The radar registered higher numbers of border crossings and lower rates for apprehension, despite the Obama administration’s insistence that the border is secure, according to the Los Angeles Times:

Operated from a Predator surveillance drone, the radar system has collected evidence that Border Patrol agents apprehended fewer than half of the foreign migrants and smugglers who had illegally crossed into a 150-square-mile stretch of southern Arizona. [...]

According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between Oct. 1 and Jan. 17. But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.

In contrast, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in January that the Border Patrol had caught 64% of those who illegally crossed into the Tucson sector in 2011.

The system, which was developed by DARPA for use in Afghanistan, is still in its testing phase. The tests, however, have been successful enough that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has asked Congress for two more systems.

Some 16 months ago, as the U.S. surge in Afghanistan was in full swing, the Air Force was ordered to get to 65 drone combat air patrols. Each CAP represents a UAV on station 24/7 and requires about four aircraft to make happen. Currently, the Air Force has 258 Predators and Reapers staffing 60 CAPs. There are almost 300 Reapers still on order, largely to replace the Predators.

Now the U.S. is drawing its forces down. For many conventional units, the end of war means a return home. F-16s will go back to Aviano or Eglin or Edwards. Infantry units will return to their homes at Fort Drum, Campbell or Bragg. But most of the Air Force’s midsize UAVs have no home bases. They’ve always been deployed.

While making new homes at American bases for the drones is an option, current regulations would make flying difficult. Finding international homes for drones is the only way to prevent them from being trashed, but each command comes with it’s own issues.

Take North Korea.

“If we fly a Predator over their territory, they may see it as an act of war and they’ll take it down,” said Joe Detrani, a former envoy for talks with Pyongyang, and who oversaw intelligence collection over North Korea when he was at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

U.S. commanders are acutely aware of this.

“We are now shifting to a theater where there’s an adversary out there who’s going to have a vote on whether I have that staring eye over the battlefield 24/7/365,” Gen. Mike Hostage, who leads the Air Force’s Air Combat Command, told a think tank audience last year. “And I’m pretty certain they’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Drones could be of use in Latin America, where states are attempting to crack down on illegal trafficking of narcotics. However,  Latin American countries take sovereignty very seriously and drones don’t have a great reputation around the world.

“It’s hard to imagine a lot of countries where this would fly in Latin America,” said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, a progressive think tank. “Certainly the optics of it for the population would be terrible. … Every leftist politician would include it in their speeches.”

The U.S. has already deployed small ScanEagle drones in Colombia. But that led to a small embarrassment in 2009, when FARC guerrillas triumphantly claimed to have shot one down.

Reapers and Predators are in another class entirely because in the psyche of modern times, they are the heart of the targeted killing program. “People think about drone strikes when they think about drones,” Isacson said.

“Big grey drones show up in other people’s countries,” said Capt. Bill Ipock, a Navy officer in SOUTHCOM’s Counterdrug Program, “there’s political aspects to that that you have to take a look at.”

The military operations that began earlier this year in Mali are highlighting the use of drones in Africa, another potential area of increased drone activity in the coming years.

Given the distance between American military operations in Africa intelligence gathering has been difficult on the continent and is a gap military leaders would like to close.

The biggest difficulty is a basing shortfall:

 “There’s not sufficient discussion about basing,” [Gen David Rodriguez] said. “No one in my office or in many of the area Air Force offices understands that piece yet. So we’ve got some questions into AFRICOM: ‘Tell me what you need and what the requirement is.’ We’ve also asked AFRICOM and SOCOM: ‘What do you see the future of AFRICOM being? Is it one or two large locations? Or is it a number of smaller locations because the distances are so dramatic?’”

For now, the Predators flying from the small airbase in Niamey have a vast area to service. And there is nowhere near the basing required to absorb the hundreds of Reapers coming online.

The state-owned South African company Denel Dynamics is working covertly with the Saudis to develop the Seeker 400 drone into an armed combat system for the Saudi military, the Paris-based newsletter Intelligence Online reported March 27.

The Seeker 400 is an advanced version of the company’s Seeker II unarmed surveillance aircraft.

The newsletter stated that the Saudi military would be the first customer to purchase the Seeker 400 armed drone and engineers from Denel are in the kingdom as part of the secret program.

