8 ms·

Single-Click Double-Tap Murder

96 points by iProject 14y ago

aresant 14y ago
A fascinating parallel field is the development of EMP weapons - and they're no longer science fiction as Boeing recently detonated the first "successful EMP bomb" (1) w/the help of the military. A well placed EMP could literally knock out a Drone operator's electronics (even if the operator is deep in a bunker (2)), or target a drone itself. (1) http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-missile-takes-down-electronics-without-touching-them-1C6663618 http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-m... (2) http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb4.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb4.htm
mtgx 14y ago
"Worse yet, the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time until alpha insurgencies like Hezbollah and the Zetas have their own fleets of armed or kamikaze drones." And who will make and sell them those drones? Probably the same companies that are selling them to the US Army today. The way things are going right now, I envision warfare in the future being much like in the Terminator Salvation movie. The only difference is that the "machines" might not be self-aware (although they could be automatic), but they will be controlled by other humans. But in places where the war will actually happen, all you'll see is a battle between machines and men being slaughtered by them.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Steal a tacocopter and stick a granade under it -- that should enable you to take out the target (and leave a pretty decent mystery for the local authorities to solve. How do you prove who flew the plane? Who fixed the handgranade?).
  - Dove 14y ago
    I don't think it's that simple. For starters, there's probably a very short list of people who own tacocopters, let alone people who own grenades. If it becomes a problem, I can think of countermeasures -- register the things, ban them in public spaces/require flight plans, detect and triangulate the control signal. Heck, you could just look around; with a low tech system like that, whoever's flying the thing needs line of sight to it in order to identify the target. It's noisy and slow and I'd expect not nearly as effective as stealing a car and doing a drive-by shooting. But more than that, I'd be very surprised if that sort of thing becomes a problem. Normal people aren't murderers. Think about all the poisons, explosives, and highly kinetic pieces of equipment normal people have access to right now.
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      Getting a grenade is pretty easy, and I meant stealing the tacopter to get around the flightplan issue you can order him the taco using a stolen credit card, the intercept it using a butterfly net.
- SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
  > And who will make and sell them those drones? TFA mentions this in paragraph 4. Also, drones aren't nuclear science. Any number can play. the Iranians may or may not be making useful drones now ( http://theaviationist.com/2012/01/30/iran-a1/ http://theaviationist.com/2012/01/30/iran-a1/ ), to give some idea. I'd guess that the enabling parts that didn't exist 20 years ago are today found in mass-market cellphones, so controlling the technology as if it was big uranium-enriching plants is not going to happen.
- c1sc0 14y ago
  From Wikipedia (Al Qassam rockets): "The cost of the materials used for manufacturing each Qassam is up to $800 or €500" I'm sure the cost of building a drone with decent carrying capacity will come within that range pretty soon. Hell, with the average Qassam's precision, does it even matter if it costs 4x if your hit rate increases?
  - philwelch 14y ago
    I'm pretty sure Hamas doesn't really care about precision.
DanBC 14y ago
> psychotic mass murderers. "Psychosis" is a real word with real meaning. It's frustrating when people use it as a slang word because that use stigmatises people with mental health problems. It's possible that someone in a spree shooting has never had a psychotic episode and was not psychotic when they were shooting. (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001553.htm https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001553.htm) Psychotic episodes are not just caused by mental illness. They can be a symptom of other illnesses - Brain diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease; Brain tumors or cysts; HIV and other infections that affect the brain; Some types of epilepsy; or Stroke. (It's a shame that 'psychotic' is similar to 'psychopathic'. And that most people have almost no understanding of either condition.) > The same applies to drone warfare. It’s suddenly so much easier to pull the trigger, and you’re not putting any of your own people at risk. And so more people die. The military kills people. We stopped caring whether those people were civilians during WWII. Our military kills people with a variety of weapons. Shock and awe didn't feel particularly targeted. The cluster bombs that kill and maim hundreds of people each year don't feel particularly targeted. Cluster bombs are currently illegal, but the US and Britain have been trying to get the ban over-turned. I don't understand why drones, as a weapon of war, are getting so much attention at the moment compared to other weapons of war. Dead civilians are dead whether they're killed by drones or landmines or cluster bomblets or whatever.
- mc32 14y ago
