On Wednesday at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, forty miles northwest of Las Vegas, the Reaper (technically referred to as the “MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer UAV”) began practice runs at 7:06 a.m. taking off, circling, and landing every eighteen minutes throughout the morning.  I have joined a group this Holy Week to vigil and pray under the banner, “Ground the Drones.”  Unlike the first Predator, an earlier unmanned aerial vehicle armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper is capable of carrying fourteen Hellfire missiles.  Flight crews of two, including a pilot and a technical support person called a sensor, sit here in rooms with several monitors and digitally guide these crafts as they move through their missions thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.  On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates announced a 127% increase in funding for drones and other digitally guided military hardware.