Pentagon chief seeks more drones in Iraq for intel

By Kristin Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the Pentagon to find ways to speed drones and other unmanned surveillance systems to Iraq despite Air Force reluctance to take pilots off missions.

Gates said on Monday he had tried for months to get more unmanned aircraft to Iraq, used to locate targets and warn ground troops of an approaching threat, but that he hit resistance inside the Pentagon.

"My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield," Gates told officers at the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base.

He indicated the Air Force's desire to use pilots for its missions had kept the Defense Department from employing more effective, lower-cost unmanned aerial vehicles.

"Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth," he said. "While we've doubled this capability in recent months, it is still not good enough."

Gates formed a task force on Friday to find ways to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities into Iraq and Afghanistan in phases, starting within 30 days, according to Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

Gates warned the group's findings may force the Air Force to replace pilots with unmanned aircraft on some missions. It may also require the Air Force to reconsider the type of aircraft it needs, the Pentagon chief said.

"All this may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not," he told the group.

"For those missions that still require manned missions, we have to think hard about whether we have the right platforms, whether for example low-cost, low-tech alternatives exist to do basic reconnaissance and close air support in an environment where we have total control of the skies," he said.

Gates compared the new task force to the one that studied the military's need for more bomb-resistant vehicles, which led to the Pentagon's $20 billion program to speed mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles to Iraq last year.

Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, is the category of systems that collect, process and disseminate intelligence. For the Pentagon, ISR often refers to systems used to observe an area or group and acquire information that can be used in targeting.

It includes satellite systems and unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the remotely piloted Predator aircraft and Northrop Grumman Corp's Global Hawk.

"Today we now have more than 5,000 UAVs, a 25-fold increase since 2001," Gates said. "But in my view we can do and we should do more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt."

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)