  I think if one is going to have a war or be at war, it's reasonable to use a method which tries to minimize 'friendly' casualties first and e'enemy' collateral damage second. Ie. does it reduce 'friendly' casualties? Does it reduce collateral deaths on the other side? I think the answer is yes to both. I think drones reduce both and as such are a good thing, if one is going to be at war. Recall how in VN the VC suffered 2million casualties? Lots of that was due to collateral damage. Or in Afghanistan how the Russians decimated the enemy? That's traditional warfare. The issue with remoteness and 'coldness' is an attempt to make this approach less palatable (appeal to some kind of war ethics?) on the other hand, if we were sending personnel on foot (a la vietnam) and people (soldiers) were dying by the dozen daily, people would feel aggrieved too (naturally). Therefore I think what people should protest is 'war' not just a 'kind of war' because, to be honest, this new kind of war, if there needs to be one (and that's debatable of course), has its advantages over traditional (and that's becoming less traditional) warfare. It's less bloody and incurs less collateral damage is more targeted and effective. So I think psychologically perhaps UAVs seem asymmetrical and unfair to a technological backward foe but realistically, they are at a huge disadvantage in traditional warfare anyway. As weird as it sounds, I think UAVs are more effective and antiseptic than traditional warfare and thus 'better' as compared to boots on the ground.
CapitalistCartr 14y ago
Drones are only the beginning. The US military leads the World in developing military 'bots. The problem with having such an excessive military as ours is that the civilian leaders use to commit more and more stupid acts. With robotic weapons, so far fewer body bags returning to Dover, what will our "leaders" do then?
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  Another problem is that we, in other countries, don't think of America as the pinnacle of democracy or progress, don't think your causes as just, nor we believe you have any moral or other right to play global cop or to have access to cheap oil. And yet, a large part of the US public and lots of its leaders, thinks those things about the US, and gives its blessing to foreign intervention. Add to that that we also (what a shocker) value our lives and our cultures, and don't consider ourselves inferior barbarians to be "civilised" or "invaded", and you can understand our problem with drones. In fact, some of us, view the US as the barbarians, burning villages 15.000 away from their country or throwing chemicals that kill and harm hundreds of thousands of people (Agent Orange), throwing nuclear bombs at civilians, doing medical tests on unsuspecting people ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment ), invading sovereign countries with BS pretexts, keeping at "beyond law" prison, pushing for mass surveillance, ACTA and such. Heck, you even have segregated buses until 50 years ago. Even today, 70% of the prison population is non whites, while at the same time you have the highest incarceration rate on earth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat... ). Heck, you guys still have the death penalty! A country like that PLUS drones? The stuff that nightmares are made of...
  - Klinky 14y ago
    The U.S. was founded by hypocrites who didn't want to be enslaved to a regime, so they killed off the natives, and enslaved people of color then called it freedom. Hypocritical idealism from the U.S. should probably be expected. Though at times the U.S. was probably the least evil option.
tomjen3 14y ago
Drones really needs to be studied badly in terms of how they are going to change the future of warfare, especially as more and more new countries gets access to them. If I was a secret service coordinator, I would be shacking in my boots when I think about how to protect the president when any enemy, whether they are a country, a terrorist group, or just a lone nutjob (and how do you even identify a lone nut job? The norwegian police pretty much admitted that they couldn't, after the debacle with the loser who shot up a kid camp), can make or adapt a drone and fly it from far away? The president is safe now, because very few people are completely unconcerned with their own lives, but with drones we may never know who was really responsible for the attack. Drones even have the potential to be more dangerous to political groups than nukes, because nukes are so difficult to make that the only entities who could make them are the large, advanced, countries that have too much to lose if they were ever used. Drones are much easier, especially as all it really takes to make a lethal killing machine from a standard drone is to strap a rocket launcher on one. And yes, private people can buy drones (http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/select-site http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/select-site) for surprisingly little money (less than all but the cheapest computers) -- true they can't carry any load at present, but that is almost guaranteed to change in the future since drones have plenty of business usages, in industries such construction and transportation (and possible in the service industry, if the tacocopter takes of). And if there is one thing a terrorist could get their hands on with relative ease it is rockets and even if they somehow can't you can properly do pretty decent damage just putting an AK47 on it. There is a final, perhaps more sinister issue with drones -- unlike nukes you don't have much, if any, idea of where they came from; and if you don't know where they came form, how do you make sure that the enemy knows that you will retaliate? And if they don't know that, what is to stop them from using the nukes on you? Heck isn't it better, all things considered, that you attack first?
- sek 14y ago
  Ever heard about suicide bombers? They are even smart as real humans and don't care about their life. The other point, terrorism is not abut effectiveness it's about publicity. Drones are not so much changing the game as it is right now.
dharma1 14y ago
You can buy remote control aircraft that can carry up to 10kg weight. We make custom built octocopters for carrying a RED EPIC digital cinema camera, large lens, gyro and a hefty bunch of batteries (check http://londonhelicam.co.uk http://londonhelicam.co.uk). Right now, drones larger than Parrot AR Drone are fairly complex pieces of technology, which will hopefully help to keep them away from crazy people. But I admit it's scary to think what they could be used for once they become a commodity.
