When American generals give the go-ahead for war against Iraq they will have the luxury of sitting back and watching events unfold live on television as five sets of roving eyes patrol the battlefield.
At an airbase not far from the border with Iraq, technicians wheeled out the latest in American military technology: five predator drones, the unmanned surveillance aircraft which has made military headquarters look more like television production suites than the traditional operations with wall-to-wall maps.
The 40ft lightweight drones are capable of flying for 20 hours to relay enemy troop movement through a single powerful camera, and can take "affirmative action" with an armoury of Hellfire missiles.
"We have the power to observe, find, shoot and eliminate," said the squadron commander, Lieut Col Gary Fabricius, in charge of the Predator drones that are already patrolling deep into Iraqi territory.
Last November the Predator demonstrated another role it may be asked to perform in Iraq after it tracked and then assassinated a senior al-Qaeda commander in Yemen: tracking fugitive members of President Saddam Hussein's regime.
The predators, which fly more slowly and at lower altitudes than conventional aircraft, have been involved in skirmishes with Iraqi fighter planes
In December Iraqi fighter planes succeeded in shooting one down, the first loss of an aircraft by coalition forces in 12 years of flying over the no-fly zone.
Sgt Thomas Hodge, part of the three-man team that operates the Predator from a control room at the airbase, said: "That's the beauty of the Predator. We can take much higher risks with these aircraft and not worry about the human consequences."