Recently, a group of high-level Al Qaeda members convened in a secret location in the Hindu Kush mountains in central Afghanistan.
"It's okay to talk," one of them said. "There are no Americans within a hundred miles."
Then...
BLAMMO.
A Hellfire missile, fired from a Predator drone, struck.
Remotely operated by pilots on the ground, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) boast a range of 454 miles and the ability to hover over a target for 40 hours. Originally developed by the U.S. Department of Defense in the mid-1990s for reconnaissance, Predators were fitted with a pair of Hellfire missiles after an American general remarked, "I can see the tank. Now I'd like to see it blown up."
The newer, bigger Reaper UAVs boast a 3,682-mile range and a relative arsenal, including Hellfires, Sidewinder missiles and 500-pound laser guided bombs -- a potent enough package that the Air Force is now training more pilots to fly aircraft from ground operations centers than from cockpits.
In researching remotely piloted aircraft, I visited the stretch of Southern Nevada desert that has become to UAVs what Silicon Valley is to the device on which you're reading this column. In 2007, Creech Air Force Base was made the home of the 432d Air Expeditionary Wing, the first Air Force wing dedicated to unmanned aircraft systems. Its daily missions in Afghanistan and Iraq could provide the military version of a SportsCenter highlight reel.
With an aim of promoting UAVs domestically as well as "enlightening" our enemies, the Defense Department recently began placing the Predator and Reaper mission clips on YouTube. Ranging from relatively detached wide shots of bombings taken by onboard cameras to startlingly graphic close-ups, the so-called "drone porn" has been a smash hit, as it were, tallying over 10 million views.
Perhaps best explaining its popularity are the thousands of YouTube commenters. Some marvel at the new technology and discuss the resulting paradigm shift in warfare. Some raise questions, including whether it's principled, dignified or otherwise in America's best interest to post drone prone in the first place. Most comments are along the lines of, "Hell yeah HOOOAH BABY!"
Below are three of the Defense Department's most popular videos on YouTube (titles theirs) as well as comparatively tranquil footage of a missile blowing up a tank. The "operational details" links go to the original YouTube pages, featuring more information and comments.
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"CIA drone attacks produce America's own unlawful combatants"
by Gary Solis
Friday, March 12, Washington Post, Opinion
(Mr. Solis is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and is the author of "The Law of Armed Conflict.")
On the other hand, we currently have civilians operating these from CIA control centers inside the US. By "operating", that includes pulling the trigger. That's a problem. Check out the Washington Post article at:
Success aside, I'm not sure why this hasn't been a bigger concern before now.
Gee, what could be wrong with having people not wearing the uniform of the US Military participating in combat activities? After all, today they're working for us.
Just leave.
Guess you got a public school education since you apparently didn't even read what I typed. Try again:
"This is not a 'Just War' and the Democrats' who support it hands are just as stained as we (former) Republicans."
And just for your edification, I wrote in a vote for Ron Paul. I would no more have voted for McStain than I would have Obllamarama.
>Spare me. Bush and Cheney started this crap and it's going to take decades to repair the greedy annihilation they have brought on the world, not to mention the shame they have brought upon our country!<
Which AIN'T gonna happen as long as Obama continues the Bush doctrine of 'Pre-emptive War'.
http://www.as.northropgrumman.com/products/nucasx47b/assets/lgm_0007.jpg
That's cool! It's a freakin unmanned stealth bomber that can take off and land on aircraft carriers autonomously. Unbelievably cool!
We blow up the wrong stuff on bad intelligence all too frequently. Iran is still sore about that time we killed 290 civilians aboard an Airbus A300 commercial airliner with surface-to-air missiles from an Aegis guided missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf, apparently mistaking it for an F-14 Tomcat.
The weapons we use to demonstrate our trigger-happy ineptitude are largely irrelevant. In the past, we only had cruise missiles to carry out these kinds of attacks, and those have the additional problem of not being particularly accurate.
