"I sure wish I had more faith in my fellow man than I do. Again, that queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach...."

+1

"DRONE ON" was very enlightening - and a bit scary.

As I mentioned in my 1st post, hunting drones can be a great new sport for all of us with rifles (or shotguns for those pesky low fliers).

Good video

Pretty soon we'll have Improvised Explosive Drones?

They included some video of a hobby drone buzzing the Brooklyn bridge, Empire State Building, and Statue of Liberty. For $1000 someone could add explosive?

If you are going to shoot them down you better get a clean shot or they may return fire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jplh7uatr-E#!

(Skip to about 2:30)

Also, despite all the hating on drones, I could see these things being moderately useful for white water boating to scout runs in canyons etc where line of sight isn't otherwise possible. Future models could also potentially fly off and get help for you (with messages/ images etc). It is agreed that having them generally whizz past on the trail would be infuriating.

Also some non-quadrocopters:

http://www.gizmag.com/lehmann-aviation-la100-uav/25142/
http://www.gizmag.com/swinglet-cam-aerial-photography-drone/16892/

Edited by jeremy089786 on 01/13/2013 16:12:35 MST.

"I could see these things being moderately useful for white water boating to scout runs in canyons etc where line of sight isn't otherwise possible."

Hmm... Wouldn't be better to develop the skills needed to read a river; the skills needed to read a topo map; the skills needed to read snow fields; etc?

Not to mention the adventure and personal satisfaction of solving and successfully developing a solution to an obstacle.

Here's an interesting article from Friday's USA Today.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/10/domestic-drones-backlash/1566212/

"Hmm... Wouldn't be better to develop the skills needed to read a river; the skills needed to read a topo map; the skills needed to read snow fields; etc?"

Indeed the skills to read rivers/ maps etc is super important and having a drone won't help you do that, but in some situations it is simply impossible to get yourself into a situation where you can scout a river. Examples of this include gorges where there are overhanging rocks on each side (see a couple of examples below). In these cases you are essentially running a rapid blind and unaware whether some new submerged log is going to kill you.

In these situations, some kind of tough drone would simply be an excellent option.

http://www.oregonkayaking.net/rivers/elwha/elwha.html
http://oregonkayaking.net/rivers/box/box.html
http://caliproduct.blogspot.com.au/2007_01_01_archive.html
http://www.awetstate.com/Print%5CNTrinity.html
http://riversofchile.com/rio-llizan/

Edited by jeremy089786 on 01/14/2013 16:39:41 MST.

Legal experts expressed grave reservations Tuesday about an Obama administration memo concluding that the United States can order the killing of American citizens believed to be affiliated with al-Qaida — with one saying the White House was acting as “judge, jury and executioner.”

Link to story

Hi Nick

Seems to me those 'legal experts' are just seeking glory and publicity for themselves.

Imagine you are leading a US Army patrol in, say, Afganistan, patrol an area known to be threatened by Al-Quaeda. You come under fire. Are these 'legal experts' demanding that the patrol leader trot up to the enemy combatants to ask them 'Any of you chaps American?'

Come on!

Cheers

Not so roger.

It is about precedent. It's continuation of the erosision of our rights. It lets the US kill its own citizens without due process. This and the unprecedented use of executive orders are disgusting.

"It is about precedent. It's continuation of the erosision of our rights. It lets the US kill its own citizens without due process. This and the unprecedented use of executive orders are disgusting."

Well, I'll be darned! Never thought I'd see the day. +100

The Obama administration gets such a free pass on this madness.

There was so much anti-war activism in the G.W. Bush years, some of which I was a direct part of, all filled with so much animosity towards an administration seen by so many as grossly overstepping its bounds with our military and trampling the personal liberty of US citizens with the Patriot Act, etc. I remember monthly demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles and across the country. Yet somehow those so critical of Bush have lost their fire when it comes to Obama, many still clinging to the fantasy that he's some sort of bringer of peace. I still see Obama stickers with a big peace sign as the "O" on cars...It's surreal.

I wonder if he strokes his Nobel Peace Prize while he's getting debriefed on the latest round of drone attacks.


YES, WE CAN!

Craig,

Exactly. I was of course more giving bush a pass caught up post 9/11. Came around towards the second term realizing the erosion of our rights. Better late than never I guess.


But it blown up since then even more. Sad how we gladly hand over our rights.

And I think obama doesn't need briefings. Heard he enjoys being hands on as far as the drones go.

"The Obama administration gets such a free pass on this madness."

Good article on exactly that: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/when_liberals_ignore_injustice/

This began as a thread about those tiny little bird-like machines that can go zinging about and annoy people. Why the sudden issue about USA killer drones?
Especially here on BPL.

