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It's interesting - as WWII is increasingly distant, the collective memory of it fades, and we begin to focus on the long term benefits from it that we enjoy (th

It's interesting - as WWII is increasingly distant, the collective memory of it fades, and we begin to focus on the long term benefits from it that we enjoy (the peace dividend), and not the immediate horrors of the war. This article written 80 years from now? Time travellers: please don't kill Osama bin Laden, the war on terror gave us drones and tons of great security technology.

DanBC 13y ago
We had drones before 911! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_veh... > The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred on August 22, 1849, when the Austrians attacked the Italian city of Venice with unmanned balloons loaded with explosives. > After World War I, three Standard E-1s were converted as drones.[6] The Larynx was an early cruise missile in the form of a small monoplane aircraft that could be launched from a warship and flown under autopilot; it was tested between 1927 and 1929 by the Royal Navy. The early successes of pilotless aircraft led to the development of radio controlled pilotless target aircraft in Britain and the US in the 1930s. In 1931, the British developed the Fairey "Queen" radio-controlled target from the Fairey IIIF floatplane, building a small batch of three, and in 1935 followed up this experiment by producing larger numbers of another RC target, the "DH.82B Queen Bee", derived from the De Havilland Tiger Moth biplane trainer. Through some convoluted path, the name of "Queen Bee" is said to have led to the use of the term "drone" for pilotless aircraft, particularly when they are radio-controlled.[7] However during this period the U.S. Navy, continuing work that reached back to 1917, was also experimenting with radio controlled aircraft. In 1936 the head of this research group used the term "drone" to describe radio controlled aerial targets.[8] etc. So current drones are just a refinement of earlier technology. If we hadn't gone to war in Afghanistan we had Iraq to use this new technology. If we hadn't gone to war in Iraq or Afghanistan we would have used drones over NK, perhaps to drop media players loaded with sitcoms and soap operas and music.
- mseebach 13y ago
  And we had rockets before WWII! (They were invented by the chinese around 1000 years ago) The big leap in technology still happened during, and mostly because of, the requirements of war. It's obviously too early to decide if drones is going to be the quintessential example of peace dividend technology to come out of the war on terror, but it's disingenuous to suggest there isn't going to be one (or several).
tinco 13y ago
I like to believe Americas misadventures with Drones give us lots of reason to be sceptical of these drones. If there was no threat from the east, these drones would still exist, but perhaps they would have no one to kill so would remain on the borders of obscurity like most of military technology. Who'd be opposed to them then?
- DanBC 13y ago
  I much prefer the murder of limited numbers innocent civilians with drones (which is usually a mistake) to the mass murder of innocent civilians by "Shock and Awe" tactics and cluster bombing. Making cluster-bomblets the same colour as air-dropped food-aid packs was a particularly cruel accident. With bombing someone is making the choice to kill civilians. At least with drones they're trying (perhaps not hard enough) to avoid killing civilians. The book "Bomber Command" (Max Hastings) talks a little bit about the changing policy in WWII from "Do not kill civilians" to "Let's carry out horrific firebombing of German cities". (Also the death rate of bomber crews was shockingly low.) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classics/dp/0330513613/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392981367&sr=8-1&keywords=bomber+command http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classics... (Wait what? Is that a referral link? I don't think I have any kind of referral stuff set up with amazon?)
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >I much prefer the murder of limited numbers innocent civilians with drones (which is usually a mistake) to the mass murder of innocent civilians by "Shock and Awe" tactics and cluster bombing. Sure, as long as it's your side/country/flag that's doing the killing. And it's not about preventing baddies, it's about the consequences of building a totalitarian superpower with access to that to fuck and exploit everybody else with.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      No. Even if my country was the target I would prefer inaccurate drone strikes than inaccurate mass bombing. Especially if that mass bombing includes cluster bombs which stay around continuing to kill civillians, sometimes long after war has ended in that region.
coldtea 13y ago
Yes, what a blessing that was, getting the most disgusting and fascist kind of war technology at the hands of an unstable superpower (and perhaps everybody else too).
- mseebach 13y ago
  I can't tell if you're being ironic and describing rockets that could reach London in the hands of Hitler, or just completely missing the point.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    The point for me is that whoever uses drones is not that better than Hitler. And the fact that "ok, at least they kill fewer people" is not that conforting either. At least a full blown war has casualties from both sides, and pilots are not a boundless resource.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      OK, so it's missing the point. Spectacularly. The peace dividend is about peaceful, civilian uses of technology developed in wartime: Rockets build to 'punish' random, civilian Londoners -> Civilian space program. Holocaust -> conclusive acceptance of the evils of racism. Drones built to track and kill baddies (and whoever happens to look like or stand near them from a few thousand feet) -> Amazon drone delivery, TacoCopter, Search & Rescue, ???.

