Drones becoming special operations forces' indispensible tools of war.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: Special Ops

* It has been one of the hallmark traits of U.S. special operations forces: They take existing technology and use it in new and creative ways.

A case in point is the way they employ unmanned systems.

In 2003 in Iraq, naval special warfare commanders grabbed a Marine Corps' drone called the FQM-151 Pointer, developed in 1986 by AeroVironment for use by ground units, and updated it for a Sea, Air, Land (SEAL) team that needed eyes in the sky as it approached Baghdad.

"If something like Pointer had never been tried, who knows where [unmanned aerial systems] would be now," said Cmdr. Rob ert Witzleb, director of technical special reconnaissance at Naval Special Warfare Command.

Special operators continue to drive innovation through their unique employment of semi-autonomous vehicles, and increasingly are setting standards and goals for future generations of UAS users, said a military robotics expert.

They manage to take technology that "big Army, Navy, or Air Force, for whatever reason, were not going to utilize" and apply it to their specific missions, said P. W. Singer, a senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington.

Special operations forces are expected to continue to push the technology envelope in unmanned systems, Singer said. Drones are rapidly evolving from airplane-like dimensions to supersized airships...