If completed, the sale would allow Saudi Arabia to join the growing number of militaries that operate missile-firing drones—the most advanced weapon currently in use to launch precision strikes on terrorists.

Drone warfare has become the hallmark of the CIA, which is aggressively pursuing terrorists with drone missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s frontier region, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and elsewhere.

The new drone will be equipped with South Africa’s Mokopa air-to-ground missiles that are currently deployed on Algerian helicopters. The drone also can be outfitted with Impi laser-guided missiles with a range of 10 kilometers.

The drones are believed to be sought by the Saudis for use against the terrorist group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is currently operating in Yemen and has conducted international operations against the United States.

Riyadh has been trying to purchase missile-firing drones from the United States but so far the requests have been denied.

The United Arab Emirates is purchasing an unarmed export version of the Predator called the Predator XP, produced by General Atomics.

According to the newsletter, the Saudis have sought armed drones for several years and want the weapons to counter Iran’s unmanned combat vehicles known as the Karrar and the Shahed 129, which are fitted with Shahid-1 missiles.

“Because it could not procure drones from China, which is allied to Iran, nor from Israel, Riyadh turned to South Africa,” the newsletter stated.

However, Saudi Arabia lacks the infrastructure needed to operate drones. The systems require satellite communications that permit remote video and communications that allow drones to be piloted.

The Seeker 400 can fly for 16 hours and has a range of 250 kilometers with a 100-kilogram payload.

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Advanced Technologies Research Institute (PSATRI), a joint project of the Saudi air force and the King Fahd University, is also developing surveillance drones for use along the southern Saudi border, the newsletter stated.

Spokesmen for Denel and the Saudi Embassy could not be reached for comment.

News reports in February revealed that Saudi Arabia is hosting a U.S. attack drone base in the southern part of the country that was revealed in satellite imagery.

These satellite images show a remote airstrip deep in the desert of Saudi Arabia. It may or may not be the secret U.S. drone base revealed by reporters earlier this week.

However, the base’s hangars bear a remarkable resemblance to similar structures found on other American drone outposts. And its remote location—dozens of miles from the nearest highway, and farther still to the nearest town—suggests that this may be more than the average civilian airstrip.

The base had been kept secret for two years until disclosed in reports by the Washington Post and New York Times in February.

The base was used for the drone strike in September 2011 that killed American-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki.

New unarmed drone deployments include the recent stationing of reconnaissance and ocean surveillance drones in Northeast Asia near Japan and the Senkaku islands and along China’s southern coast. Drones also are planned for the South China Sea where China has been encroaching on international waters and bullying nations of that region in asserting control over international waters, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.

“Unmanned aerial vehicles are emerging as critical enablers for PLA long range precision strike operations,” said Mark Stokes, a former military intelligence official now with the Project 2049 Institute. “A general operational PLA requirement appears to be persistent surveillance of fixed and moving targets out to 3,000 kilometers of Chinese shores.”

Japan, meanwhile, is developing and purchasing military drone capabilities to counter what it regards as Chinese aggression and Beijing’s growing military capabilities as Tokyo’s dispute with China over the Senkaku islands intensifies, the officials said.

After Chinese aircraft intruded into Japanese airspace over the Senkakus undetected late last year, Tokyo stepped up efforts to seek drone capabilities. The efforts include building an indigenous missile-tracking drone and high-altitude U.S. drones.

So far, unlike Beijing, Tokyo asserts its drone will be unarmed, the officials said.

“China has started deploying UAVs for reconnaissance and oceanic surveillance purposes in the vicinity of disputed maritime territories, such as the Senkaku Islands,” said one military source.

Of particular concern to U.S. intelligence agencies are two new missile-equipped drones known as the CH-4 and Yi Long. The aircraft were shown off along with six other military drones at a major Chinese arms show last November in Zhuhai.

Photos of the drones reveal the designs appear to be copied from the U.S. Predator armed drone that has been leading the Obama administration’s war on al Qaeda in Pakistan and elsewhere. Photos of the CH-4 show it armed with Blue Arrow-7 anti-tank missiles that appear similar in size to the U.S. Hellfire fired from Predators.