- DenisM 14y ago
  Cool stuff! What is the price range currently, on order of magnitude - 1k? 10k? 100k?
  - dharma1 14y ago
    DenisM - depends on your requirements, definitely not 100k, but not 1k either. Feel free to drop me a line if you have something in mind?
weeksie 14y ago
I feel like the article is mostly empty scaremongering. Drones are inevitable, you can't stop technology marching forward. They may not be a bad thing, however. More drone warfare means fewer soldiers involved in conflict and fewer deaths. I think a lot of the handwringing over drones is just because it's OMG ROBOTS, rather than considering that these deaths would have happened anyway but would have also caused casualties and psychological damage to the troops that would have been in their place.
- Joeri 14y ago
  Drone operators work with less intel than boots on the ground, and have less ability to precisely target, so it's pretty much a given that there will be more civilian casualties, not less. If drones didn't make it easier to kill, they wouldn't be used on such a massive scale (the US military now trains more drone operators than fighter pilots).
  - weeksie 14y ago
    All weapons make it easier to kill. We have been on a steady march forward as far as the efficiency of killing goes. We have guns, bombs, etc. . . And the same arguments were made about planes, I'm sure. The pilots are too detached from what's happening on the ground, etc. . . However, the order to kill is going to happen regardless and drones are better than carpet bombing, let alone the Shock and Awe crap that we were doing in Iraq. War is horrid. It's the worst thing we do as humans, but I can't see how drones really make it worse. Are they used to kill the wrong people sometimes? Yes. Are there civilian casualties? Yes. But that happens with all warfare. And as we've gotten more efficient at killing we've been doing less of it. Wars have become less brutal over time, not more and I don't see that trend changing.
    - gnaffle 14y ago
      War has become less brutal and more efficient, but it's very foolish to say that as a result, there are going to be fewer deaths. WW2 was more deadly than WW1, and if you look at the weapons we have available today, I don't know how anyone can think that WW3 is going to be _less_ deadly.
Dove 14y ago
This is a very serious charge. Whether it's with drones, artillery, rifles, or bare hands doesn't matter. If they have solid evidence of the military intentionally (or recklessly) targeting civilian first-responders, I'd think they should be looking to have charges filed against the individuals responsible.
- nkurz 14y ago
  You are correct that they should charged if they were to target a civilian, but you are neglecting the definition of “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”. Once that male first responder is in the US-determined strike zone (ie, his country of birth) he is a combatant -- and hence an justified target ---until proven otherwise, which can only be after he is dead. By this definition, there is legally no such thing as a living male adult civilian first responder. Sadly, the US doesn't even deny that they make follow-up strikes: 'We don’t discuss classified programs or comment on alleged strikes.' Anyway, who else would attempt to aid a wounded combatant (male funeral goer) other than another combatant (grieving male relative)? http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/ http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror...
agpen 14y ago
The US military has spent a decade murdering over a million civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and more and taken to labeling every male over the age of 16 as a "militant" in order to try and salvage the statistics a fraction. Who are the psychotic mass murderers again?
kevinpet 14y ago
An easy way to spot a bullshit article with more concern for their agenda than truth is implying a comparison between numbers that can't be compared. "Meanwhile, only 2 percent of the victims of the American drone war — a body count that now far exceeds the number who died in the World Trade Center — were “high-level militants” and hundreds upon hundreds were civilians." Aside from quibbling with using "victims" to refer to "high-level militants", I would expect similar numbers from any military operation ever. How's this sound "only 2% of the victims of the american invasion of Iwo Jima were field-grade Japanese officers"? Then we see the switch to comparing percentages to raw numbers. American's likely killed significantly more civilians in European bombing campaigns than we did in Hiroshima, but anyone with a shred of moral judgment can differentiate between civilians killed due to proximity to military targets (European bombing) vs. what we would call today state terrorism -- the intent to kill large numbers of civilians at Hiroshima to demonstrate our power. So what percent of those killed in the drone strikes are civilians? To what extent does the military weigh the risk of killing civilians when evaluating potential missions? Is any of this unique to drone strikes? I can't come to any conclusion but that this was just a generic collection of musings to generate outrage. It has nothing to do with Connecticut. It has nothing valuable to say about the ethics of drones. It's just troll baiting.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Just a minor nitpick, but a lot of the (European Bombing) was deliberately at civilian targets, with up to 600,000 civilian deaths. The second world war started with an agreement to try to avoid civilian targets, but that stopped in 1940. Later developments included incendiary bombs and "firestorms". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command) The UK RAF Bomber Command had a mind-boggling rate of death. About 44% of crew died. (About 55,000 killed out of about 125,000 crew).
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Dresden.
  - gus_massa 14y ago
    Dresden: 200K Hiroshima: 100K Nagasaki: 70K

