{"id":21491,"date":"2018-01-25T15:32:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T15:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2018\/01\/25\/how-rumsfeld-viewed-the-most-iconic-aircraft-of-the-war-on-terror\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:03:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:03:52","slug":"how-rumsfeld-viewed-the-most-iconic-aircraft-of-the-war-on-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/unmanned\/2018\/01\/25\/how-rumsfeld-viewed-the-most-iconic-aircraft-of-the-war-on-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"How Rumsfeld viewed the most iconic aircraft of the War on Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Wednesday, the National Security Archive released 913 pages of Rumsfeld \u201csnowflakes,\u201d the cutesy nickname he gave for his regular missives. The collection, roughly 59,000 pages in total, is being released in monthly batches under the FOIA request (after some prompting with legal action). The archive is vast, and strange, and <a href=\"https:\/\/nsarchive.gwu.edu\/briefing-book\/foia\/2018-01-24\/rumsfeld-snowflakes-come-cold\">worth poking through<\/a> in full for an insight into the tweet-length thoughts of the longest serving secretary of defense. For our purposes today, I\u2019m going to talk about a subset of the Rumsfeld Snowflakes: his thoughts, in 2001, on drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The people around Rumsfeld appear to have been interested in drones, and in their military utility in both contested and uncontested skies, but nothing suggests that Rumsfeld paid any special attention to the most iconic aircraft of the War on Terror, at least not in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Drones first appear in a January 4th \u201cTransition Agenda Thoughts\u201d paper sent to Rumsfeld by Sean O\u2019Keefe. O\u2019Keefe, who would go on to work as deputy director of OMB for most of 2001 before heading NASA, wanted the military to explore new solutions for problems, and he suggested ruling existing answers out and finding new tools for tasks such as \u201cprecision deep strike, rapid deployment and battle space command &amp; control missions.\u201d He wanted tools that are different from the standard set of \u201ccruise missiles\/long range aircraft, forward deployment, and reconnaissance aircraft.\u201d Instead, O\u2019Keefe floats to Rumsfeld the \u201cvaried mission utility of B-2, mobile offshore bases, and UAVs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words: to transition away from precision deep strike, O\u2019Keefe suggested a stealthy strategic bomber built for precision deep strike, and that instead of traditional reconnaissance aircraft, the Pentagon should look to drones. The transition agenda thoughts appear a second time in the released batch of memos, and there\u2019s a check mark and a plus sign next to the section on drones, marks presumably made by Rumsfeld before he forwarded the list of thoughts along to his deputies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On October 15th, 2001, Rumsfeld sent a memo to his deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz asking that he \u201cget program decision memoranda drafted to instruct the Services to do what they should on UAVs.\u201d There\u2019s nothing in the memo about what Rumsfeld says the services should do, but it does reference having Pete Aldridge, then Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, take a look at the memos before sending them down so the services can get on board. Shortly thereafter, Rumsfeld sent Aldridge a memo on gunships, saying \u201cWe need more weapon systems that are like the AC-130, where the ordnance can be directed in a more precise way than can some of our other platforms and weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On November 8th, 2001, Aldridge responded, saying \u201cthe gunship\u2019s advantage is that it couples target identification, man-in-the-loop decision making and organic firepower in a single platform.\u201d To this end, Aldridge recommends that the Air Force upgrade gunships with \u201csmall UAVs and air-to-surface missiles\u201d, as well as upgrades to their guns. Notably, Aldridge also suggests that the gunships be augmented with UCAVS, or unmanned combat aerial vehicles, a category of drone long in development but that does not yet exist outside the prototype or testing stages in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The only drone mentioned by name in the released memos is the Global Hawk, and even then, it\u2019s not mentioned by Rumsfeld. It instead appears as a model technology in a sample column attached to a letter from Bill Roesing, suggesting that Rumsfeld write a weekly column on Leadership. (The column\u2019s author, presumably Roesing, suggests that the Pentagon develop the Global Hawk first as a surveillance platform while exploring future iterations as \u201cpotential combat vehicles.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In April 2001, former Secretary of the Air Force Don Rice sent Rumsfeld a letter arguing for the restart of the B-2 program, complete with diagrams supposedly showcasing the cost savings of payload delivery by B-2 compared to an equivalent payload weight delivered by cruise missiles. In that letter, Rice suggests that \u201ca long-range, dwell capability for electronic combat-manned or unmanned-would be valuable in many circumstances,\u201d foreshadowing the long-endurance drones of the 2010s, and possibly even anticipating the optionally manned nature of the still-in-development B-21 bomber. Rice also suggested that the Air Force abandon the Joint Strike Fighter program and a proposed \u201cstealthy F-111\u201d program, and suggested instead that the Pentagon invest in \u201ca technologically serious and fiscally prudent R&amp;D program on a future unmanned long-range, stealthy attack aircraft you can pursue for the more distant future,\u201d to fly alongside the B-2s from a restarted bomber program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps the best reflection of Rumsfeld\u2019s attitude on drones, at least as seen through these memos, is a short missive sent on February 214th, 2001: \u201cPlease add intelligence and unmanned UAVs to the list of things that we are going to get people to comment on.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The people around Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, had an interest in drones but do not appear to have given the technology any special attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":63207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":21,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"10":{"categories":["pentagon","air"],"primary_category":"pentagon"}}},"categories":[106,29,32,21],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3021],"class_list":["post-21491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters","category-unmanned"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"GYTYH7I3YRACHMNSWE57SSVGIQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/unmanned\/2018\/01\/25\/how-rumsfeld-viewed-the-most-iconic-aircraft-of-the-war-on-terror\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Rumsfeld viewed the most iconic aircraft of the War on Terror - C4ISRNet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The people around Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, had an interest in drones but do not appear to have given the technology any special attention.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Rumsfeld viewed the most iconic aircraft of the War on Terror\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The people around Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, had an interest in drones but do not appear to have given the technology any special attention.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/unmanned\/2018\/01\/25\/how-rumsfeld-viewed-the-most-iconic-aircraft-of-the-war-on-terror\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"C4ISRNet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-25T15:32:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-08T18:03:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kelsey D. 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