Even more of a concern, according to the officials, are intelligence reports from Asia indicating that China is well along in building a large stealth unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV)—an upiloted jet—that was revealed recently in an online Chinese military video.

The drone combat jet is nearly identical in shape to the experimental batwing-shaped U.S. Air Force X-47B currently under development. The X-47B was tested on an aircraft carrier in December.

The Chinese UCAV is expected to have enough range to reach the U.S. island of Guam, some 1,800 miles from the Chinese coast and the hub of the Pentagon’s shift to Asia, officials said.

Video and photos of the Chinese UCAV were posted on Chinese military enthusiast Internet sites recently. Also, a model of the drone combat jet was on display at Zhuhai. The aircraft is being built by the China Shenyang Aerospace Institute and could be deployed on China’s new aircraft carrier, officials said.

Richard Fisher, a China military analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the first prototype flying wing UCAV was completed at China’s Hongdu Aircraft Corp in mid-December. The drone weighs 10 to 14 tons and could be carrier based.

“This means that the U.S. attempt to ‘outrange’ an emergent PLA anti-access systems, like the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, could soon be outflanked by a new PLA carrier-based UCAV,” Fisher said.

Japan, alarmed at fierce Chinese reaction to its efforts to solve the Senkakus dispute by nationalizing several of the uninhabited but oil-rich islands last year, is bolstering its military forces with both missile-detecting and maritime surveillance with drones.

Japanese Defense Ministry officials, quoted in press reports, have called the purchase of several long-range U.S. Global Hawk surveillance drones an urgent priority.

Tokyo is seeking up to three Global Hawks by 2015 but could speed up purchases in response to what it regards as growing Chinese aggressiveness toward Japan over the Senkakus.

The U.S. military currently has Global Hawks deployed at Guam.

The Japanese do not plan to develop armed drones and plan to limit initial purchases to the Global Hawk, which fly nearly 60,000 feet for extended missions. It is able to track vessels using sensors and radar.

Japan also is developing an unmanned drone aircraft that will be used to detect North Korean nuclear missile attacks and to counter the Chinese military buildup, the officials said.

The anti-missile drone program is being developed over the next four years with the first drone deployed by 2020. It will use infrared sensors designed to detect missiles shortly after launch.

China’s drone program is believed to have benefitted from its aggressive economic and cyber espionage operations against the United States. Those efforts have included breaking into both government and defense industry networks and stealing valuable drone technology.

Officials also said China’s drone program is receiving a boost from an unlikely source: Taiwan.

The largest Chinese drone production center is being built at Wuhan in Hubei province, site of a joint construction project by China’s Wuhan Visiontek Inc. and Taiwan’s Carbon-Based Technology, Inc.

Officials said China launched a crash program to develop military drones beginning around 2007. Beijing is planning a range of unmanned aircraft capabilities, including high-altitude, long-endurance drones, integrated air and sea warfare drones, sea-based drones and UCAVs.

China’s new UCAV, a small bird-like drone shown during a recent military show at Zhuhai / Source: Chinese Internet

More than 60 drones were on display in Beijing last June, including a drone helicopter, and a drone with simulated birds’ wings.

Additionally, officials have said drone bases are being set up in the South China Sea to monitor Scarborough reef, which is claimed by Philippines and China; Macclesfield Bank; the Paracel Islands; and the Spratly Islands. China also is using drone to monitor the Socotra Reef claimed by South Korea.

A report made public March 11 by the Project 2049 Institute on Chinese drones estimated that China has more than 280 military drones.

“The PLA has developed one of the largest and most organizationally complex UAV programs in the world,” the report stated.

For the immediate future, the Chinese drones are monitoring disputed maritime and land boundaries that are likely to “increase tensions” since other states in the region lack the same capabilities.

“Like any new capability, UAVs may encourage the inexperienced to overreach and engage in risk taking,” the report said. “There could be a sense that because human pilot lives are not at stake, operators can push farther than they otherwise might.”

An isolated UAV attack during a crisis also could lead to a major conflict. “In the future, PRC decision-makers might feel compelled to order ‘plausibly deniable’ UAV attacks as a means of sending a political signal only to inadvertently wind up escalating tensions,” the report said.

