Cavguy,

The "late 90's" wasn't that long ago and the Navy had the best UAV program before that which explains why they were the managers for Hunter, Pioneer and Predator under DARO.

The Air Force developed the Predator and turned it into a capable weapons and ISR platform that is integrated with other weapons systems. Yes the Army has UAV's and I'm sure you put them to good use, as you should. But unless I'm mistaken they are essentially just cameras in the sky. For example, can your mortar or arty teams use them to correct fire? Can they designate for your other weapons systems? Can your apaches get your video feed to develop SA when they're enroute to your tic? Unless I'm mistaken, the current crop of Army UAV's can do none of these things.

As for integration with the ground force, that is a two-way street. There is nothing preventing the Army from buying as many ROVERs as it wants or integrating the datalink technology more directly into its weapon systems as the Air Force is currently in the middle of doing. The technology and architecture are there for the Army to exploit if it chooses to do so.

In the meantime, the Army likes what the USAF made so much it wants to buy a bunch of its own predators (500!) which is fine by me.

And I'm genuinely sorry about your bad predator experience, there really is no excuse for that.

Coldstreamer,

One might argue that everything is ultimately land-centric

I postulated moving ADA to the AF in jest to simply make the point. Truth be told, however, a lot of pilots were more afraid of Patriot than the Iraqi air defenses - the capabilities of the system are such that the aircrew tends not to survive. As an intel guy I had to brief the location and status of the various Patriot batteries before each mission.