Rolling Drone Thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/politics/obama-orders-release-of-drone-memos-to-lawmakers.html?ref=politics&_r=0

worth noting

Yesterday, as a task force of 125 officers, some riding Snowcats in the rugged terrain, continued their search, it was revealed that Dorner has become the first human target for remotely-controlled airborne drones on US soil.

unarmed spy drones, i guess, but yknow

What became of literature’s vaunted power to inspire empathy? Why was the candidate Obama, in word and in deed, so radically different from the President he became? In Andrei Tarkovsky’s eerie 1979 masterpiece, “Stalker,” the landscape called the Zona has the power to grant people’s deepest wishes, but it can also derange those who traverse it. I wonder if the Presidency is like that: a psychoactive landscape that can madden whomever walks into it, be he inarticulate and incurious, or literary and cosmopolitan.

According to a report in the New York Times, the targets of drone strikes are selected for death at weekly meetings in the White House; no name is added to the list without the President’s approval. Where land mines are indiscrimate, cheap, and brutal, drones are discriminate, expensive, and brutal. And yet they are insufficiently discriminate: the assassination of the Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in Pakistan in 2009 succeeded only on the seventeenth attempt. The sixteen near misses of the preceding year killed between two hunderd and eighty and four hundred and ten other people. Literature fails us here. What makes certain Somali, Pakistani, Yemeni, and American people of so little account that even after killing them, the United States disavows all knowledge of their deaths? How much furious despair is generated from so much collateral damage?

Of late, riding the subway in Brooklyn, I have been having a waking dream, or rather a daytime nightmare, in which the subway car ahead of mine explodes. My fellow riders and I look at one another, then look again at the burning car ahead, certain of our deaths. The fire comes closer, and what I feel is bitterness and sorrow that it’s all ending so soon: no more books, no more love, no more jokes, no more Schubert, no more Black Star. All this spins through my mind on tranquil mornings as the D train trundles between 36th Street and Atlantic Avenue and bored commuters check their phones. They just want to get to work. I sit rigid in my seat, thinking, I don’t want to die, not here, not yet. I imagine those in northwest Pakistan or just outside Sana’a who go about their day thinking the same. The difference for some of them is that the plane is already hovering in the air, ready to strike.

I know language is unreliable, that it is not a vending machine of the desires, but the law seems to be getting us nowhere. And so I take helpless refuge in literature again, rewriting the opening lines of seven well-known books:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist’s.

Call me Ishmael. I was a young man of military age. I was immolated at my wedding. My parents are inconsolable.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead bearing a bowl of lather. A bomb whistled in. Blood on the walls. Fire from heaven.

I am an invisible man. My name is unknown. My loves are a mystery. But an unmanned aerial vehicle from a secret location has come for me.

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was killed by a Predator drone.

Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His torso was found, not his head.

Mother died today. The program saves American lives.

I was in New York City on 9/11. Grief remains from that awful day, but not only grief. There is fear, too, a fear informed by the knowledge that whatever my worst nightmare is, there is someone out there embittered enough to carry it out. I know that something has to be done to secure the airports, waterways, infrastructure, and embassies of our country. I don’t like war; no one does. But I also know that the world is exceedingly complex, and that our enemies are not all imaginary. I am not naïve about the incessant and unseen (by most of us) military activity that undergirds our ability to read, go to concerts, earn a living, and criticize the government in relative safety. I am grateful to those whose bravery keeps us safe.

This ominous, discomfiting, illegal, and immoral use of weaponized drones against defenseless strangers is done for our sakes. But more and more we are seeing a gap between the intention behind the President’s clandestine brand of justice and the real-world effect of those killings. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words against the Vietnam War in 1967 remain resonant today: “What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them?” We do know what they think: many of them have the normal human reaction to grief and injustice, and some of them take that reaction to a vengeful and murderous extreme. In the Arabian peninsula, East Africa, and Pakistan, thanks to the policies of Obama and Biden, we are acquiring more of the angriest young enemies money can buy. As a New York Times report put it last year, “Drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants.”