Over the long term, Chinese drones will support the expansion of Chinese military operational areas by pushing the ability to hit targets further into the western Pacific. The report said China likely will use its UAV force for targeting and guidance of the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile designed to strike U.S. aircraft carriers more than a thousand miles from China’s coast.

“While the potential for a large scale conflict in the region currently appears low, the lack of adequate preparation for worst case scenarios could encourage and invite adventurous adversary behavior, ultimately increasing risks to peace and stability,” the report stated.

U.S. intelligence agencies reported earlier this month that China plans to build 11 drone bases along its coastline by 2015, with each base deploying at least one unmanned aircraft.

The People’s Liberation Army currently has two drone bases in northeast Liaoning province. A third base was disclosed further south at Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, also on the Bohai Sea.

The bases were announced in August by the State Oceanic Administration, which has been used as a proxy by the Chinese military to lay claim to international waters and islands as part of a strategy of pushing Chinese maritime control hundreds and eventually thousands of miles from the coast through what Beijing calls its two Asian island chain strategy. The island chains stretch from Northeast Asia through Southeast Asia.

The two bases in the Bohai Sea are located at Yingkou and Dalian to provide surveillance of the Bohai and Yellow Seas.

China called U.S. aircraft carrier exercises held in the Yellow Sea three years ago “a threat to China” even though the carrier maneuvers were carried out in international waters.

The maritime surveillance drones provide high-definition remote imagery and will be used by China to respond to emergencies in the region and also to identify what China claims are illegal resource extraction from undersea gas and oil deposits.

U.S. officials regard recent highlighting of attack drones as a sign that Beijing remains intent on taking control of the Senkakus.

The increased use of drones by both China and Japan is expected to increase tensions over the Senkakus, the officials said.

According to Fisher, China is also exporting two of its armed drones, the Yi Long and CH-3, to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

The UAE government purchased the Yi Long, and a smaller CH-3 was sold to Pakistan and repackaged by Islamabad as the Shahpar.

Fisher said he is concerned China will sell the new and larger CH-4 to Iran.

“Because it is not connected to the Aviation Industries Corporation (AVIC) which wants to do business in the United States, the CH-4 stands a better chance of being sold to Iran,” he told the Free Beacon.

“China’s willingness to sell UCAV technology to terrorist-linked states means that terrorists may soon have another deadly tool with which to attack the United States.”

Among the concerns cited by Feinstein was the fear drones could be used in such a way that compromises the privacy of “Hollywood luminaries:”

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Do you think, senator, that technology, and you and I have grown up with the dynamic, almost unbelievable exponential growth in what mankind can do with technology, is that playing to the paranoia in people – they think if we have the capability we’re going to use it against average citizens who are of a different political persuasion for example? Is that why the far right is so nervous?

DIANNE FEINSTEIN: Well, I think the drone is a new technology. In some respects it’s the perfect assassination weapon. It can see from 17,000 – 20,000 feet up in the air. It is very precise. It can knock out a room in a building if it’s armed. It’s a very dangerous weapon, and right now we have a problem. There are all these nations that want to buy these armed drones. I am strongly opposed to that. We have no regulation of drones in the United States in their commercial use. You can see drones some day hovering over the homes of Hollywood luminaries violating privacy. This question has to be addressed, and we need rules of operation on the border, by police, by commercial use, and also by military and intelligence use. So this is now a work in progress. We are taking a look at it on the Intelligence Committee trying to draft some legislation. The administration is looking at a rules playbook as to how these won’t be used and how they will be used. So it’s a very complicated subject of new technology, and I think we have to take a pause and get it right.

Full interview:

CROWLEY: I need a quick yes or no from you, about the use of them and using them targeting Americans overseas. Al-Awlaki, a known terrorist, but an American citizen, as well as his son were killed–you have talked about oversight, you think there’s plenty of oversight for this drone program. Were you told in advance of those two killings?

ROGERS: For the planning purposes of air strikes against terrorists and enemy combatants overseas, yes.

CROWLEY: These specific men?

ROGERS: If people make the target list we know that in advance, there’s appropriate oversight. And then how we target those individuals changes from day to day, but air strikes are certainly a part of that.

“These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise,” Carney said.

