Battleland

Drones `R’ Cheap

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Air Force photo / Lt Col Leslie Pratt

An MQ-1 Predator drone

First item in Tuesday’s Pentagon’s contract announcements is a big one: $950 million to Battlespace Flight Services of Arlington, Va., for “organizational level maintenance support of remotely piloted aircraft…to sustain the combat and training capability at tasked locations worldwide.”

Batteland gets nervous whenever unfamiliar companies start landing billion-dollar Pentagon deals for 16 months of work.

The first decade after 9/11, there was concern that the nation had subcontracted out waging war to its small but professional military. It increasingly appears that in the second decade after 9/11 we’re going to be subcontracting it out to War, Inc.