US-Experten warnen vor deutscher Beteiligung an Eurodrohne

Jennifer Rooke served 24 years as an intelligence officer in the United States Air Force upon graduation from the Air Force Academy in 1989 until military retirement at the rank of colonel in 2013. She deployed to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1990-1991 during the First Gulf War as the officer-in-charge of a surveillance and warning line-of-sight downlink station for manned signals intelligence aircraft that have remained in Southwest Asia since that time in what has become the longest-running 24/7 airborne collection operation in history. That surveillance and warning ground station would eventually become a critical part of the foundation for today’s sprawling Distributed Common Ground Station (DCGS), described on the U.S. Air Force’s official website as the "primary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) planning and direction, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and dissemination (PCPAD) weapon system" for both manned and unmanned aircraft that consists of at least 27 regionally aligned and globally networked sites. In essence, it is the backbone for intelligence operations upon which the German Air Force’s—as a NATO contributing member—Intelligence Fusion Centre would most likely be similarly modeled. Jennifer was involved in the programming, development and operational oversight of this weapon system across various locations in her career, to include the Air Force units co-located with the National Security Agency (NSA) cryptologic centers at Fort Gordon in Georgia and at Kunia in Hawaii (prior to its present relocation in Wahiawa), as well as at the Pentagon within the Headquarters Air Force Directorate of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. Additionally, she served as a staff officer from 2000-2003 within U.S. European Command’s Directorate of Intelligence at Stuttgart, Germany, and as the Deputy Director and then Director of Intelligence from 2009-2011 for U.S Air Forces in Europe at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. While at Ramstein, she oversaw the intelligence operations training program for Project Crossbow, the joint U.S.-U.K. program that integrated U.K. forces into the DCGS network. She further interacted regularly with the co-located Distributed Ground Station-4 (DGS-4), one of the five core DCGS networked sites, particularly during coalition operations in Libya in 2011, which became the catalyst for the European Partner Integration Enterprise (EPIE) that according to public statements by one of her successors now resembles a pared-down version of a DGS team. It has become a hub of coalition partner tactics collaboration and common processing capabilities for various intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance products, such as full-motion video derived from "drone" surveillance missions.

Lisa Ling worked on, and with, various types of military electronic equipment, from the time she enlisted as a medic in 1991 until 2012 when she left the military as a network/electronics technician. During her time in the military she witnessed the evolution of military technology from an era prior to the very first dial-up internet accounts and BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems), to the DCGS (Distributed Common Ground System) that the U.S. Air Force now defines as its "primary intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection, processing, exploitation, analysis and dissemination" system. It is this system that accepts real-time and near real-time data from various platforms, including what are commonly known as drones. Working as a technologist for most of her military career, among other notable accomplishments she installed one of the earliest proxy servers and designed one of the earliest interconnected classrooms. She remains proud of what she was able to accomplish with emerging technology back in a time when it had a more limited usage, solely imagined for things like processing pay, word processing, and to create presentations. But Lisa had no idea this very same interconnected technology would be used to kill from worlds away, or that she would be a part of it. In the drone program she performed equipment maintenance and repair, security, as well as other various assigned duties. She appears in the documentary National Bird, addressing her key issues with the drone program. She has a BA in History with an emphasis on State Secrecy and National Security from University of California, Berkeley.

Cian Westmoreland deployed with the 73rd Expeditionary Air Control Squadron, and was a technician specialized in radio and satellite communications. In that capacity he was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan to establish and maintain a high bandwidth satellite data link containing the voice communications, targeting data, imagery, and geographical data for both manned and unmanned aircraft. This work covered a 240,000 mile radius in Afghanistan, reporting to the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Airbase, Qatar and the 24th Intelligence Squadron at Ramstein AB, Germany. In this unit, and the associated auxiliary unit at Al Udeid, there were Air Battle Managers who directed pilots where to go to drop bombs. While there he was made privy to videos of drone strikes and conventional airstrikes alike. He witnessed Google servers next to the 62nd Reconnaissance Squadron in their work, alongside private military contractors with higher security clearances. At the end of his tour, he was credited with assisting in 2,400 Close Air Support Mission and over 200 "enemy kills". Throughout this time, the civilian casualty numbers were intentionally hidden from those working there. Later, he came to discover that the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported over 300 civilians died due to airstrikes that year within his unit’s Area of Responsibility.