USAF: The U.S. Army Air Force Quietly Reappears

March 8, 2009: Although the U.S. Army doesn't officially receive its first Sky Warrior MQ-1C UAVs until this month, they sent two of the prototypes to Iraq last year for testing. The first flight, lasting 10.5 hours, was on April 18th. The MQ-1Cs are slightly larger Predators, and are being used for missions formerly performed by Shadow 200, and other large army UAVs. The big difference is that Sky Warrior can carry weapons (like Hellfire missiles.) But the army is already using missile firing, fixed wing combat aircraft, something it has not been able to do for many decades (since the U.S. Air Force was created out of the old U.S. Army Air Force in the late 1940s). The air force has accepted, for the moment, that unmanned aircraft are not the sole preserve of the air force, and the army is taking that and building a new air force for itself.
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