Assassinations should never have happened in our name. But now we see that they endanger us physically, endanger our democracy, and endanger our Constitution. I believe that when President Obama personally selects the next name to add to his “kill list,” he does it in the belief that he is protecting the country. I trust that he makes the selections with great seriousness, bringing his rich sense of history, literature, and the lives of others to bear on his decisions. And yet we have been drawn into a war without end, and into cruelties that persist in the psychic atmosphere like ritual pollution.

http://newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/02/a-readers-war.html

salon asks the one nagging question that was troubling us all:

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/11/would_lincoln_use_drones/

you know, i'm not sure i'm against (unarmed) drones searching for a particular bad guy. seems materially different from "surveillance"

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/02/drones_war_and_civilian_casualties_how_unmanned_aircraft_reduce_collateral.html

Rather laughable to talk about reducing collateral damage through the use of drones in countries the US is not at war with and would have no other practical option for attacking if it were not for unmanned aircraft.

Damn, schlump - that's a powerful piece you linked to.

that slate piece is incredibly awful

OT?: The Cannes '12 sound & light show performed by a 16 drone swarm and mentioned en passant in the Time piece is rather pretty.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/FAA-investigating-report-of-drone-spotted-near-NYC-4329166.php

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/drones-congress-terror

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/03/drones_don_t_target_u_s_citizens_they_kill_them_overseas_as_collateral_damage.2.html

http://www.theonion.com/articles/youre-my-best-friend-says-obama-to-drone-that-appe,31594/

Obama’s Defense Budget Shows the Drone Spending Boom Is Over
www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/drone-budget/

The laser cannons the Navy are installing are purportedly for downing drones.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/04/pentagon-global-observer

The Pentagon spent millions developing a humongous hydrogen-fueled drone that, it hoped, could fly at soaring altitudes for a week at a time. Now the drone is all on its lonesome, because no one wants to buy it.

Built by drone manufacturer AeroVironment, the Global Observer is a 70-foot-long jumbo drone with a wingspan nearly as long as one of the Air Force’s B-52 bombers. Powered by liquid-hydrogen fuel cells, it was billed as a persistent eye-in-the-sky capable of loitering at 65,000 feet for a week a time without spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Pentagon also envisioned many missions. The drone’s 380-pound payload of spy cameras and sensors could stare at a diameter of 600 miles of earth at once, while doubling as a communications relay. It could patrol the oceans and possibly track hurricanes — the Department of Homeland Security was interested in it too.

But now no one wants the giant drone. “Currently, no service or defense agency has advocated for it to be a program,” Pentagon spokeswoman Maureen Schumann told InsideDefense (subscription only) in April. This was after spending $27.9 million developing the drone since 2007, which came to an end in December when the Pentagon closed down its development contract, the trade journal reports.

Flies on the nose of the Pentagon in fairness - the F-35 jet cost $40 billion and is just as unloved.

I feel like we're so close to

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/Helicarrier.jpg

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/14/a_liberal_case_for_drones

Speculating that technology nobody is building could be programmed using criteria nobody has outlined to be less malicious / incompetent than the people operating drones IRL is an odd "liberal case" but it's an attention-grabbing headline, i suppose.

http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2013/05/i-might-need-you-kill-signatures-patterns-and-alternatives.html

http://www.imore.com/tom-clancys-division-let-mobile-players-get-post-apocalyptic-console-action

In a lot of ways, it's a standard duck-and-cover action game with lots of gadgets, skills, progression, and persistent open world player-versus-player, but what's really interesting to us is the mobile element. Players on unnamed tablets will be able to join in the fun as a drone, offering tactical support by way of surveillance, healing, and providing other bonuses. You can still get shot at, even though you're in the air, so watch out.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/25/gender_and_drone_strikes_pew_research_center_study_shows_a_huge_gap_in_public.html

How To Think About Drones
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/files/2013/10/whitehouse-photo.png

Malala Yousafzai may not have won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, but she enjoyed a private Oval Office audience with President Obama and the first family.

Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani student who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for speaking out in support of the right of girls to go to school, met Friday with Obama and his wife, Michelle. A photograph issued by the White House shows the Obamas' 15-year-old daughter, Malia, also present during the visit.

