US Air Force terminates Predator drones. Now you will fear the Reaper After more than 20 years of service, the US Air Force fly boys have today announced that the MQ-1 Predator drone is going to be phased out within a year. Since its first operational deployment in the Balkan wars in the mid-1990s, the Predator has evolved from a pure surveillance drone to an armed flying weapon that has become …
Things will get easier, once we have self-navigating killer drones. How do they not have this now? Plug in GPS coordinates, fire, go to Chipotle's!
"the UK air force has renamed its Reaper squadron as the Protector, to make it sound friendlier."
HA! How cute. Let's just name all offensive weapons after happy things? Grenades will now be called Bumpy Metal Sweet-potatoes. Bullets can be Friendly Hole Makers. Guns we can call Automatic Uncoordinated Juice Machine. And bombs we can rename Happy Cake Full of Surprises! And everyone wins!
AFAIK the V1 & V2 were drones with some sort of analogue computer inertial guidance and the original US Cruise missile is operating as a drone plane after the launch phase, with both GPS and image recognition for map reading.
It's just incremental developments.
Now there is live encrypted video and ability to remote control rather than be autonomous, so it begs the question, why so many civilian casualties? These things have had remote control and GPS for years.
I think the statement that it is "all just ragheads" simplifies it to much. all combat/drone pilots are trained to minimalize collateral damage. however sometimes a targets value out weighs the civilian casualties. everyone always puts the blame on the pilot. pilots don't get to choose their own targets. they have to follow their orders. basically fly here, bomb that or them.
An ethical man knows that it is wrong that he is cheating on his wife, but a moral man does cheat on his wife in the first place. the pilot does not get to choose his orders. the pilot knows it is morally wrong to bomb a wedding with targets mixed with civilians, but must follow the orders of those above him. Ethically you have to look at amount of civilian casualties. Killing 50 civilians to get 1 guy with an AK-47 is wrong. killing 5 civilians to get 1 guy like Osama Bin Laden who is known to be plotting further attacks would be regrettable but could be justified, depending on the circumstances. The bombing of a wedding for a Taliban commander is also a grey area, in one case 90 people were killed. 32 of them civilians. basic math is 90 dead - 32 civilians = 58 terrorists killed. 2:1 collateral damage is not justifiable in my book. However we don't have all the classified data on the target and what he was planning. maybe it was justifiable, unfortunately we will never know as we don't have that data. Unfortunately, you will always have civilian casualties when fighting this kind of a war so long as the enemy continues to mix with the civilian population. this has been going on for as long as there has been war. the Taliban/AQ/ISIS know that the US will be more reluctant bomb them if they are mixed with civilians, and so they use them a human shields. That is the true moral outrage, and shows AQ/ISIS/Terrorists disregard for human life by putting them in danger. You will never see an American or British soldiers using civilians as human shields. AQ/ISIS/Taliban don't care about civilians getting killed, and regrettably sometimes the only way to eliminate their top commanders is sometimes with risk heavy collateral damage, and while regrettable may be justifiable in bigger picture. another good example is WW2 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is regrettable that the US dropped nukes on them, but in the big picture, it ended the war faster and reduced the amount of casualties that would have occurred had the allies tried to attack the mainland. it was morally wrong, and the suffering of the people unimaginable but it ethically it was justifiable.
"Now there is live encrypted video and ability to remote control rather than be autonomous, so it begs the question, why so many civilian casualties?"
If you seriously want to know, a good start is Andrew Cockburn's book "Kill Chain".
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kill-Chain-Drones-High-Tech-Assassins/dp/1784782696/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488287487&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+chain
Off the top of my head, I think Madeleine Albright's question may be relevant. "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" And what's the point in flying around with Hellfire missiles loaded and ready to fire, if you never get to fire them?
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054293,00.html
Turns out the public information slogan "Don't Fear The Reaper" was already in wide use by domestic undesirables.
There was no other recourse if unacceptable levels of association with longhairs and other pinkoes was to be avoided.
Also, Air Force brass were tired of shakedown trial assessment summaries reading "needs more cowbell".
When are they appearing in the International Criminal Court for Extra-Judicial Executions?
Never.
Deployment of drones in countries they are not at war with and also against non-military targets?
The simple answer is Humans.
As long as there's humans and warfare, there will be mistakes. Hopefully, those incidents of non-military targets getting hit are on the decline as the pilots, etc. get some experience. The same goes for having troops in combat and aircraft over the battlefield. War is hell and very confusing as well as stressful. Been there, seen these things go to hell in a handbasket.
Compared to the average GA light aicraft most of these engines have MASSIVE hours on them. Probably more than enough to make the entirely uninteresting for re-use. There WILL probably be some low hour ones remaining that might turn up in surplus at some point, but I doubt it'll be large amounts. And they'll probably get snatched up by some surplus dealer for a bargain and a greased palm only to be sold on for a massive markup. That's my experience from what I've seen happening in surplus sales anyway.
"Right now the plan is to stop flying the MQ-1 in 2018...As part of that, we are going to stop flying the MQ-1 completely by July 1, 2017."
I'm not sure how pedantic to be here... On the one hand, if they stop flying the Predators by July, then they will have stopped by 2018, but he does say that they'll stop flying them "IN" 2018, so if they stop this year, then they won't be able to stop flying them next year...
I should probably just chalk it up to a nervous guy that doesn't have to talk to the press much.
*Apologies to the woodchucks.
> I should probably just chalk it up to a nervous guy that doesn't have to talk to the press much.
Given current incumbent's view of the press the nervous guys will probably just be allowed to turn up to these conferences in his Reaper soon.
The Predator is a bit heavier and has a similar speed to a WW1 Sopwith Camel that carried 4 small bombs for ground attack. Subsequent aircraft were heavier, and faster, and more expensive, and had a greater weapons payload, and now we have the F35. The Reaper is heavier, and faster, and more expensive, and has a greater weapons payload than the Predator...
Unfortunately it's far easier to add stuff and increase weight (and cost) than to follow William Bushnell Stout's maxim.
You must have missed this article about the California Highway Patrol's drone squad. Ok, it was a guerrilla art project that caused a wee bit of news coverage when it appeared along the highway.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