96 points by iProject 14y ago

A fascinating parallel field is the development of EMP weapons - and they're no longer science fiction as Boeing recently detonated the first "successful EMP bomb" (1) w/the help of the military. A well placed EMP could literally knock out a Drone operator's electronics (even if the operator is deep in a bunker (2)), or target a drone itself. (1) http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-missile-takes-down-electronics-without-touching-them-1C6663618 http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-m... (2) http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb4.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb4.htm

mtgx 14y ago

"Worse yet, the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time until alpha insurgencies like Hezbollah and the Zetas have their own fleets of armed or kamikaze drones." And who will make and sell them those drones? Probably the same companies that are selling them to the US Army today. The way things are going right now, I envision warfare in the future being much like in the Terminator Salvation movie. The only difference is that the "machines" might not be self-aware (although they could be automatic), but they will be controlled by other humans. But in places where the war will actually happen, all you'll see is a battle between machines and men being slaughtered by them.

tomjen3 14y ago
Steal a tacocopter and stick a granade under it -- that should enable you to take out the target (and leave a pretty decent mystery for the local authorities to solve. How do you prove who flew the plane? Who fixed the handgranade?).
- Dove 14y ago
  I don't think it's that simple. For starters, there's probably a very short list of people who own tacocopters, let alone people who own grenades. If it becomes a problem, I can think of countermeasures -- register the things, ban them in public spaces/require flight plans, detect and triangulate the control signal. Heck, you could just look around; with a low tech system like that, whoever's flying the thing needs line of sight to it in order to identify the target. It's noisy and slow and I'd expect not nearly as effective as stealing a car and doing a drive-by shooting. But more than that, I'd be very surprised if that sort of thing becomes a problem. Normal people aren't murderers. Think about all the poisons, explosives, and highly kinetic pieces of equipment normal people have access to right now.
  - tomjen3 14y ago
    Getting a grenade is pretty easy, and I meant stealing the tacopter to get around the flightplan issue you can order him the taco using a stolen credit card, the intercept it using a butterfly net.
SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
> And who will make and sell them those drones? TFA mentions this in paragraph 4. Also, drones aren't nuclear science. Any number can play. the Iranians may or may not be making useful drones now ( http://theaviationist.com/2012/01/30/iran-a1/ http://theaviationist.com/2012/01/30/iran-a1/ ), to give some idea. I'd guess that the enabling parts that didn't exist 20 years ago are today found in mass-market cellphones, so controlling the technology as if it was big uranium-enriching plants is not going to happen.
c1sc0 14y ago
From Wikipedia (Al Qassam rockets): "The cost of the materials used for manufacturing each Qassam is up to $800 or €500" I'm sure the cost of building a drone with decent carrying capacity will come within that range pretty soon. Hell, with the average Qassam's precision, does it even matter if it costs 4x if your hit rate increases?
- philwelch 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure Hamas doesn't really care about precision.

