France gets Pentagon backing to buy U.S.-made drones: paper  May
18, 2013|Reuters (Handout . Reuters, )  PARIS (Reuters) - France
has received approval from the U.S. Pentagon to buy two Reaper
drones for intelligence gathering, and now only needs backing
from Congress, Le Monde newspaper said on Saturday.  With its
current hardware increasingly outdated, France is urgently
trying to build up a modern fleet of drones for surveillance
operations in countries such as Mali.  Le Monde said France
intended to eventually buy a total of five or seven Reapers,
built by privately held General Atomics, for 300 million euros
($385 million).  The French-led military intervention in Mali
since January has exposed France's shortage of drones suitable
for modern warfare.  The U.S. military did not participate in
the ground offensive but aided the operation by transporting
troops and providing intelligence information from drones based
in Niger. ($1 = 0.7798 euros)  (Reporting by Patrick Vignal;
Writing by Leigh Thomas; Editi