The Pentagon’s decision to deny the Air Force the role of “executive agent” of unmanned aircraft programs was particularly upsetting to Gen. Ronald Keys, former chief of Air Combat Command. A directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England to create a “task force” to coordinate “critical unmanned air systems issues” is bad news for troops fighting wars, he said shortly before his retirement last month. The committee that England proposed would be best described as a “cul-de-sac down which good ideas are lured and then quietly strangled,” Keys said. “We are in a ridiculous situation. We have 1,000 UAVs down range, but the control systems are incompatible, the data systems are not compatible.” The information is “going to a single person, not across the battle space.”
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