DanBC 14y ago

> psychotic mass murderers. "Psychosis" is a real word with real meaning. It's frustrating when people use it as a slang word because that use stigmatises people with mental health problems. It's possible that someone in a spree shooting has never had a psychotic episode and was not psychotic when they were shooting. (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001553.htm https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001553.htm) Psychotic episodes are not just caused by mental illness. They can be a symptom of other illnesses - Brain diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease; Brain tumors or cysts; HIV and other infections that affect the brain; Some types of epilepsy; or Stroke. (It's a shame that 'psychotic' is similar to 'psychopathic'. And that most people have almost no understanding of either condition.) > The same applies to drone warfare. It’s suddenly so much easier to pull the trigger, and you’re not putting any of your own people at risk. And so more people die. The military kills people. We stopped caring whether those people were civilians during WWII. Our military kills people with a variety of weapons. Shock and awe didn't feel particularly targeted. The cluster bombs that kill and maim hundreds of people each year don't feel particularly targeted. Cluster bombs are currently illegal, but the US and Britain have been trying to get the ban over-turned. I don't understand why drones, as a weapon of war, are getting so much attention at the moment compared to other weapons of war. Dead civilians are dead whether they're killed by drones or landmines or cluster bomblets or whatever.

mc32 14y ago
I think if one is going to have a war or be at war, it's reasonable to use a method which tries to minimize 'friendly' casualties first and e'enemy' collateral damage second. Ie. does it reduce 'friendly' casualties? Does it reduce collateral deaths on the other side? I think the answer is yes to both. I think drones reduce both and as such are a good thing, if one is going to be at war. Recall how in VN the VC suffered 2million casualties? Lots of that was due to collateral damage. Or in Afghanistan how the Russians decimated the enemy? That's traditional warfare. The issue with remoteness and 'coldness' is an attempt to make this approach less palatable (appeal to some kind of war ethics?) on the other hand, if we were sending personnel on foot (a la vietnam) and people (soldiers) were dying by the dozen daily, people would feel aggrieved too (naturally). Therefore I think what people should protest is 'war' not just a 'kind of war' because, to be honest, this new kind of war, if there needs to be one (and that's debatable of course), has its advantages over traditional (and that's becoming less traditional) warfare. It's less bloody and incurs less collateral damage is more targeted and effective. So I think psychologically perhaps UAVs seem asymmetrical and unfair to a technological backward foe but realistically, they are at a huge disadvantage in traditional warfare anyway. As weird as it sounds, I think UAVs are more effective and antiseptic than traditional warfare and thus 'better' as compared to boots on the ground.

