When US drones obliterated a car carrying Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last month, it was the kind of targeted killing that unmanned aircraft are best known for.
But 15 years after a drone first fired missiles in combat, the US military’s drone programme has expanded far beyond specific strikes to become an everyday part of the war machine.
Now, from control booths in the US and bases around West Asia, Afghanistan and parts of Africa, drone crews are flying surveillance missions and providing close air support for troops on the ground.
The increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a wide range of battle applications comes as the US looks to reduce the number of soldiers fighting abroad.
The US military declined to provide statistics breaking down drone activity into types of missions, but dozens of interviews with people working in the secretive programmes show UAVs have become an integral tool on the battlefield.
That is likely to raise further objections from critics who say drones often miss their intended targets, can only partly relay what is happening on the ground and encourage warfare with impunity waged by people at computer screens far from danger.
In Afghanistan, the US has around 9,800 troops left and plans to cut the level to 5,500 by early 2017.
At its peak a few years ago, the US military had around 100,000 soldiers there, yet the dramatic decrease does not mean the conflict is winding down. In fact, the Taliban insurgency is as potent now as at any time since 2001.
As part of its expanding programme, the air force aims to double the number of drone squadrons over the next five years.
For the first time, the top air force general in the country was trained as a drone pilot before he deployed, a move he said reflected the importance of unmanned aircraft in the broader military mission.
“Our airmen are flying persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike missions all across Afghanistan,” Major General Jeff Taliaferro told Reuters in Kabul, referring to the drone programme.
The latest generation of drones carries more and bigger weapons and an expanding payload of hi-tech sensors designed to handle a wider range of missions for the conventional military. The number of hours flown by the air force’s newest attack drone, the MQ-9 Reaper, more than doubled globally between 2010 and 2015, to nearly as many hours as F-16 fighter jets, according to statistics from the air force safety centre.
The US Army also operates a fleet of roughly 130 MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft, an upgraded version of the Predator, and all military services have thousands of smaller, mostly unarmed surveillance drones.
One challenge for the US military is recruiting enough staff to operate a growing fleet and expanding range of roles.
While Afghan missions are flown via satellite link by pilot sat bases in the US, aircraft take off and land under the control of crews deployed to the airfields in Afghanistan.
As a steady procession of Reapers rolled down the runways and into the bright Afghan sky, operators at Kandahar described life in on of the fastest-changing sectors of the military.
Kandahar’s role as a drone centre in Afghanistan brings the drone full circle.
Fifteen years ago, a US drone made history over Kandahar when it fired the first weapon deployed by unmanned aircraft in combat, during a failed attempt to kill then-Taliban leader Mullah Omar in the first days of the US-led operation that ousted the hardline Islamists from power.
On its way back to base, the drone fired its second missile at Kandahar airfield, then suspected of being occupied by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.
Squeezed into sand-coloured shipping containers just off the tarmac, pilots and sensor operators flip through checklists amid an array of monitors, touch screens, radio consoles and a secret chat system with which they talk to pilots in the United States.
At the beginning of the year, the squadron at Kandahar began flying new, extended-range Reapers, usually carrying four Hellfire missiles, one 500 lb GBU-12 bomb and an external fuel tank under the wings.
That load has allowed the aircraft to be used for more than just hunting individuals, including close air support for troops fighting on the ground.
Sitting in dark, air-conditioned booths at Creech Air Force base in Nevada, pilots and sensor operators work closely with large teams of intelligence analysts who sift streams of real-time data transmitted by the drones on the other side of the planet.
While air strikes often grab the headlines, the vast majority of missions in Afghanistan involve hours of mind-numbing surveillance and intelligence gathering, crews say.
The most revolutionary aspect of unmanned aircraft, crews add, is the combination of weapons and surveillance capabilities, which often provide more information than analysts can process.
At Creech, crews handle nearly half of all the Air Force’s 60 global drone flights on any given day. “For us it’s anything but a video game,” said Captain Tim, a pilot based at Creech, addressing one of the main criticisms levelled at the drone programme. “From here you’re having an impact on the battlefield.”