During Shock and Awe, we attempted to take out Saddam Hussein, whom we thought was hiding at Dora Farms. Not only was he not there, but none of the four Tomahawk cruise missiles actually hit the target, and three of them hit an adjacent residential area, killing one civilian and wounding fourteen others, including nine women and one child.
So UCAVs are just our latest and definitely our coolest way to afflict the same kind of atrocities we've been afflicting by other means for several decades.
Even worse, there is a rumor that American city police departments are 'looking at' the possibility of buying dronesfor use over American streets. I trust that, in this prospect, at least, Americans will fill the streets in loud protest and not allow such unethical robotic tactics. (And where is the
street protest -- alone the blog protest -- over such science-fiction, flawed technology
Many of our missile systems, from tactical ballistic missiles to cruise missiles to strategic ICBMs are impersonal affairs where the target is only visible to the operator via a digital representation.
If anything, the UCAV is less disconnected than other OTH weapons, since high-resolution imaging equipment is maneuvered into line-of-sight before the decision to fire is made. That's not possible with conventional missile systems.
We get caught up in the fact that UAVs are robots. But all modern guided missiles are robots. The only difference is that UAVs can be deployed without committing to an attack, which is a positive development in all respects.
'...where is the protest against drones being used in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries'.
I wonder why they have been labeled "criminals".
Ugly and small-minded, with a violent distaste for anyone they perceive as different, they like the idea of people being kidnapped by the government and locked in secret prisons where they can be tortured and murdered in complete legal darkness. They like the idea of private mercenary companies mowing down the unarmed citizenry in countries their nation has invaded and occupied.
They want the government to spy on all Americans at all times, without any legal oversight. They loudly condemn any poor person who steals something, but fashion strange, tortured defenses for corporate CEOs who rob billions from the public.
Anti-individualist to the bone, they demand that everyone else grovel to their deities and their flags.
Much of their conversation consists of nothing more than a tedious recitation of their imagined grievances against women, against gay people, against people who have other religious convictions, against black or brown or yellow people.
They enjoy listening to ranting idlots on the radio and television, and think those loudmouth dropouts are “intellectuals.” They have a long list of people they want to execute, and they delight in telling you how much they would enjoy seeing that done. For all the lip service they may pay the Constitution, in fact they despise it.
They don’t like to call themselves “fascists,” but that’s PR. What they like, very much, is being fascists.
Eat up, slaves.
2) No, drones are not used 'with accuracy'; they have killed, it is estimated, over a hundred civilians, including children, with zero or one or two ' militants' also killed. (Evoking backlash killings of Americans exponentionally, it seems.)
3) Drones are being considered for use by large city police departments. Surely if they use them for surveillance they will eventually use them for bomb-targeting, with all the flaws and misses the Afghanistan drones effect.
If you don't respond to the violence in the middle east, the people there will weary of it and support for those that perpetrate those acts will wane.
If you respond by killing innocent people and destroying the livelihoods of more, then the hate of foreign oppressors becomes more pressing than a few lunatics acting out against those oppressors in terrible ways.
People do not blow themselves up for fun. They do not blow themselves up just because they think they'll get 72 virgins. The prettiness of martyrdom is a story they are sold to hide the ugliness of what they will do. The REASONS for their actions have everything to do with asymmetric warfare and perceived injustice.
Also it upsets me that America can spend an unlimited amount of money making war while our infrastructure fall into disrepair due lack of maintenance and plain old neglect. America needs desperately to rethink its priorities! After all what do we pay our taxes for anyway? Certainly too much money has been focused on the military and foreign aid that the American citizens have gotten the short end of the stick again. I'm going to stop now as this is one of the issues that makes me very angry.
This basically a non proven cause and effect. There is as much evidence of the opposite.
Okay, I'll bite. What do we pay our taxes for?
"Certainly too much money has been focused on the military and foreign aid that the American citizens have gotten the short end of the stick again."
Really!? The military, for one, is one of the smaller portions of the budget. Something around 60% of the Federal Budget goes into social programs.