Non-Subscriber Extract
Yemen drone strike: just the start?
- Article Tools
| 08 November 2002 |
By Craig Hoyle, JDW Aviation Editor, London and Andrew Koch, JDW Bureau Chief, Washington, DC.
The US Central Intelligence Agency's airstrike against six suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen on 3 November has again demonstrated the Predator unmanned air vehicle's (UAV's) transition from a surveillance drone to a hunter-killer asset.
The mission saw a CIA-operated RQ-1 Predator destroy a civilian vehicle after launching a Hellfire air-to-surface missile at the target around 160km east of the Yemeni capital, Sana'a.
US officials had indicted one of the six men as being involved in the October 2000 attack on the US Navy destroyer USS Cole off Yemen, in which 17 US sailors were killed.
95 of 1250 words