'60 Minutes': War by remote control Video
'60 Minutes': War by remote control Video Transcript
>> Here's what really made the difference, an arsenal of advanced high-flying UAV's, unmanned aerial vehicles with highly improved camera systems so sensitive they can see the enemy, even at night, through clouds and gun smoke from high up. They can spot someone smoking or a weapon on someone's side, and they have sensors so advanced they can hear enemy radio transmissions and pinpoint their location.
>> In 2003 we didn't have all the systems that are now available, we had some but we didn't have all the UAV's.
>> In the battle for Sauder City they used two different UAV's, one was the Shadow Drone, depicted here on one of Colonel Hort's [assumed spelling] slides, 20 or 30 seconds after a militia team fired a rocket. The Shadow locked on them, shadowed them, watched them move, and set up for their next shot. Then an armed UAV, The Predator, was activated. These are actual pictures of the battle on the streets of Sauder City, as you can see, a group of militia fighters rush to a car that had just been hit by a US Hellfire Missile, they remove a mortar tube from the trunk and load it into a second car, which they drive through the streets to an open field. At that point The Predator locks its sight onto the vehicle and fires off another missile. According to the Army, this killed two fighters inside the car and destroyed the mortar tube; war by remote control. This is how Charlie Company hunted down the militia rocket teams and whittled down their numbers.
>> Ya know, they went from 20 to 30 men groups down to 5, 4 and in some cases only 1 or 2. The Predator and the Shadow were just phenomenal in their abilities to see the enemy particularly after he shot a rocket. ^M00:02:02 [ Silence ]
In the battle of Sadr City, the military used UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) with highly-improved camera systems, so sensitive they can see the enemy even at night, through clouds and gun smoke from high up.
