I watched a National Geographic presentation recently about the use of drones to help detect improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. The drones are controlled from bases in the United States, based on satellite communications from on-site aircraft and other sources.
One of the narrators posited that it took 68 personnel to keep one drone active. It also takes hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment. All that to try to intercept a guy with an AK-47 and a bucket of ammonia fertilizer. It has a degree of success.
Or maybe we should just get out and leave the Afghanis to their own devices. It seems like only yesterday we had B-52s dropping 500-pound bombs on bicycle convoys in Vietnam, with about the same results.
DALE VANDER LINDEN, DELANO, MINN.
