THE US: The US military is to provide a spy plane in the search for the sniper who has killed nine people and wounded two others in the Washington area since October 2nd in response to a request from the FBI and local police.
The RC-7B spy plane ordered by the Pentagon is a much more potent weapon than its looks would suggest.
The new and modified version of the original four-engine, turboprop De Havilland Canada Dash-7 airliner is used by the US army. Packed with sophisticated surveillance equipment, it can track people and vehicles on the ground day and night.
The quiet RC-7B carries a crew of pilot, co-pilot and four systems operators. But the $17 million electronics system is highly automated to reduce the crew's workload.
Used in recent years to hunt for drug smugglers in Latin America and to look closely at the military in North Korea, it also carries computer-enhanced, long-range camera equipment.
The aircraft is 24.5 metres long, has a wingspan of 28.4 metres and can stay aloft for nearly 10 hours at a stretch, circling an area to watch the ground with heat-seeking infra-red and other sensors.
The response to a request from the FBI and local police to use the military in a domestic criminal case is not unprecedented. But it is highly unusual and reflects the pressure in the search for the sniper.
While defence officials declined to provide specifics of the operation, they stressed that crews would include civilian federal agents and that the military would not become directly involved in police work.
Any conclusions drawn from information obtained from the aircraft, or police response on the ground, would not be made by the military, they said.