Roger,
The US citizen angle involves the drone killing of a US citizen also an Al Quada leader and others in Yemen, and has been coming up in the USA in an organized fashion recently on public TV and other media. They may have a pretty good point of US constitutional law, but I would be more concerned about the innocent people of any nations who get killed and maimed in these attacks, a military policy euphemistically called 'collateral damage' that has been a disaster for the USA at least since the early days of the Vietnam conflict, and is well covered in Neil Sheehan's book about John Paul Vann in Vietnam entitled, "A Bright Shining Lie." Our recently appointed Secretary of State opposed this policy vigorously as a young veteran.

I'll never forget the Aussies I knew in Vietnam, the most capable and professional soldiers I ever met anywhere. I agree with your sentiment, if not opinion. A lot of civilian folks nowadays don't really understand what war is all about. That's probably a good thing, as long as they are against it. They are better off for not knowing.

BTW, on the original point of this thread, under common law that generally applies in the USA, air space over land is owned by the land owner to significant altitudes in most cases. Recreants can't just send their copters zinging about over areas owned by others, including persons and state and local govermnents. I'm not a 'legal expert,' just a retired legal aid lawyer.

MYOGers might also be interested in taking a look at all the carbon fiber parts for these copters that are being sold on Ebay. Might be something useful there.

That's a good read Doug, thanks.

One dark thought (amongst many) about drone warfare that lurks in the back of my mind:

I play video games with my 11 year old son quite a bit. He's good. I mean really good. I know he plays online (I play online with him) but I recently found out he's got a "reputation", even amongst college and adult gamers. I actually heard about my son through an ex-student that now attends UC Berkely and is also a gamer...
(Thankfully, my son is also his class president, an avid reader, and loves camping too...)

That said, if you were to convert the controls of a drone to an Xbox controller platform and give them some time to learn, I'm willing to bet that my son (as well as legions of other teens and tweens in this country) could probably go toe to toe with some of the best drone pilots out there. We have an entire generation that is literally growing up simulating what the Air Force doesn't start training adults to do until the age 18 or later...

I hear a lot of talk about Orwell's 1984 these days. How about Ender's Game?

Edited by xnomanx on 02/05/2013 21:53:51 MST.

A good friend of mine is a GoPro athlete and shared a photo of a GoPro "drone" that is slated for 2013/2014.

It uses live-Feed from a GoPro cam to transmit video- pretty badass.

Good reference and we will all learn very soon what continual modernization of warfare means to us and our descendents.

The experiences of B52 pilots vs infantry during the Vietnam Conflict may provide a sense of how the reality of casualties may be perceived by future warriors.

A lot of money and danger to aircrews could be spared with S & R drones out covering grid patterns searching for missing persons with optical and IR cameras. Could save a lot of lives.

OTOH, I AM serious about an "open drone hunting season". If I knew private drones were monitoring an area for invasion of privacy reasons I'd be very tempted to shoot them down. With a good magnum chambered rifle, Horus reticle scope and laser rangefinding ballistic programmable binoculars one could have some fun here in Nevada's open deserts. Jus' sayin'...

Or... just use "electronic counter-measures" to scramble their control signals. That's a less pointy stick method of dealing with what will be a nusiance in the future. I use a radar/lidar scrambler in my car to good effect.

> It lets the US kill its own citizens without due process.
Sigh.
This completely avoids the basic facts of WAR.
It also avoids answering my basic question.

Every legal convention about war that I know of allows a legitimate military force which comes under fire to return that fire.

In this case the US forces are in Afghanistan at the request of the internationally recognised elected Afghan government. This gives them the same legal status as the Afghan army. They are dealing with a internationally recognised terrorist organisation - Al-Quaeda. The internationally accepted rules of war are quite clear about legal actions in this case.

The so-called 'legal experts' in this case are probably Tea Party supporters solely concerned with attacking Obama. THAT is politics.

In this case Obama did not create any new law or erode anyone's legal rights. If you go to fight for the enemy against your own country, you become a traitor and you forfeit your normal civil rights. The order was simply an operational matter of how the military forces should procede, within the rules of war.

If you don't know about the rules of war, read up on them and then on the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions for a start. The former date back to 1864, the latter to 1899. The fine details place limits on the treatment of non-combatants; it is assumed that combatants can and will kill each other.

For the record, I think the USA was stupid to get involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is a separate matter. I also think the Afghan government is riddled with corruption (they are in broad company), but that too is irrelevant here.

Cheers

I think we're almost there Eric

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/drone-finds-dummy-bushwalker-in-worldfirst-20121005-273lv.html