I wish I could say this was Science Fiction. But the "powers that be" have other plans ...
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A US soldier prepares a small drone in Afghanistan’s Arghandab Valley. This one, which can be carried into the field, is used for transmitting real-time images.
AFP/Newscom /File -- Christian Science Monitor
Unmanned drone attacks and shape-shifting robots: War's remote-control future
by Anna Mulrine, staff writer, Christian Science Monitor -- Oct 22, 2011
[...]
Soldiers hoping to eavesdrop on an enemy release a series of tiny, unmanned aircraft the size and shape of houseflies to hover in a room unnoticed, relaying invaluable video footage.
A fleet of drones roams a mountain pass, spraying a fine mist along a known terrorist transit route – the US military's version of "CSI: Al Qaeda." Days later, when troops capture suspects hundreds of miles away, they test them for traces of the "taggant" to discover whether they have traversed the trail and may, in fact, be prosecuted as insurgents.
Welcome to the battlefield of the future. Malleable robots. Insect-size air forces. Chemical tracers spritzed from the sky. It's the stuff of science fiction. [...]
Science Fiction, soon to become Science Fact.
Engineering students at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., for instance, are now experimenting with chemical taggants on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the ones being used in Afghanistan. [...]
"We're not about 20 years, or 10 years, or even five years away -- a lot of this could be out in the field in under two years," says Mitchell Zatkin, former director of programmable matter at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Pentagon's premier research office.
Who says Science can't solve all our problems ... too bad these are mainly communication problems, it's trying to solve, by remote control and auto pilot.
Maybe we should try "talking to our enemies" again, someday ... ? Couldn't hurt.
Why can't we ever have an "Arms Race" that is trying to win "Peace and Prosperity"?
As Drones Evolve, More Countries Want Their Own
Talk of the Nation, NPR -- Sept 26, 2011
Guest: David Sanger, chief Washington Correspondent, The New York Times -- [H/T MB]
The Obama Administration has dramatically ramped up its use of drones as military and foreign policy tools. But many other countries want drones of their own, and advances in technology will soon allow for smaller, more powerful and cheaper models.
NEAL CONAN, host: [...] The first arms race of the 21st century is the unmanned aircraft, the drone.
Drones are relatively cheap, much less intrusive than manned airplanes, and highly effective for reconnaissance and pinpoint attacks. The U.S. currently fires missiles from drones in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Manufacturers can't keep up with demand. New types with new capabilities continue to arrive, and new questions too.
[...]
SANGER: [...] I think one of the biggest surprises of the Obama administration has been how quickly the administration has adopted and accelerated this program. In President Obama's first year in office, 2009, there were double the number of drone strikes that there had been I think during the previous four years of the Bush administration.
CONAN: And it has also become an instrument of foreign policy. As the United States withdraws from Iraq, for example, it would like to keep a drone base in Turkey to watch things in Iraq. Yet the Turks, they say yes, that would be fine, if you sell us some drones and keep -- so we can keep track of the Kurdish breakaway group, the PKK.
SANGER: That's right, and so there are two big issues here. One is how quickly do you want to sell this technology, and of course that's driven some by competitive concerns. It's not like the United States is the only country designing and building drones. Certainly the U.S. is well ahead, but the Chinese have caught on that there's something going on here, and so have a lot of other countries. And while the U.S. technology is advanced, the fundamental technology of building drones is pretty widely available.
[...]
CONAN: And it is -- you say all right, one drone firing one missile, it would be a terrible thing, but it's not 9/11. However, this technology is just in the cradle still. It's developing by leaps and bounds.
SANGER: In both drone technology and cyberwarfare, I think it's fair to say that we're sort of at the equivalent point that we were at in the mid to late 1940s, when the U.S. had set off the first atomic attacks and knew the technology was going to spread, and the Soviets would get it, as they did by the late '40s. But it was not a widespread technology.
But everybody knew that the bomb was going to spread, and in fact it has, and drones will probably faster than nuclear technology did.
[...]
SANGER: [...] There's one called the Raven that troops use right now just to launch by hand, and it can sort of go over a hill and send back an image of what's on the other side of the hill, and then it's supposed to return like a boomerang. Some days it does, and some days it doesn't.
That's the other problem here, which is that, you know, like any software-driven device, it can have a mind of its own at times.
[...]
Uh oh. It's them damn Computers again, taking over the world -- they're sprouting up like smart phones and I-pads ...
What are ya gonna do? Maybe invest in mini-drone repellent, perhaps?
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A model of an insect-size US Air Force drone is held by a member of the Micro Air Vehicles team of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Their goal is to make drones so small that they resemble small birds and insects – some will have wings that flap – and so sophisticated that they can operate in complex urban environments.
Skip Peterson/Reuters -- Christian Science Monitor
War by remote control -- In Pictures
This Predatory Drones business -- really needs some serious side-bars, starting with public disclosure and debate. And maybe some public congressional oversight.
If we don't curb it now, there's no telling where it will all end ...
Science Fiction has a way of becoming Science Fact, left to its own devices.
Left to the military powers with more money than sense;
A military machine without a clear humanitarian mission ... without a constructive humanity-restoring cause ...
Humans, they just get in the way anyways, they say ... Why do you think they need so many drones for, in the first place? It's all them damn humans, don't ya know.