Jeremiah Gertler, a military aviation specialist at the Congressional Research Service, has suggested that the Defense Department could meet a military demand for unmanned ISR missions by reusing older drones, FierceGovernmentIT reported Friday.Gertler wrote in a CRS Insights report obtained by FierceGovernmentIT that DoD believes the department has an adequate number of unmanned aerial vehicles to support military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He also observed the department is turning to the private sector to build drones equipped with stealth technology.
“DoD has not put out unclassified specifications or requests for proposal for new generations of UAVs,” Gertler stated.
“Instead, it seems willing to let industry develop and put forward whatever that next generation will be.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the U.S. military looks to double its ISR-related drone flights to monitor global hot spots during the next four years.
