Eyes in the sky: Inside the hunt for Islamic State fighters in Syria
(LA Times Clippers)

The Air Force pilot carefully throttled the controls of a missile-firing MQ-1 Predator drone flying half a world away in northern Syria. Suddenly his headset crackled to life. Militants firing from bombed-out buildings had ambushed a U.S.-backed militia on a rubble-strewn street in Raqqah, Islamic...