CapitalistCartr 14y ago

Drones are only the beginning. The US military leads the World in developing military 'bots. The problem with having such an excessive military as ours is that the civilian leaders use to commit more and more stupid acts. With robotic weapons, so far fewer body bags returning to Dover, what will our "leaders" do then?

pretoriusB 14y ago
Another problem is that we, in other countries, don't think of America as the pinnacle of democracy or progress, don't think your causes as just, nor we believe you have any moral or other right to play global cop or to have access to cheap oil. And yet, a large part of the US public and lots of its leaders, thinks those things about the US, and gives its blessing to foreign intervention. Add to that that we also (what a shocker) value our lives and our cultures, and don't consider ourselves inferior barbarians to be "civilised" or "invaded", and you can understand our problem with drones. In fact, some of us, view the US as the barbarians, burning villages 15.000 away from their country or throwing chemicals that kill and harm hundreds of thousands of people (Agent Orange), throwing nuclear bombs at civilians, doing medical tests on unsuspecting people ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment ), invading sovereign countries with BS pretexts, keeping at "beyond law" prison, pushing for mass surveillance, ACTA and such. Heck, you even have segregated buses until 50 years ago. Even today, 70% of the prison population is non whites, while at the same time you have the highest incarceration rate on earth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat... ). Heck, you guys still have the death penalty! A country like that PLUS drones? The stuff that nightmares are made of...
- Klinky 14y ago
  The U.S. was founded by hypocrites who didn't want to be enslaved to a regime, so they killed off the natives, and enslaved people of color then called it freedom. Hypocritical idealism from the U.S. should probably be expected. Though at times the U.S. was probably the least evil option.

tomjen3 14y ago

Drones really needs to be studied badly in terms of how they are going to change the future of warfare, especially as more and more new countries gets access to them. If I was a secret service coordinator, I would be shacking in my boots when I think about how to protect the president when any enemy, whether they are a country, a terrorist group, or just a lone nutjob (and how do you even identify a lone nut job? The norwegian police pretty much admitted that they couldn't, after the debacle with the loser who shot up a kid camp), can make or adapt a drone and fly it from far away? The president is safe now, because very few people are completely unconcerned with their own lives, but with drones we may never know who was really responsible for the attack. Drones even have the potential to be more dangerous to political groups than nukes, because nukes are so difficult to make that the only entities who could make them are the large, advanced, countries that have too much to lose if they were ever used. Drones are much easier, especially as all it really takes to make a lethal killing machine from a standard drone is to strap a rocket launcher on one. And yes, private people can buy drones (http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/select-site http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/select-site) for surprisingly little money (less than all but the cheapest computers) -- true they can't carry any load at present, but that is almost guaranteed to change in the future since drones have plenty of business usages, in industries such construction and transportation (and possible in the service industry, if the tacocopter takes of). And if there is one thing a terrorist could get their hands on with relative ease it is rockets and even if they somehow can't you can properly do pretty decent damage just putting an AK47 on it. There is a final, perhaps more sinister issue with drones -- unlike nukes you don't have much, if any, idea of where they came from; and if you don't know where they came form, how do you make sure that the enemy knows that you will retaliate? And if they don't know that, what is to stop them from using the nukes on you? Heck isn't it better, all things considered, that you attack first?

sek 14y ago
Ever heard about suicide bombers? They are even smart as real humans and don't care about their life. The other point, terrorism is not abut effectiveness it's about publicity. Drones are not so much changing the game as it is right now.

dharma1 14y ago

You can buy remote control aircraft that can carry up to 10kg weight. We make custom built octocopters for carrying a RED EPIC digital cinema camera, large lens, gyro and a hefty bunch of batteries (check http://londonhelicam.co.uk http://londonhelicam.co.uk). Right now, drones larger than Parrot AR Drone are fairly complex pieces of technology, which will hopefully help to keep them away from crazy people. But I admit it's scary to think what they could be used for once they become a commodity.

DenisM 14y ago
Cool stuff! What is the price range currently, on order of magnitude - 1k? 10k? 100k?
- dharma1 14y ago
  DenisM - depends on your requirements, definitely not 100k, but not 1k either. Feel free to drop me a line if you have something in mind?

weeksie 14y ago

I feel like the article is mostly empty scaremongering. Drones are inevitable, you can't stop technology marching forward. They may not be a bad thing, however. More drone warfare means fewer soldiers involved in conflict and fewer deaths. I think a lot of the handwringing over drones is just because it's OMG ROBOTS, rather than considering that these deaths would have happened anyway but would have also caused casualties and psychological damage to the troops that would have been in their place.

