The U.S. military is growing increasingly reliant on unmanned aircraft, especially in Iraq, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Wednesday. Figures obtained by AP from the Defense Department showed that the U.S. Air Force doubled its monthly use of the aircrafts between January and October. The use of the aircrafts for over 500,000 hours in the air has caused the Air Force to take pilots out of the air and shift them to remote flying duty to meet part of the demand. The Defense Department's figures show that the dramatic increase in the development and use of the unmanned aircraft that can watch, hunt and sometimes kill insurgents will increase aggressively over the next 25 years. The aircraft's increased use in Iraq coincided with the build up of U.S. forces this summer in order to halt the violence in Baghdad. Pentagon officials said that even as troops begin to slowly come home this year, the use of the aircraft such as Predators, Global Hawks, Shadows and Ravens, will not likely slow. “I think right now the demand for the capability that the unmanned system provides is only increasing. Even as the surge ends, I suspect the deployment of the unmanned systems will not go down, particularly for larger systems,” said U.S. Army Colonel Bob Quackenbush, deputy director for Army Aviation. The increased military operations all across Iraq last summer triggered greater use of the drones and an escalating call for more of the systems.