DanBC 13y ago

We had drones before 911! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_veh... > The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred on August 22, 1849, when the Austrians attacked the Italian city of Venice with unmanned balloons loaded with explosives. > After World War I, three Standard E-1s were converted as drones.[6] The Larynx was an early cruise missile in the form of a small monoplane aircraft that could be launched from a warship and flown under autopilot; it was tested between 1927 and 1929 by the Royal Navy. The early successes of pilotless aircraft led to the development of radio controlled pilotless target aircraft in Britain and the US in the 1930s. In 1931, the British developed the Fairey "Queen" radio-controlled target from the Fairey IIIF floatplane, building a small batch of three, and in 1935 followed up this experiment by producing larger numbers of another RC target, the "DH.82B Queen Bee", derived from the De Havilland Tiger Moth biplane trainer. Through some convoluted path, the name of "Queen Bee" is said to have led to the use of the term "drone" for pilotless aircraft, particularly when they are radio-controlled.[7] However during this period the U.S. Navy, continuing work that reached back to 1917, was also experimenting with radio controlled aircraft. In 1936 the head of this research group used the term "drone" to describe radio controlled aerial targets.[8] etc. So current drones are just a refinement of earlier technology. If we hadn't gone to war in Afghanistan we had Iraq to use this new technology. If we hadn't gone to war in Iraq or Afghanistan we would have used drones over NK, perhaps to drop media players loaded with sitcoms and soap operas and music.

mseebach 13y ago
And we had rockets before WWII! (They were invented by the chinese around 1000 years ago) The big leap in technology still happened during, and mostly because of, the requirements of war. It's obviously too early to decide if drones is going to be the quintessential example of peace dividend technology to come out of the war on terror, but it's disingenuous to suggest there isn't going to be one (or several).

tinco 13y ago

I like to believe Americas misadventures with Drones give us lots of reason to be sceptical of these drones. If there was no threat from the east, these drones would still exist, but perhaps they would have no one to kill so would remain on the borders of obscurity like most of military technology. Who'd be opposed to them then?

DanBC 13y ago
I much prefer the murder of limited numbers innocent civilians with drones (which is usually a mistake) to the mass murder of innocent civilians by "Shock and Awe" tactics and cluster bombing. Making cluster-bomblets the same colour as air-dropped food-aid packs was a particularly cruel accident. With bombing someone is making the choice to kill civilians. At least with drones they're trying (perhaps not hard enough) to avoid killing civilians. The book "Bomber Command" (Max Hastings) talks a little bit about the changing policy in WWII from "Do not kill civilians" to "Let's carry out horrific firebombing of German cities". (Also the death rate of bomber crews was shockingly low.) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classics/dp/0330513613/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392981367&sr=8-1&keywords=bomber+command http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classics... (Wait what? Is that a referral link? I don't think I have any kind of referral stuff set up with amazon?)
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I much prefer the murder of limited numbers innocent civilians with drones (which is usually a mistake) to the mass murder of innocent civilians by "Shock and Awe" tactics and cluster bombing. Sure, as long as it's your side/country/flag that's doing the killing. And it's not about preventing baddies, it's about the consequences of building a totalitarian superpower with access to that to fuck and exploit everybody else with.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    No. Even if my country was the target I would prefer inaccurate drone strikes than inaccurate mass bombing. Especially if that mass bombing includes cluster bombs which stay around continuing to kill civillians, sometimes long after war has ended in that region.

coldtea 13y ago

Yes, what a blessing that was, getting the most disgusting and fascist kind of war technology at the hands of an unstable superpower (and perhaps everybody else too).

mseebach 13y ago
I can't tell if you're being ironic and describing rockets that could reach London in the hands of Hitler, or just completely missing the point.
- coldtea 13y ago
  The point for me is that whoever uses drones is not that better than Hitler. And the fact that "ok, at least they kill fewer people" is not that conforting either. At least a full blown war has casualties from both sides, and pilots are not a boundless resource.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    OK, so it's missing the point. Spectacularly. The peace dividend is about peaceful, civilian uses of technology developed in wartime: Rockets build to 'punish' random, civilian Londoners -> Civilian space program. Holocaust -> conclusive acceptance of the evils of racism. Drones built to track and kill baddies (and whoever happens to look like or stand near them from a few thousand feet) -> Amazon drone delivery, TacoCopter, Search & Rescue, ???.