Drones...

The thing that won't die, in the nightmare that won't end.

A quite realistic replacement for the notorious government “black helicopters” of conspiracy theory fame are UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), or as they’re more popularly called, Drones, that seem to be much in the spotlight lately. Being much less expensive to purchase or to operate than manned helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft, both the military and the CIA have been using an assortment of these remotely controlled flying machines to very aggressively prosecute the war on terror in the mid-east.

On the home front we now have reconnaissance drones patrolling a section of the Canadian border under the control of those ever so popular Homeland Security folks, more of them playing around on the southern border, and even some of our smaller police departments have taken to using smaller versions for assorted surveillance flights. Then there are quite a number of privately owned “mini-drones” in existence, used for everything from commercial power line inspections to simple hobby flying enjoyment.

We have drone aircraft, drone helicopters, drone gliders, and a couple of things that I haven’t figured out quite how to classify cluttering the skies of the world today. These aircraft come in all sizes as well, from the “really big” on down to some very specialized reconnaissance units about the size of an insect. (Humm… don’t swat that strange metallic looking “bug” on your wall, you might find yourself charged with the destruction of government property!) Their flight characteristics are just about as unusual. While some can fly for only a few minutes with a range measured in yards, a solar powered craft under development NASA and the DoD can stay aloft for nearly five years, flying at 100,000 feet! Military drones are generally quite stealthy, and some are acknowledged to operate well in excess of 20,000 feet while traveling a couple of thousand miles, at 500+ miles per hour, and carrying thousands of pounds of death and destruction!

Originally these were simple camera equipped radio control model airplanes intended to be used in real-time short range battlefield reconnaissance operations. Oh how they’ve grown! UAV’s have been developed into quite successful tactical and even strategic reconaissance platforms equipped with any number of nearly science fiction spy devices! Devices ranging from optical cameras to infra-red sensors, or if your mission requirements prefer, a wide assortment of electronic equipment that can include ground penetrating radar. Rest assured, they can see and probably identify you and what you’re doing, even if you have no idea they’re anywhere nearby. Currently, operational drones are remotely controlled by a human operator, much like the model planes that preceded them. They are however semi-automatic in that the operator tells the machine which direction to turn, when to start taking pictures or launch a missile in Pakistan, and even when to come home, leaving the machine to do everything else. That “Practically everything else” is controlled by on-board computers, assorted flight data sensors, and up-to-date GPS technology.

In the interest of protecting our soldiers from harm, drones are being armed, in some cases quite heavily with everything from “smart” iron bombs to long range “fire and forget” target seeking guided missiles. (If you can put a weapon on an airplane, you can put it on a drone.) These weapons can find, and hit, a target designated from miles away by a laser beam or radar. They can track a target, day or night, from the heat it radiates. They can be guided remotely by built in television. Or they can seek out and hit a specific GPS position. (Remember not long back, when the census folks came by and recorded the GPS position of your front door?) Mr. Obama’s eye-in-the-sky can quite easily find you nowadays. And, if it can find you…

Additionally as one pundit comments, they can quickly determine if you’re properly recycling your trash according to whatever current government standards demand, or perhaps if you’re speeding a bit on the highway… well, they can also determine if the old roof on your house is leaking more heat than whatever the EPA has determined is proper energy usage in fighting global warming. Get used to living in a government controlled and operated fishbowl folks, there’s very little you can do, either indoors or out, that can’t be observed, and reported to the “proper authorities”, by these government controlled aerial spy-eyes.

Nor is it just airborne drones that concern me. The Army and law enforcement agencies are developing an entire stable of ground bound robotic vehicles as well. This includes everything from full grown tanks with big guns, to cargo trucks that don’t need a driver (scratch yet another American job), to robot cops and security guards. Some move on treads, some roll on wheels, and some even walk on two legs! And the majority of these are, unfortunately, armed! Dunno about anyone else, but the thought of a machine-gun toting robot suddenly telling me to halt and produce my papers is quite frightening! Slightly behind the deployment curve, the Navy is also working on drones, predominantly small warships and even robot attack submarines!

Another frightening aspect of these things is that they are slowly becoming completely autonomous, where in accordance with pre-set generalized instructions, the machine “thinks” for itself in following those instructions, without a human operator in the loop. But still, it’s a machine that can only do what it’s told. We are also familiar with the ills that can befall a computer, and what results might occur… The Navy X-47B currently under test is a fully automated aircraft carrier based strike drone that only needs to be told where to go and who to kill… unless it decides to just kill everything in the target area. After all, who’s the bad guy, the Arab looking dude sneaking up on you with an RPG… or perhaps it’s that evil conservative guy down the street, who objects to the Obamacare program?

So here we have the scenario of an almost undetectable killing machine, armed with terribly precise weapons, flying over our heads and looking over our shoulders. I certainly hope there’s no hiccup in the master computer, or that another Hitler or Stalin hasn’t somehow gained control… and it’s already been demonstrated that computer hackers can access the system, feeding wrong targets, positions, and even control information to the on-board computer. I have no issues with the limited use of military drones during wartime. I can also quickly understand and approve of some civilian use as well. I do, strenuously, object to the use of drones of any sort being used by the government to “spy” on American citizens for any reason. If the government or the police want to know what I’m up to today, they can darn well come and ask me in person. They most definitely do not “need these new tools” to control my life. Even more so, I object to the very idea of armed, autonomous, robots running around looking for somebody to kill, no matter what the motive!

Nearly all of us have seen the opening scenes of the movie “Terminator”, where robot fighting machines battle humans for control of the Earth. The movie is futuristic science fiction of course… but that future may be getting much closer than you think.