NBC News reported late Monday on an unclassified Department of Justice white paper on the use of drones against American citizens, like al Qaeda operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

The increased weaponization of remote controlled Iranian planes could imperil U.S. warships, fighter jets, and even domestic airliners in the region, experts warn.

“A growing [unmanned] fleet might embolden the [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps] to test the defense of American naval vessels and the [fleet’s] armament might also require U.S. or other international forces to fire sooner upon intruders,” Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq, observed in a recent analysis published by the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO).

The Iranian press in recent months has carried a slate of stories detailing the military’s increased manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as UAVs or drones.

It is suspected that Iran has capitalized on technology gleaned from the downing of a U.S.-made stealth drone last year. 

Military officials revealed in July that they had decoded and extracted information from the CIA-owned drone, an RQ-170 Sentinel produced by Lockheed Martin, according to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA).

“You have to think there’s a certain amount of technology that was compromised,” retired Admiral James Lyons Jr. told the Free Beacon.

“They couldn’t have given the Iranian engineers a better Christmas present,” Rubin said in an interview. 

Less than two months after Iran claimed to have decoded the captured American drone, a slate of reports emerged indicating that Iran had armed its newest drones with missiles capable of carrying a 17-pound payload.

Senior Iranian military officials claim the country is close to designating these drones as fully operational, according to Iran’s official Fars News Agency.

“We observed the operation of Iran’s combat Unmanned Arial Vehicles in the recent war-games conducted by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and we plan to mount missile systems onto these drones,” Mohammad Eslami, Iran’s Deputy Defense Minister for Industrial and Research, told Fars earlier this month.

While Iran is known for its military bluster—even doctoring photos to alter the appearance and capabilities of its attack equipment—experts such as Rubin believe the regime has invested great resources in its UAV program.

“Iranian UAV development appears to be real,” Rubin wrote in his analysis, which was published this month in the FMSO’s Operational Environment Watch publication.

“If unarmed Iranian UAVs already posed a growing threat to aircraft and helicopters operating in international airspace over the Persian Gulf, then armed UAVs can throw gasoline onto an already combustible situation,” Rubin wrote. 

Iran’s interest in UAV technology is a sign that the regime wants to ratchet up tension with the West, according to Admiral Lyons. 

“It’s not going to be helpful at all,” said Lyons, CEO of the consulting firm Lion Associates. “It will not help in any way to stabilize, but will be a further factor ratcheting up the problem with face in the Middle East.” 

Armed UAVs could prompt an unnecessary conflict, Rubin noted.

“It really changes the way we do business in the Persian Gulf,” he said. “We may not have had relations for more than three decades [with Iran], but our ships and air traffic controllers talk to the Iranians each and every day. But you can’t talk to a drone. 

Even civilian airliners could be targeted, Rubin warned.

“We have to worry about them sending drones into the path of civilian airliners, let alone our own fighter jets,” Rubin explained. “The drone can go from on guard to combat mode in a matter of a second.”

U.S. military helicopters also could find themselves in the line of fire, Rubin said.

“Most people forget, whenever our aircraft carriers are operating, the issue isn’t just the fighters and ships, but we have helicopters” containing rescue divers hovering above, he said. “Basically, the drones make our helicopters sitting ducks. They’re actually the most vulnerable.”

U.S. forces will not tolerate Iranian aggression, Lyons said.

“We’re certainly not going to present ourselves as targets and I think Iran needs to understand an attack on an American ship is an attack on our homeland, and they’d get a response they don’t like.”

Iran’s military has announced the completion of several new drones in recent months. They are reportedly capable of performing various military operations, as well as hauling cargo, according to various reports in the Iranian media. Iranian officials have stressed the military’s ability to dispatch its drones to all parts of the country at any time, according to Fars.

One domestically produced drone, dubbed Liko, is said to be capable of hauling 220 pounds of material 62 miles, Iran’s PressTV reported over the weekend.

The Liko drone can fly uninterrupted for three hours and reach heights of 16,000 feet, according to PressTV.

Two other drones are reportedly capable of conducting “rescue operations” and territorial patrols, as well as towing “light cargo,” according to Fars.

Another domestically made UAV, the Shahed 129, can “carry out combat and reconnaissance missions with its 24-hour nonstop flight capability,” Iranian Chief Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari was quoted as saying earlier this month.

