Clone Wars category archive

From “robotic death raining from the skies” to “instrument of foreign policy.”

A command center for military drones will open this fall at the Horsham Air Guard Base, bringing a controversial instrument of U.S. foreign policy into the Philadelphia area.

The ground-control station for the remotely controlled aircraft will open Oct. 1 and be established by the Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s 111th Fighter Wing, the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs announced Monday. It is expected to create about 250 jobs, including 75 full-time positions.

Last time I checked, “foreign policy” did not blow stuff up.

War blew stuff up.

Never mind. Creates jobs for gamers.

The Roanoke Times predicts dollar signs.

With parts easily found on the Internet, a determined drone aficionado could build a strong unit capable of carrying a 50-pound payload 3 miles and back, said Ellis, who is aware of the potential downside of that much capability in the wrong hands.

On the other hand, Ellis has been approached by business people with a vision to sell legitimate aerial services. One was a home inspector who wanted an alternative to climbing roofs for inspection. Another was a wedding photographer.

Once drones are approved for commercial use, “it’s going to generate a massive number of business opportunities for people,” Ellis said.

I used to work with a dron—never mind.

What’s in a name?

Virginia Tech apparently thinks, “quite a bit” (emphasis added).

In addition to its work with robots and unmanned ground vehicles, Tech experiments with pilotless aircraft both to improve the technology of the platform and develop specific applications.

Improving the study of agricultural disease and the assessment and mapping of special environments, such as forests and explosion sites, are major project drivers.

(snip)

These flying machines, the accessories such as cameras and sensors that they carry, and the control mechanisms are referred to by Tech engineers as unmanned aerial systems — UAS for short — and not “drones.”

Drones, unmanned aircraft, model aircraft with electronics are here to stay. They can no more be made to go away than, in their times, the automobile or the choo-choo.

They need to be regulated and restrained, as were the automobile and the choo-choo.

Daniel Ruth makes a point about raining robotic death from the sky; follow the link for the rest.

Those of us who had a problem with what’s-his-name asserting that the Constitution did not protect Americans because he said they were enemy combatants must also observe that Mr. Obama with his killing lists ordering death-from-on-high is in the same league. And so are his legal experts with their semantic gymnastics trying to justify treating American citizens as if they weren’t citizens. They drone on, same as it ever was, sort of.

It’s difficult, though. In my selective way, I concede that blasting some American al-Qaida member deep in Yemen seems reasonable. You can’t have the drone read him his constitutional rights through a loudspeaker. My attitude is: Occupy any area that is clearly a battlefield in a war against America, die. But too often there is collateral damage, the modern term for innocent people dead. We are on a slippery slope in a toboggan of our own manufacture.

My two or three regular readers know that I am not a fan of drone warfare.

Note that I am no more against drones in general than I am against M16s, Tanks, and aircraft carriers.

I’m not for any of them, but sometimes they seem necessary.

What troubles me is the packaging–drones are presented as somehow surgical weapons that always get the right target. Their PR makes gamers’ raining robotic death from the sky seem somehow, well, nice, antiseptic, almost harmless.

Too many wedding parties, too many children gathering food, too many innocents surgically struck have been destroyed.

Yet, the “surgical strike” PR helps the citizenry turn away from the dealing of death.

As Bob Cesca points out, there is a possible corrective, and it’s not yelling “Obama=Bush”; anyone who is capable of grasping more than one thought at a time can see that he doesn’t.

Even though summer is on the way, give up those plans to sunbathe nekkid behind your eight-foot privacy fence in your backyard.

(Note to self: Add to to-do list, “Order tri-copter.”)

Via Bartcop.

Dick Destiny reviews the performance and spotlights the man behind the curtain.

It’s a must-read antidote to the cyber-FUD emanating from the “full employment for security consultants” lobby.

Oh, so now it’s a “booming industry.”

. . . the FAA announced Thursday that it would pick six locales for test runs — and Florida is among the 35 or more competitors expected to vie for the chance to open its airways as soon as this fall.

“This research will give us valuable information about how best to ensure the safe introduction of this advanced technology into our nation’s skies,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in a statement.

Although no money is attached, officials in Florida and elsewhere see the competition as an opportunity to get a jump on the booming drone industry, which is expected to almost double in size from $6.6 billion in global spending now to $11.4 billion in 10 years.

Follow the money and watch fat cats feast on our private lives.

James Carroll starts with the murder of “American Sniper” Chris Kyle and ends with robotic death raining from the skies. A nugget:

Now the U.S. military, along with its CIA paramilitary, is moving into the age of the automated sniper – the armed drone. The public reticence that inhibited discussion of the actual meaning of Kyle’s history pales beside the silence with which the nation – government, media, citizenry – treats the moral threshold of assassination by drone.

Death out of nowhere, inflicted by unthreatened operators, upon designated enemies, who may or may not pose lethal threats and who may or may not be as guilty as the joystick judges decide. America has become a sniper nation.

(Link fixed.)

Yeah.

Right.

The capsule version.

Coming soon to a lawful public assembly near you.

In the Guardian, Naomi Wolf considers the implications of raining remote-controlled robotic death from the skies:

People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.

Just imagine how much Bull Connor would have loved him some drones.

Read the rest.

Coming soon to your back yard.

Via C&L.

Robert Greenwald discusses the rain of robotic death from the skies. A quote:

According to the NYU-Stanford study, and others are substantiating this, maybe two per cent of the people we are hitting are “high value” targets.

If you don’t want to feel uncomfortable about gamers’ raining robotic death from the sky, don’t read this Asia Times article:

The world recently celebrated Malala Day in honor of the young Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, an innocent victim of political violence perpetrated by the Taliban. She was rightfully honored as a hero for her willingness to speak up for her right to an education and against religious extremism.

While her bravery deserved the attention it received, it lies in stark contrast to the many other innocent victims of political violence in Pakistan. Indeed, the Drone War continues with hardly a mention in the US media. It is not hard to imagine that if Malala lived in a different village, she could just as well have been killed by a Predator drone as by the Taliban – and we’d know nothing about her courage.