the intended targets.
Even without a missile strike, there are traumatic effects of drones hovering overhead. The former New York Times reporter
David Rohde has described what he experienced during captivity by the
Taliban in tribal areas of Pakistan: “The drones were terrifying. From
the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking
as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant
reminder of imminent death.”
As
civic leaders in Syracuse and elsewhere embrace the expanding domestic
involvement in day-to-day drone warfare, clear mention of the human toll
far away is almost taboo. Elected officials join with business groups
and public-relations officers from the military in extolling the
benefits and virtues. Rarely does anyone acknowledge that civilians are
maimed and killed as a result of the extolled activities, or that — in
the name of a war on terror — people in foreign lands are subjected to
the airborne presence of drones that is (to use Rohde’s word)
“terrifying.”
Such
matters are a far cry from Syracuse, where the local airport’s role in
drone warfare is visible yet virtually unseen. My random conversations
with dozens of Syracuse residents in many walks of life turned up scant
knowledge or concern about the nearby drone operations. What’s front and
center is the metropolitan area’s economic distress.
Unlike
the well-financed Air National Guard base, the city’s crumbling
infrastructure and budgets for relieving urban blight are on short
rations. When I talked with people in low-income neighborhoods of
Syracuse — one of the poorest cities in the United States — despair was
often unmistakable. A major study by the Century Foundation identified
Syracuse as the city with the highest concentrations of poverty among
African Americans and Hispanics in the United States. Locally, the
latest influx of federal largesse is for the drone war, not for them.
*** *** ***
A group called Upstate Drone Action has
been protesting at the Air National Guard base on the outskirts of
Syracuse with frequent vigils and persistent civil disobedience. A
recent demonstration, on Good Friday, included nine arrests. The
participants said in a joint statement: “What if our country were
constantly being spied upon by drones, with some of us killed by drones?
What if many bystanders, including children, were killed in the
process? If that were happening, we would hope that some people in that
attacking country would speak up and try to stop the killing. We’re
speaking up to try and stop the illegal and immoral drone attacks on
countries against which Congress has not declared war.”
The
last couple of months have not gone well for authorities trying to
discourage civil disobedience — what organizers call “civil resistance” —
at the base. In early March, a jury in the Dewitt Town Court took just
half an hour to acquit
four defendants on all charges from an action two years ago that could
have resulted in a year behind bars for disorderly conduct, trespassing
and obstruction of government administration.
Later in March, citing a lack of jurisdiction, a local judge dismissed
charges against four people who set up a “nativity tableau” in front of
the main gate at the Hancock Air Force Base two days before Christmas
last year. In a press release, Upstate Drone Action said that the
activists had been “protesting the hunter/killer MQ-9 Reaper drones
piloted over Afghanistan by the 174th Attack Wing of the New York
National Guard” at the base.
*** *** ***
The
U.S. drone war is escalating in numerous countries. A year ago the head
of the Air Combat Command, Gen. Herbert Carlisle, told a Senate
subcommittee that “an insatiable demand” was causing U.S. drone
operations to grow at a “furious pace.” That pace has become even more
furious since President Trump took office. In early April a researcher
at the Council on Foreign Relations, Micah Zenko, calculated that
President Trump had approved an average of one drone attack per day — a
fivefold increase from the rate under the Obama administration.
Upstate
New York is leading the way for the Pentagon’s plan to expand its drone
program from isolated areas into populous communities, which offer
ready access to workers. One hundred and sixty miles to the west of
Syracuse, just outside the city of Niagara Falls, an Air National Guard
base — the largest employer in the county — is in the final stages of
building a cutting-edge digital tech center with huge bandwidth. There,
pilots and sensor operators will do shifts at computer consoles, guiding
MQ-9 drones and firing missiles on kill missions. The center is on
track to become fully operational in a matter of months.
At
the main gate of the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station, a sergeant from
the public-affairs office was upbeat about the base “operating the MQ-9
remotely piloted aircraft.” At city hall the mayor of Niagara Falls, a
liberal Democrat, sounded no less pleased, while carefully sidestepping
my questions about whether he could see any downsides to the upcoming
drone role. A local businessman who chairs the Niagara Military Affairs
Council — a private organization that has long spearheaded efforts to
prevent closure of the base — told me that getting the drone mission was
crucial for keeping the base open.
In
such ways, functioning locally while enabling globally, the political
economy and mass psychology of militarism do the work of the warfare
state.
[This
article was released by ExposeFacts, a program of the Institute for
Public Accuracy, where Norman Solomon is executive director.]
