U.S. Proposes Arming 6 of Italy's Reaper Drones WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to arm Italy's small fleet of Reaper surveillance drones with Hellfire missiles and precision-guided bombs, a move that advocates say supports a staunch NATO ally in Afghanistan and that critics contend represents a potentially risky proliferation of advanced technology. Italy now flies unarmed surveillance aircraft to help protect the 4,000 troops it has deployed to Afghanistan. But Italian officials have been eager to upgrade their Reapers, a larger, more lethal version of Predator drones, since an Italian soldier died in a firefight while the unarmed aircraft hovered overhead helplessly, a senior Congressional aide said. Italy would become the second foreign country besides Britain to fly armed American drones, although only up to six aircraft would receive the upgrades and most likely not until next year at the earliest, the aide said. Senior American officials in Afghanistan said the armed Reapers would have a minimal impact on the mission as NATO withdraws most of its troops by 2014. A broader debate centers on whether arming Italy's Reapers would set off a clamor from other NATO allies for the same technology, and disrupt efforts to curb sales of armed drones by other countries that make the aircraft, including Israel. Surveillance drones, from tiny insectlike probes to giant Global Hawk aircraft, have become ubiquitous over battlefields and border areas, but relatively few are armed. Critics of the proposed sale include the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who has argued that the country's most advanced technology should not be shared. But a spokeswoman for Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, said that Italy operates American-made F-16 attack planes and plans to fly advanced F-35 aircraft, and that in briefings with administration officials about their proposal, no evidence had emerged indicating Italy "would be incapable of operating this capability safely and responsibly." State Department officials said that as a condition of any sale of such advanced technology, the buyer would have to allow American monitors to check on the way the aircraft were being used. While the administration has informally consulted with Congressional committees for weeks about its plans, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, State and Defense Department officials, as well as the Italian Embassy here, would not comment on the matter pending formal notification to Congress, possibly this week. But that did not stop administration officials from extolling the virtues of selling advanced weaponry to an important ally. Italy has lost 50 troops in Afghanistan, an Italian Embassy spokesman said. "Italy is one of our strongest partners and NATO allies, and it's important for us, for a variety of reasons, to share technologies and capabilities with them for purposes of burden sharing and to enable them to better protect themselves and, by extension, to protect the United States and our other allies," the Pentagon spokesman, George Little, told reporters on Tuesday.