[BITList] Precision drone attack

[John Feltham]

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Date: Thursday, July 9, 2009, 12:59 AM

CIA Drone Targeting Tech Revealed, Qaeda Claims

By Adam Rawnsley
July 8, 2009  |
3:59 pm  |


American drone strikes are finding their targets in Pakistan through a  
series of infrared homing beacons, Al Qaeda alleges in a new online  
publication.

The American and Pakistani intelligence services credit U.S. unmanned  
aircraft with decimating the ranks of terrorist and insurgent  
operatives in Pakistan. “Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in  
terms of confronting and trying to disrupt the Al Qaeda leadership,”  
CIA director Leon Panetta said in May. The unmanned aircraft have  
supposedly carried out 28 attacks on suspected militants, just since  
the start of the year. Hundreds have been killed, including as many as  
45 more people in a series of strikes today.

But how the killer drones find their targets has been a matter of some  
dispute. Local Taliban commander Mullah Nazir, himself an occasional  
target, says they’re guided by SIM cards, installed in militant cell  
phones. Area tribesman talk of homing devices, planted by informants,  
that are capable of signaling American aircraft. In The Ruling  
Concerning Muslims Spies, an internet-distributed book written by self- 
styled theologian and emerging Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi,  
warns readers of American infrared devices which he claims directs the  
attacks on Al Qaeda and its allies.

“These result in the firing of the murderous and destructive missiles  
whose wrath is inflicted on the Mujahedeen and the weak,” he writes.  
Then he provides “photos of some of the devices the spies  
painstakingly transport to the targets they are assigned by their  
infidel patrons.”

The pictures of the “chips with 9 volt batteries” provided in the book  
(see photo, above) bear a sharp resemblance to the Phoenix and Pegasus  
models of infrared flashing beacons made by Cejay Engineering. The  
devices are used by the U.S. military, among others, to identify  
friend from foe, mark drop zones, and outline perimeters.

The gadgets use LEDs, powered by a 9 volt battery, to emit beacons of  
infrared light that are visible only through night vision equipment. A  
six-second memory can be programmed to flash in Morse-type codes and  
other sequences. The lights can be seen at “distances of over five  
miles and can also be seen through clothing and underwater,” according  
to one distributor. from a distance of up to five miles. They can  
weigh as little as a half-ounce, are as small as an inch-and-a- 
quarter, and have a battery life of nearly 100 hours. The Phoenix  
family of infrared beacons have been in use since 1984, making them  
the “the most widely used electronic Combat ID system in the world.”

American Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft are both equipped with  
infrared cameras, making such beacons a natural drone signaling  
mechanism. And because the devices are relatively simple and cheap —  
less sophisticated models can be purchased online for as little as $25  
each — they can be handed out to informants, without fear of  
compromising clandestine, sophisticated American technology.

“Transmitters make a lot of sense to me,” former CIA case officer  
Robert Baer previously told about the general notion of beacons  
guiding in drone strikes. “It is simply not possible to train a  
Pashtun from Waziristan to go to a targeted site, case it, and come  
back to Peshawar or Islamabad with anything like an accurate report.  
The best you can hope for is they’re putting the transmitter on the  
right house.”

In April, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of  
planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as  
an American spy. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette  
paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” he said. If I was successful, I  
was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”

But Rehman says he didn’t just tag jihadists with the devices. “The  
money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people  
were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money,” he  
added. Which raises the possibility that the unmanned aircraft —  
America’s key weapons in its covert war on Pakistan’s jihadists and  
insurgents — may have been lead to the wrong targets.

[Translation: Yasser El-Shimy]

– Adam Rawnsley and Noah Shachtman

.

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