...Yousafzai said she was honored to meet Obama and that she raised concerns with him about the administration's use of drones, saying they are "fueling terrorism."
"I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees," Yousafzai said in a statement published by the Associated Press. "I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/10/11/malala-yousafzai-meets-with-the-obamas-in-the-oval-office/

otmfm

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/10/drone-reports/

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/11/pakistan-taliban-chief-killed-drone-strike-2013111163646666844.html

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2013/11/Maveric_Prioria.jpg

http://gailshumway.com/gallery/plog-content/images/my-collection/mammals/bottlenose-dolphin-3-touched-up-best-sky-9-violet-photo-filter-cropped-2-sharp.jpg

uh
http://www.amazon.com/b?node=8037720011

Ha! just last month my gf and I were brainstorming future products/services for an art project and one of our ideas was drone-delivered takeout.

american govt p big on that already

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/us/colorado-town-drone-ordinance/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

"I would shoot a drone down if it's peering in my window, scanning me, and it's within elevation where I can nail it," said Robert Copely, a resident.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/technology/personaltech/review-the-phantom-2-vision-photo-drone-from-dji.html

Navy’s 757-Sized Drone Will Provide Big-Time Surveillance

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2014/01/triton/

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2014/01/23941-660x440.jpg

Gonna be an interesting next couple decades

Making super-huge and expensive drones like that Navy one is just very, very stupid. Because the whole point of drones is that they are cheap and expendable. Having no pilot means you can put them in harm's way. All those advantages are inapplicable to a massively expensive drone filled with super-secret hardware. You might as well give the damn thing a pilot who can respond to sticky situations better than some techie sitting in a room 8,000 miles away with a joystick.

I'm skeptical that a human in a plane can pilot better than a gamer w/ a joystick.

may you live in interesting decades

I'm still aligned with the reality-based community myself.

The advantages of a big expensive drone is that it can handle way more gs, will never panic, doesn't become fatigued or subject to environmental factors. In order to accommodate a human pilot, significant amounts of weight and design are compromised...and the leading cause of crashes will be pilot error.

http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/01/27/medals_for_drone_pilots_hagel_still_cant_decide

They should just do Achievements

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2014/02/avenger/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/opinion/let-the-military-run-drone-warfare.html

seems like a great idea to me -why diversify our war crimes when we can get the same division doing all of them?

“Civilian casualties” authorized under secret US drone-strike memo: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/civilian-casualties-authorized-under-secret-us-drone-strike-memo/

A secret Obama administration memo disclosed Monday outlines the legal justification for the government's drone-targeted killing program, a lethal strategy that authorizes the killing of innocents as collateral damage.

The memo (PDF), released by a US federal appeals court under a Freedom of Information Act request, describes the government's legal underpinnings for its so-called overseas targeted-killing program where drones from afar shoot missiles at buildings, cars, and people. It began under the George W. Bush administration but was broadened under Obama and now includes the killing of Americans.

leading cause of crashes will be pilot error.

Belated note to Don:

Just because a drone's joystick is located outside the plane doesn't mean the person holding it is not the pilot or is magically exempted from making an pilot error or becoming fatigued. While the panic of being responsible for the loss of a drone worth tens of millions of dollars may not be quite as potent if you are not in it at the time, I presume it can still get a good amount of fear stirred up.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147?CMP=share_btn_tw

The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida’s leader, this time in Bajaur.

Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.

However many Americans know who Zawahiri is, far fewer are familiar with Qari Hussain. Hussain was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group aligned with al-Qaida that trained the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, before his unsuccessful 2010 attack. The drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010.

Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain, the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.

Wait, that's from 2014 - i just saw it come up again on Twitter.

regular drone, not killer drone, but hey this is the thread we have

Hit-and-Run Drone Collision Causes Power Outage for 1,600 in Google’s Hometown

Home-made drones now threaten conventional armed forces

^ yup

F-35 fighter aircraft cost roughly $100 million per unit, not counting maintenance. You can buy one helluva lot of drone aircraft for that kind of money.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/20/tens-of-thousands-of-passengers-stranded-by-gatwick-airport-drones

drones

i can't remember this and it's impossible to google and it's driving me crazy: who composed the early drone/experimental piece "was?" (german for "what?")

fuck wrong thread

You think?

"“Like in many other areas of drone regulation, the statutory and regulatory framework is lagging the technology,” said Reggie Govan, a former chief counsel to the F.A.A. who now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “It’s just that simple.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/us/drones-FAA-colorado-nebraska.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage