span, comes into its own. The Heron carries no weapons, holding instead a sophisticated payload of sensors and cameras. It can stay airborne for up to 24 hours, soaring to a height of 27,000 feet. RAAF Herons range far and wide across Afghanistan, supporting not just Australian troops, but all Coalition forces. Insurgents push out (communicate) from mountain top to mountain top. We exploit that. Our mission is to locate these people so they can be removed. Wing Commander Jonathan McMullan "We go from one customer to another until we run out of fuel," Wing Commander McMullan said. Since first being deployed to Afghanistan in December 2009, RAAF Herons have flown 10,000 hours. Wing Commander McMullan claims the Heron's automatic take-off and landing system makes it much safer than American Predators and Reapers, which he says have notoriously difficult manual controls and suffer a high crash rate. "The majority of Predators and Reapers are lost on landing. They lost three during my last time there," he revealed. But the Heron isn't always graceful. Wing Commander McMullan conceded there had been "some crashes". In 2010, Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported that Defence had covered up two Heron accidents . Military aviators never use the "drone" word. The RAAF prefers remotely piloted aircraft system, or RPA. No military UAV presentation is complete without a sample of what's nicknamed "Kill TV" by the Australians, or "Predator porn" by Americans. Conference delegates watched a brief video clip of what appeared to be an Afghan villager