Joeri 14y ago
Drone operators work with less intel than boots on the ground, and have less ability to precisely target, so it's pretty much a given that there will be more civilian casualties, not less. If drones didn't make it easier to kill, they wouldn't be used on such a massive scale (the US military now trains more drone operators than fighter pilots).
- weeksie 14y ago
  All weapons make it easier to kill. We have been on a steady march forward as far as the efficiency of killing goes. We have guns, bombs, etc. . . And the same arguments were made about planes, I'm sure. The pilots are too detached from what's happening on the ground, etc. . . However, the order to kill is going to happen regardless and drones are better than carpet bombing, let alone the Shock and Awe crap that we were doing in Iraq. War is horrid. It's the worst thing we do as humans, but I can't see how drones really make it worse. Are they used to kill the wrong people sometimes? Yes. Are there civilian casualties? Yes. But that happens with all warfare. And as we've gotten more efficient at killing we've been doing less of it. Wars have become less brutal over time, not more and I don't see that trend changing.
  - gnaffle 14y ago
    War has become less brutal and more efficient, but it's very foolish to say that as a result, there are going to be fewer deaths. WW2 was more deadly than WW1, and if you look at the weapons we have available today, I don't know how anyone can think that WW3 is going to be _less_ deadly.

Dove 14y ago

This is a very serious charge. Whether it's with drones, artillery, rifles, or bare hands doesn't matter. If they have solid evidence of the military intentionally (or recklessly) targeting civilian first-responders, I'd think they should be looking to have charges filed against the individuals responsible.

nkurz 14y ago
You are correct that they should charged if they were to target a civilian, but you are neglecting the definition of “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”. Once that male first responder is in the US-determined strike zone (ie, his country of birth) he is a combatant -- and hence an justified target ---until proven otherwise, which can only be after he is dead. By this definition, there is legally no such thing as a living male adult civilian first responder. Sadly, the US doesn't even deny that they make follow-up strikes: 'We don’t discuss classified programs or comment on alleged strikes.' Anyway, who else would attempt to aid a wounded combatant (male funeral goer) other than another combatant (grieving male relative)? http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/ http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror...

agpen 14y ago

The US military has spent a decade murdering over a million civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and more and taken to labeling every male over the age of 16 as a "militant" in order to try and salvage the statistics a fraction. Who are the psychotic mass murderers again?

kevinpet 14y ago

An easy way to spot a bullshit article with more concern for their agenda than truth is implying a comparison between numbers that can't be compared. "Meanwhile, only 2 percent of the victims of the American drone war — a body count that now far exceeds the number who died in the World Trade Center — were “high-level militants” and hundreds upon hundreds were civilians." Aside from quibbling with using "victims" to refer to "high-level militants", I would expect similar numbers from any military operation ever. How's this sound "only 2% of the victims of the american invasion of Iwo Jima were field-grade Japanese officers"? Then we see the switch to comparing percentages to raw numbers. American's likely killed significantly more civilians in European bombing campaigns than we did in Hiroshima, but anyone with a shred of moral judgment can differentiate between civilians killed due to proximity to military targets (European bombing) vs. what we would call today state terrorism -- the intent to kill large numbers of civilians at Hiroshima to demonstrate our power. So what percent of those killed in the drone strikes are civilians? To what extent does the military weigh the risk of killing civilians when evaluating potential missions? Is any of this unique to drone strikes? I can't come to any conclusion but that this was just a generic collection of musings to generate outrage. It has nothing to do with Connecticut. It has nothing valuable to say about the ethics of drones. It's just troll baiting.

DanBC 14y ago
Just a minor nitpick, but a lot of the (European Bombing) was deliberately at civilian targets, with up to 600,000 civilian deaths. The second world war started with an agreement to try to avoid civilian targets, but that stopped in 1940. Later developments included incendiary bombs and "firestorms". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command) The UK RAF Bomber Command had a mind-boggling rate of death. About 44% of crew died. (About 55,000 killed out of about 125,000 crew).
jacquesm 14y ago
Dresden.
- gus_massa 14y ago
  Dresden: 200K Hiroshima: 100K Nagasaki: 70K