The Shahed 129 also can carry “long range” missiles, according to Press TV.

However, some experts doubt that the Shahed is authentic.

“I’m skeptical about the Iranian claim to have a new operational combat UAV called the Shahed 129,” Michael Eisenstadt, a retired Army reservist who formerly served in the Pentagon and at U.S. Central Command in Afghanistan, told the Free Beacon. “The Islamic Republic frequently exaggerates the achievements of its defense industries, and I suspect they are doing the same in this case.”

Just as Iran has lied about its past military accomplishments, it is deceiving the West about its latest array of drones, Eisenstadt said.

“Iranians have released at least two still photos of what they claim is the Shahed 129 that show two very different UAVs,” he explained. “One of the photos shows what looks like a static mock-up of a UAV carrying mock-ups of two missiles. The other shows a very different UAV in flight, but without any ordnance.” 

Eistenstadt said that until he sees video showing the Shahed 129 in flight, “I will consider this an unverified claim.” 

Still, “Iran has money and we have unhelpful countries such as China, North Korea and Russia willing to provide the materials” necessary to produce next generation weapons, Lyons said.

Iran has also provided its UAV technology to other rogue regimes and terror organizations, according to the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat Online, a Saudi news outlet.

In addition to providing drone technology the regime of Syrian President Bashal al-Assad, who has spied on and slaughtered scores of his own citizens, Iran has helped the terror group Hezbollah.

“Hezbollah has also relied on drones, while Iran helps Venezuela develop its own unmanned spy planes,” Al-Sharq reported.

Iran also has unveiled new missile defense capabilities and cruise missiles in recent weeks.

The defense system, which Iran claims to have successfully tested over the weekend, is reportedly capable of reaching targets up to 75,000 feet in the air. 

A recently developed Iranian cruise missile is said to be capable of reaching any Israeli city.

As Iran gets closer to enriching enough uranium to producing a nuclear weapon, it will rely more on its air defenses to deter a possible Israeli or American attack, experts said.

The Free Beacon reported yesterday on a letter from Rep. Tom Latham (R., Iowa) to the EPA:

“Few developments in the news in recent weeks have disturbed me more than what we’re learning about the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) using unmanned drone aircraft to monitor Iowa farms,” Latham said in a statement Sunday. “In some cases, we’re learning that the EPA has used the aircraft to gather information on agricultural operations. The simple truth is that no government agency should be able to treat Iowa farmers like the Taliban.”

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Some aren’t even sure the EPA has the legal backing to conduct such flights, as lawmakers from Nebraska made clear in another letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson.

“On what statutory authority is the EPA relying to conduct aerial surveillance inspections?” wrote the bipartisan congressional delegation from the Cornhusker State.

The EPA has publicly acknowledged that is has flown surveillance flights over Nebraska and Iowa, reportedly to check for violations of federal clean water laws relating to the regulation of livestock operations.

“Any reports of EPA using unmanned aircraft, or drones, are wrong,” the agency said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon on Monday. The EPA insists that it uses only manned aircraft to verify compliance with environmental laws, a practice that has been in place for nearly a decade. The agency says the “over-flights” are a cost-effective tool that reduces the need to do on-site inspections, but enforcement actions are never made on the air patrols alone.

Other organizations also said the EPA is not using unmanned drones.

“There have been reports about drones, but I can assure you they are false,” said Kirsten Hassebrook, the natural resources director of the Nebraska Cattlemen.

Nevertheless, Hassebrook said her organization “remains opposed to these fly overs as they are intrusive, unnecessary and a waste of money.”

The retired four-star general—who rewrote the counterinsurgency field manual in the early 2000s and then saw it applied most effectively in Iraq and with less effect in Afghanistan—is considered one of the Army’s most innovative generals.

Now Petraeus has turned his attention to the CIA, one of the United States’ two major intelligence agencies that, post-September 11, has sought to reinvent itself as a premier human-intelligence gathering agency.

In addition to spying successes and failures in recent years, the CIA’s most significant work is its role in a relentless shadow war on terrorism most known for the ongoing covert operations involving Predator and Reaper drone strikes around the world, but mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Petraeus, who was a surprise choice of President Obama to head the CIA in the fall of 2011, has continued the CIA’s drone war that began under Leon Panetta and has become in recent years the agency’s defining policy.

