WASHINGTON — In unusually blunt terms, Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday challenged the Air Force to contribute more to immediate wartime needs and to promote new thinking, saying it was like “pulling teeth” for participation.
Gates singled out the use of pilotless surveillance planes, in growing demand by commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan, as an example of how the Air Force and other services must act more aggressively.
Gates has been trying for months to get the Air Force to send more unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, such as the Predator drone that provides real-time surveillance video, to the battlefield. They are playing an increasing role in disrupting insurgent efforts to plant roadside bombs.
“Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it’s been like pulling teeth,” Gates said of his prodding. “While we’ve doubled this capability in recent months, it is still not good enough.”
Gates made his remarks to a large group of officers at the Air Force’s Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.
While Gates’ comments were directed mainly at the Air Force, his concern about faster fielding of unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft included a broader appeal to the entire military. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps have been expanding their fleets of drone aircraft.
“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,” he said. “My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield.”
He cited the example of drone aircraft that can watch, hunt and sometimes kill insurgents without risking the life of a pilot. He said the number of such aircraft has grown 25-fold since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to a total of 5,000.
To push the issue harder, Gates said he has established a Pentagon-wide task force “to work this problem in the weeks to come, to find more innovative and bold ways to help those whose lives are on the line.”
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Gates expects an initial report from the group by early May.
“All this may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not,” Gates said, referring to so-called unmanned aerial vehicles in the Air Force fleet that are controlled by service members at ground stations.
Gates, who served in the Air Force in the 1960s as a young officer before he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, urged the officers in his audience to dedicate themselves to thinking creatively.
“I’m asking you to be part of the solution and part of the future,” he said.
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