For years, the CIA has flown killer drones over Pakistan – without giving local authorities much say in how or where the aircraft operate. But there's been a major shift in the unmanned war over Pakistan, the Los Angeles Times reports. Two shifts, really.

First, Pakistani and American military officers have begun jointly operating a set of American Predator and Reaper unmanned planes. Second, those aircraft are from the U.S. Air Force's remotely-piloted squadrons, not the CIA's. This shift from spy drones to military drones could have important consequences in the air war over Pakistan, and the larger struggle against Islamic extremists in the region.

Under a new partnership with Pakistani Government, the Times' Julian Barnes and Greg Miller write, this "separate fleet of U.S. drones operated by the Defense Department will be free for the first time to venture beyond the Afghan border under the direction of Pakistani military officials, who are working alongside American counterparts at a command center in Jalalabad, Afghanistan." Pakistani officers previously have been able to see footage from the Predators' high-powered cameras. Now the military men are being given "significant control over routes, targets and decisions to fire weapons."

The CIA drones will continue to "focus on the United States' principal target, Al Qaeda. The military drones, however, are intended to undermine the militant networks that have moved closer to Islamabad, the capital, in recent weeks." The underscores an expansion of the Obama administration's military aims in the region. No longer is this fight solely about "defeat[ing] Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan," as the President said two months ago. The war's goals now include keeping Islamabad from being overrun by a distinct, but related, group of homegrown extremists.

The Air Force drones now being employed against those militants are now presumably subject to the oversight of the lawyers, intelligence analysts, and targeting specialists at the U.S. military's Combined Air and Space Operations Center (CAOC). Such reviews could cut down on the unmanned strikes' civilian casualties – as well as the popular and political resistance to the attacks. But the greater hesitancy to use the drones' arrays of Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs may allow militant targets to get away, unscathed.

Already, "some U.S. officials have expressed frustration that the Pakistanis have not used the Predator capabilities more aggressively. Officials said Pakistan was given the authority to order strikes on the jointly operated flights as long as there was U.S. agreement on the targets," the Times says. Pakistan also "declined an offer to use the drones for its recent military offensives in the Swat Valley and Buner areas, and poor weather has caused other sorties to be scrapped."

Until now, "the heavy U.S. military presence in Afghanistan has been largely powerless to pursue the Islamic extremists who routinely escape into Pakistan," Barnes and Miller notes.

Largely – but not entirely. There have been cross-border raids by special forces. And occasionally, the Air Force's Predators and Reapers* are* allowed to enter Pakistani airspace – with Islamabad's explicit permission.

Yesterday, Danger Room examined the possibility that the new American commander in Afghanistan might look to expand operations into Pakistan. Looks like that already happened.

[Photo: Noah Shachtman]

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