Typical of the agency’s paramilitary focus was last week’s successful drone attack in Pakistan’s tribal area that killed al Qaeda No. 2 leader Abu Yahya al-Libi.

The CIA operation was based on intelligence that identified the terror leader in time to dispatch a drone equipped with a missile. The agency celebrated the attack as one of its most significant operations since the raid to kill Osama bin Laden a year ago.

In addition to the technical aspects of drone strikes involving both intelligence and military skills, the raids add a highly effective psychological aspect to the war against al Qaeda by making life as an al Qaeda leader dangerous. As evidence, the agency noted recently that one of al-Libi’s relatives called drone warfare “inhumane” after the strike.

But some in the intelligence community are critical of the drone war focus. A retired senior U.S. intelligence official with close contacts inside government said the agency remains behind the curve in developing its own agents and informants inside some of the hardest intelligence targets, including China, Russia, and Iran.

“We have a military that is superb at conducting drone strikes,” the former official said. “The CIA needs to do more to steal secrets.”

Petraeus, through a spokesman, declined to be interviewed.

According to current and former CIA and U.S. intelligence officials, since taking over the CIA less than a year ago, Petraeus has made changes in both the analysis branch and the National Clandestine Service, the espionage branch, aimed at improving the functioning of the service.

A source close to the agency told the Free Beacon that Petraeus in the past year established the CIA’s first true strategic campaign plan for the agency. The plan is designed to give more strategic direction to an agency that critics say has become a management-heavy bureaucracy.

Petraeus also made “greater investment in human capital, the most comprehensive effort ever to increase and realign global coverage, and produced an ever more aggressive, efficient pursuit of bad guys and penetration of hard targets,” the source said.

Other changes under Petraeus include the establishment of a corporate learning officer and the creation of a better system to present intelligence to policymakers.

He also beefed up the CIA’s technology efforts with a new program at In-Q-Tel, a CIA-funded group, in Palo Alto, California. Other innovations included several new leadership and management initiatives designed to improve CIA’s overall functioning.

On the spying front, Petraeus recently directed the first ever change in the way the National Clandestine Service conducts operations, the source said. No other details could be learned of the changes.

Regarding the Directorate of Intelligence, the analysis branch, Petraeus recently broke up what the source said was an “unwieldy” and poorly aligned division that included analysts working on Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa.

“Talk about an impossible span of control,” the source said. “Best of all, he persuaded folks that it was largely… their idea.”

Michael O’Hanlon, who is on a CIA advisory board, said his conversations with Petraeus and other agency employees revealed the former general is succeeding at the agency.

“My overall sense is that he has tried very hard to be collegial, to be academic in the sense of not getting bogged down entirely in the ‘war on terror’ and not imposing military discipline or style on a non-military organization,” O’Hanlon told the Free Beacon.

Petraeus has tried hard to be “curious about subjects that he hadn’t previously focused on, like Mexico and China, and other such places/subjects, and of course to get out of that uniform and learn some of the customs and rituals of the Agency,” he said.

Petraeus had to learn a new culture, from how people dress and address each other, to how they interact at briefings and incorporate dissenting views on National Intelligence Estimates, which include views he disagrees with.

“He is of course famous for being a hard-charger, which inevitably turns some people off, and he is also director at a time when the agency is heavily involved on the operational side of things, which makes for a real risk that that part of the intelligence function gets prioritized and overemphasized,” O’Hanlon said. “I think he is cognizant of these worries, but that doesn’t mean he can make them all go away.”

Critics say one thing that shows Petraeus allows CIA bureaucrats to have their way was on the issue of past CIA harsh interrogation of terrorists. He went along with Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell in issuing a letter of reprimand last year to former counterterrorism operations chief Jose A. Rodriguez for alleged insubordination in 2005, when Rodriguez ordered the destruction of CIA interrogation videos that, if disclosed, would have jeopardized the lives of CIA officers.

Rodriguez declined to comment on Petraeus’ leadership at the agency in an interview with the Free Beacon. But he said the belated reprimand is “an embarrassment to the agency in general, because of the message its sends to the workforce to forget about making tough decisions, and forget about protecting your people when confronted with something hard like this [tough interrogations].”

