Unmanned Weapon Makes Its Mark in Yemen

The latest phase of the global war on terror has a new slogan - "loitering with intent".

"Loitering" is the official term for what the Predator unmanned air vehicle (UAV) can do for up to 40 hours over a target.

This week, after three aborted efforts to strike terrorist hideouts in Yemen in the past month, a Hellfire missile was launched from a UAV at a car in the Marib province 175kms east of the capital Sana'a, killing an al-Qaeda fugitive and five accomplices.

The attack opened a new front against al-Qaeda.

"Increasingly this war is going to be fought in the margins and the shadows," said Andrew Brookes, aerospace specialist at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

It also registered in Washington, where the sort of warfare epitomised by the Predator is competing for funds against tanks and aircraft.

The only previous use of an armed CIA Predator was in an attempt to assassinate the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohamed Omar. The operator had Mullah Omar within range, but the CIA lacked 'shoot-to-kill' authorisation and the attack was aborted.

White House officials will not say whether President George W. Bush personally gave the order to fire on Sunday, but he could have pressed the button himself. Just 1.5 seconds later and more than 7,000 miles away the engine on the Hellfire anti-armour missile would have blazed into life, detached from the wing of the UAV, and locked on to the car some 10,000ft below.

Many Yemenis applauded the strike, which killed Ali Qaed Sunian al-Harithi, also known as Abu Ali, and five others. Both Yemeni and US authorities had been hunting al-Harithi since last December for his alleged role in the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 US servicemen in Aden harbour two years ago.

Last month, Yemen's foreign minister Abu-Bakr al-Qirbi said, spyplanes searched the vast sand-sea, the Rub' al-Khali or 'Empty Quarter', which stretches for thousands of square miles either side of the Saudi-Yemen border. According to Abdul-Karim al-Iryani, a Yemeni former foreign minister and now adviser to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the fugitives had been avoiding US Predators and Yemeni forces by "moving around in a pick-up truck with a simple tent on the top and probably a Bedouin guide who knows the Rub' al-Khali like the palm of his hand".

The CIA, which may have been operating the Predator out of a forward base in Djibouti, could have deployed a number of Predators to keep the car under constant surveillance for days. From its usual operating height of 10,000ft-15,000ft, the small aircraft would not be heard by anyone on the ground.

The Predator, which is flown using direct satellite data links, is fitted with a powerful 900mm zoom lens on its video camera and has an infra-red camera and all-weather radar. From 15,000 feet, the camera can read vehicles' number plates and zoom in on faces, enabling its remote operator to identify potential targets relatively easily.

Some reports credited the targeting of Mr al-Harithi to intercepted phone calls, but intelligence experts said this was an unlikely scenario, given senior al-Qaeda operatives' tendency to avoid using satellite phones.

"Without extensive human intelligence of where the al-Qaeda operatives are, it is unlikely we will ever find all of them," said Loren Thompson, head of security studies at the Lexington Institute. "Technology has its limitations, and unfortunately al-Qaeda operatives know most of those limitations."

That is why this week's strike looks as if it was carried out with the help of special forces on the ground or - more likely - the direct co-operation of Yemeni intelligence.

"On an operation like this you have to be so thoroughly embedded in the situation," said a former CIA official who has worked in the region. "You're not just flying up there with a Predator looking for a license plate number. People like this are always captured with your number-one asset, your relationship with local intelligence."

Whether such strikes will become common will depend in part on who wins budget battles now being fought in the US between conventional forces and security services.

"There are a lot of power struggles going on at present between the old ways of using tanks and fighters and the new ways of fighting. The old ways are becoming less and less relevant," said Andrew Brookes.

"What isn't taking place is a readjustment of where the defence funding should go and whether to switch it towards the fight against the non-state players. The militaries are sitting back and being a bit precious, while the CIA is saying 'If you're not going to do it, we will do it ourselves'," he said.

But as the new front against al-Qaeda grows, the Predator's fate as a counter-terrorist weapon will also depend on the ability to contain the anger of Yemeni tribes sympathetic to the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.