In fact, John F. Kennedy’s older brother, Joseph, was one of the drone program’s first pilots: he was killed in August 1944 when a drone-to-be that he was piloting exploded prematurely over Suffolk, England.
From August 1964, until their last combat flight on 30 April 1975 (the fall of Saigon), the USAF 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing would launch 3,435 Ryan reconnaissance drones over North Vietnam and its surrounding areas, at a cost of about 554 UAVs lost to all causes during the war.
It was 14 years ago this month that Bush, Jr. okayed drone strikes in the Middle East,Band 12 years ago, on February 4, 2002, that the CIA first used an unmanned Predator drone in a targeted killing. Within days of the strike, journalists on the ground were collecting accounts from local Afghans that the dead men were civilians gathering scrap metal.
Development of modern drone technologies will never eliminate civilian collateral damage in conflict deployment, Michael Raddie, antiwar activist told RT, arguing that investing in drones makes warfare more acceptable for general public.
RT: A Downing Street source has told the Independent that drones are an essential piece of equipment for the military. Well they are, aren’t they?
Michael Raddie: If the military is all about killing the civilians, then I guess they are. But the real essence of drone tech is really about just carrying on giving subsidies to the industrial military complex, the likes of BAE, the likes of Rolls Royce, Thales UK, these are all the companies that are going to benefit from this joint-drone program. In fact it’s not going to be just with the French. I think the British are talking to the Italians and the Swedes and who knows who else.
But the program is likely to continue, the Reaper drones in Afghanistan are likely to be redeployed into Africa, again to assist the French, maybe in Mali, Central African Republic and possibly back into Libya to quell the pro-Gaddafi green uprising that is happening there in the south of the country.
This is the problem with the politics of drone warfare. It becomes very easy to sell a war based on drones to the domestic audience, because there’s no soldiers, there’s no airmen, there’s no pilots putting their lives at risk. This makes drone warfare fairly acceptable to most countries. It is very popular in the US, again for those reasons I’ve mentioned. It’s become popular in the UK, because we don’t have boots on the ground, we don’t have soldiers losing their lives. But what is to stop China and Russia and other states taking part in drone warfare.
Effectively, if you use drones in another country, you have invaded a sovereign state, you have violated the sovereignty of that foreign country. That is against the law, that is a breach of international law right there.
RT: Will drones become far more effective and accurate in the future, thus lowering the amount of civilian casualties?
MR: I don’t really see this happening, to be honest. The CIA drone program is pretty reckless and has the most civilian casualties associate with it. But then the CIA instead of getting most of its intelligence from Pakistan, places like Somalia, countries like Afghanistan, all of their intelligence is coming from the NSA and the GCHQ. So they are basing their missile strikes on intelligence that is not even being gathered on the ground, it’s gathered several thousand miles away. For one, it’s not going to be very accurate. In terms of collateral damage, yes we do have missiles that do kill those in the surrounding area and I do not think even the British military take much care, if they need to take out what they consider as an insurgent, if it is in a crowd of people, I think, they will carry on doing it anyway. Certainly the CIA drone attacks have been known to do that.
But even when there is only one person in the vicinity, we have managed to kill one person and as it turns out later, they happened to be civilians. There is a court case going on in the UK at the moment, brought out by the Afghan civilians because their family members were killed while farming. We also have drone pilots that have gone on the record and have said that from their images they can’t tell if someone is carrying a gun or a spade.
IN THE BOOK Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control ,
"...exposing the public to the horrors of war, drones make war look fun..."
Where once the ratio of soldier to civilian war deaths was 9:1, now it has reversed.
Enter the drones.
The drones track and kill identified militants – or individuals whose behaviour, as observed from the drone, fits a pattern thought to typify militancy. Despite numerous direct reports of civilian deaths, the Obama administration insists that so-called collateral damage is slight. However, as it also persists with the view that any prime-age male killed by a drone is by definition a militant, the claim lacks elementary credibility.
s firing a missile from a drone morally worse than dropping a 500lb bomb from 10,000ft? Or pressing the button that launches a cruise missile? Perhaps what is repugnant is the unique combination of deliberately firing at a specific individual, combined with distance and the knowledge that you yourself are invulnerable to retaliation. Time to reprise the ancient Greeks with their contempt for archers. Despite some loose editing and repetition, Drone Warfare is both a justifiably angry sourcebook and a call to action for the growing worldwide citizen opposition to the drones.
WELL, CALIFORNIA IS HALTING THE PRACTICE OF FLYING DRONES OVER THEIR POPULATED AREAS, OR SO THEY THINK.
Beale AFB is home to the U2 and the Global Hawk, the unmanned surveillance drone that is an "accomplice" in drone killings.
