“The program will end as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” Kerry told Pakistan TV. “I think the president has a very real timeline and we hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”

I’m betting that the UAV program in Pakistan will shut down when the US either sets Pakistani military forces up with their own UAV program to carry on without US effort, the Pakistani military steps up in dealing with the frontier provinces, or other efforts are made on the Afghan side of the border.

This still boils down to how Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the US all deal with the frontier provinces and the Taliban who harbor AQ and other affiliated or aligned terror groups (like LeT).

Just as the US hoped to get the Afghans to stand on their own and the Iraqis to do the same, there’s a whole lot of hope riding on the decision to end the US UAV campaign in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions.