Laden with sophisticated sensors and carrying Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs, they patrol the skies above Afghanistan, launch lethally accurate strikes against terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and have helped NATO turn the tide against Muammar Qaddafi's forces in Libya.
IS is a "killing and destruction machine", says Abu Qatada, a jihadist ideologue (once described as Bin Laden's top man in Europe) who was extradited from Britain to Jordan, where he is on trial on terrorism-related charges; its fighters are the "dogs of hellfire".
Predator pilots say it is not unusual to abort a Hellfire missile strike when an army helicopter unexpectedly comes into view.Military UAVs are evolving quickly.
But locals talked of seeing American unmanned Predator aircraft, armed with Hellfire missiles.
Those made of sterner stuff prefer the more puritanical oratory of Nouriel Roubini, forever preaching hellfire and damnation for those (particularly the Federal Reserve) who fail to repent.Finance seems to be a polytheistic rather than a monotheistic faith.
AFTER five gruelling years, many of Europe's citizens must wish they could dispatch the entire political class to hellfire and torment.
Taiwan will also buy 30 Apache Longbow attack helicopters, equipped with night-vision sensors, air-to-air missiles and Hellfire missiles; 32 Harpoon submarine-launched missiles; 182 Javelin-guided missiles with 20 launch units; upgrades to four E-2T airborne-warning and control aircraft; and various spare parts.
He stresses that all were flawed (Eisenhower took a mistress, whom he treated icily, for example) and some were often miserable (Samuel Johnson, author of the first English dictionary, lived in terror of hellfire).
America has urgently dispatched Hellfire missiles to Iraq, but with only two converted Cessna aircraft to fire them from, Russia is providing more lethal air power.
The Iraqi government has promised aid but has failed so far to supply it.The American administration, worried lest Iraq implode just when it hoped it could forget about it, has hastily authorised the dispatch of air-to-ground Hellfire missiles to hit ISIS camps in Anbar's western desert, where fighters go to and fro between Iraq and Syria.
Rather than sending in a Predator drone to vaporise jihadists with Hellfire missiles, the plan was to capture them and take them to America to face justice.