The reprimand tells CIA officials that they should just “kick the can down the road” when dealing with contentious issues, he said.

Rodriguez, in his new book Hard Measures, recalled how he spent 36 months allowing CIA bureaucrats and lawyers to discuss whether to destroy the tapes. He finally took what was later determined to be the legal step of ordering the tapes destroyed.

“If the agency ever declassifies my letter of reprimand and gives me a copy, I’ll have it framed,” he wrote. “To me it says: Courage to Act.”

A second source close to Petraeus said one great challenge for the director was being a general heading a civilian spy agency. His directorship takes place as the CIA is largely fighting the war on terrorism behind the scenes.

Petraeus is pushing the agency through his “hyper work ethic and competitiveness,” this source said.

“He wants to prove he can do it,” the source said. “And he’s trying to avoid being pigeonholed on the war” by showing he can direct the agency in its intelligence-gathering priorities.

One of the most difficult things for Petraeus is his desire to make things happen at CIA, which has often put agency officials under pressure.

Petraeus also had to learn to take a more objective position on intelligence analysis. He resisted intervening in the agency’s contribution to a pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan produced last fall. The estimate included elements Petraeus opposed, but he went along with the analysts’ assessment.

Petraeus has not been coopted by the agency’s bureaucratic culture, the second source said. “Some people want him to fire rivals or do something differently just for the sake of change. He sees that that is not always productive.”

A retired general and intelligence officer agreed that Petraeus is not someone who is easily coopted.

“He is bright and perceptive. He realizes that there is a lot of institutional resistance to having another general at the helm, given the historic conflict between DoD and CIA,” the retired general said.

“Things work fairly well in the battle space between the two but there are always struggles inside the beltway.”

This former general said the conflict continues between the Pentagon and CIA over human intelligence gathering authority.

“Under Rummy [former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld], DoD moved ahead in clan[destine] HUMINT and refused to let CIA have a veto or approval on activities. He opted for coordination instead. That issue has not gone away and Petraeus knows how sensitive it is.”

The retired general said Petraeus has been a “mixed bag” at CIA with some critics saying he is letting the old agency professionals run things.

“I doubt that because it goes against his nature,” the retired general said. “Others say he is operating through some key credible and experienced operatives. I think that is more likely the case. While he is a man of great ambition and ability, he is also very shrewd and calculating. He will not do anything to denigrate his image by making controversial moves.”

Ishmael Jones, a retired CIA operations officer and critic of the agency, said he has heard that Petraeus has instituted some financial reforms that “have led to reductions in some of the more egregious financial shenanigans.”

“He’s also responsible for an ongoing investigation of the CIA’s censorship of employees’ books,” Jones, a pseudonym required because of life-long covert status, said. “CIA censors have sought to block written criticism of the agency that contained no secret, confidential, and/or classified material. However, they’ve permitted the publication of secret, confidential, and classified information when the authors are senior bureaucrats and the overall thrust of their books has been favorable to CIA bureaucracy,” he said.

However, Jones said Petraeus has made no real progress in improving the flexibility of overseas intelligence collection.

“The Mossad model is one I’ve encouraged the CIA to follow—the Mossad moved away from reliance upon embassies in the 1990s,” he said. “When a Mossad officer needs to travel from Greece to South Africa, he just does it; he doesn’t need to coordinate with half a dozen bureaucrats first.”

The CIA remains too reliant on official government facilities, and the result is too much focus on liaison intelligence relationships, he said.

“That’s why it took 10 years to find Osama bin Laden although he was hiding in plain sight,” Jones said.

“We sit inside our official facilities and rely on help from liaison,” he said. “When liaison chooses not to help, we have nothing. Had bin Laden hidden in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military controls the bureaucratic turf, he’d have been caught years before.”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported recently that there have been some critics of Petraeus among mid-level CIA agents, who say Petraeus upset some of the CIA’s covert action counterterrorism officials by not being more aggressive in conducting drone strikes.

Petraeus, according to the columnist, improved CIA coordination with the military on drone attacks and other operations, sharing intelligence, people, and hardware.

Petraeus also helped surge CIA officers to Libya to support opposition forces there during the recent ouster of the Muammar Qaddafi regime.