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Stop video leaks now

It should not have been a surprise.

When news broke last week that insurgents were tapping into video feeds from U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan, the first response from many experts was blasé. “Every few years someone writes about this,” one said.

What is surprising and even disturbing, however, is that we are still at least a year, if not longer, away from a solution.

Video feeds from Predators and other remotely piloted aircraft are transmitted via satellite datalinks to pilots and commanders hundreds or thousands of miles away. But they are also transmitted by radio signals to troops on the ground. Those signals can be intercepted.

When the technology was rushed into service in the mid-1990s in Bosnia, it was rare and novel enough that the risk associated with open-channel communication seemed reasonable. And why not? At the time, NATO forces were communicating their flight plans on open-channel radio waves, as well, because most member countries didn’t have compatible secure-communications systems.

The stunning fact now is that, after eight years of continuous, intense warfare in two countries, during which time unmanned systems have come of age and risen to prominence as a key strategic advantage in the U.S. military arsenal, American leaders have failed to take the steps to secure these vital intelligence signals.

Defense leaders underestimated the threat and ignored early pleas from within their organizations to tackle the problem. They also ignored the obvious: The Taliban may have a 16th-century outlook on life, but they have a 21st-century understanding of how to use the Internet and other modern technology to recruit, communicate and conduct information operations.

Now, the problem must be licked. But the five-year timetable the Air Force is operating on is not acceptable. There should be no delay in sealing this leak completely.