National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. FOSTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of an amendment to optimize the technological posture of our Armed Forces, but I am also the son of a civil rights lawyer who wrote a lot of the enforcement language behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And I am proud to serve with our majority leader and the representative of the Pennsylvania Eighth district.

I rise in support of an amendment which would direct the Secretary of Defense to commission an independent study assessing the optimal balance of manned versus unmanned aircraft, as well as whether our military is capable of defending against an enemy force consisting of unmanned aerial vehicles. I believe it's the duty of Congress to ask hard questions and to take the long view of matters on national security.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, we've already seen how UAV technology has revolutionized warfare and how rapidly we can launch an attack half a world away without risking a single American life. Between 2002 and 2008, the number of unmanned aircraft used by the Department of Defense increased from 167 to over 6,000. This year for the first time in history, the Air Force trained more UAV pilots than traditional fighter pilots.

This amendment will help us optimize the balance between manned and unmanned aircraft, and I urge its support.

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