SACRAMENTO, January 30, 2014 – Yesterday, the California state assembly easily passed a bill to strictly limit the use of drones within the state. The vote was 63-6.
“We know that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using grant money to get drones in the hands of local law enforcement,” said Michael Maharrey, communications director for the Tenth Amendment Center. “DHS and other federal agencies will never need to fly a single drone if they can just get all the states doing it for them. Once they’re in the air, they’ll simply point to information-sharing provisions of the PATRIOT Act or other federal acts and have a network of spies everywhere,” he continued. “By passing state laws to restrict drone use, we can stop this nightmare before it ever takes off.”
FOR ONCE, CALIFORNIA HAS IT FIGURED OUT ...DRONES ARE FOR ONE THING ONLY HERE IN AMERICA....TO SPY ON AMERICANS.
IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT, THEN JUST IGNORE THAT BUZZING SOUND OVER YOUR PATIO.
AND IF ONE CRASHES INTO YOUR HOUSE, OR "MISTAKENLY" KILLS AN INNOCENT AMERICAN....TOO BAD, RIGHT?
Nov 17, 2013 - An American drone has malfunctioned and crashed into a guided missile cruiser off the coast of Southern California.
OOPS! ACCIDENT!
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. 07/17/2013-- A remote stretch of a Florida Panhandle highway is closed after an Air Force drone crashed near the area.TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- A remote stretch of a Florida Panhandle highway is closed after an Air Force drone crashed near the area.
OOPS! ACCIDENT!
Multimillion-dollar military drone crashes in New York lake, remains missing for second day . (November 13, 2013
OOPS! ACCIDENT!
June 11, 2012 A Naval drone aircraft crashed on Maryland's Eastern Shore on Monday without injuries or property damage on the ground, officials said.
The 44-foot (13.4-meter) plane on a routine training flight crashed around noon near Bloodsworth Island
OOPS! ACCIDENT!
January 28, 2014
An American drone that is part of a fleet that
patrols the border with Mexico has crashed off the coast of Southern
California.
Customs and Border Protection says the drone was being flown
on a border security mission when a mechanical problem developed about 20 miles
southwest of San Diego late Monday.
OOPS! ACCIDENT!
YOU GET THE PICTURE, YES?THERE ARE A LOT OF THESE ACCIDENTS IN AMERICA, NEAR YOU, NEAR ME...
I FOUND 8,660,000 RESULTS ON A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR DRONE ACCIDENTS, YES, MANY ARE DUPLICATES, BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF "ACCIDENTS" THAT COULD HAVE KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME.
SURPRISE! THE FBI HAS BEEN USING DRONES HERE SINCE 2006, YES, 2006.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says it has used drones for domestic surveillance purposes in the United States at least ten times without obtaining warrants. In three additional cases, drones were authorized but “not actually used.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday published a letter from FBI Assistant Director Stephen D. Kelly, who admitted that the agency used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) domestically, without gathering any warrants.
“The FBI uses UAVs in very limited circumstances to conduct surveillance when there is a specific, operational need,” the letter reads. “Since late 2006, the FBI has conducted surveillance using UAVs in eight criminal cases and two national security cases.”
Overall, confirmation of the FBI’s drone use might be cause for concern among privacy advocates and anti-drone activists. Dave Norris, a councilman of Charlottesville, Va., predicted last February that drone use would occur domestically, and feared that there would be room for abuse.
“To me, it’s Big Brother in the sky,” he told the New York Times. “I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial about it, but these drones are coming, and we need to put some safeguards in place so they are not abused.”
ME, TOO, DAVE, ME TOO!
WHEN WE USE DRONES, IT IS NOT SOME SORT OF VIDEO GAME.
PEOPLE DIE,
MANY ARE INNOCENT VICTIMS, CHILDREN, BABIES,
WILL YOUR KIDS BE NEXT?
MAYBE...IF WE SIT HERE AND ALLOW DRONES OVER AMERICA.
ISN'T IT A GOOD THING THAT WE LOSE FEWER SOLDIERS IF WE USE DRONES?
WELL, IS IT A GOOD THING THAT WE STILL GO TO WAR?
IF DRONES WERE LIMITED TO MILITARY USE AND WAR THAT WOULD BE ONE THING, BUT THEY ARE USED BY THE MILITARY RIGHT HERE IN THE USA!
WHY?
ASK "BIG BROTHER".
OR, JUST SIT BACK AND WAIT YOUR TURN TO BE PART OF A DRONE "ACCIDENT", TO BE SPIED ON...OR WORSE.
DRONES SELL WAR?
ONLY TO THOSE WILLING TO BE TARGETS MAYBE?
No comments:
Post a Comment