Unmanned Aerial Drones Coming Soon Above U.S. 841
cnet-declan writes "Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, but now the Bush administration wants to use them for domestic surveillance. A top Homeland Security official told Congress today, according to this CNET News.com article, that: "We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory." One county in North Carolina is already using UAVs to monitor public gatherings. But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers? A pilot's association is worried."
Wryness (Score:3, Interesting)
UAVs vastly superior to blimps (Score:5, Interesting)
Unmaned blimps are far more fuel efficient than unmaned planes. Plus they can stay airborne for more time. Why don't they use blimps all along ?
Because you can't reroute blimps to get a closer look at something very easily.
Funny this article gets posted while I'm in the middle of writing a proposal for follow-on funding on my research into UAV control algorithms...
Endurance is a concern. Collision avoidance is a concern. But UAVs offer incredible surveillance opportunities that stationary sensors just can't match.
I could go on and on but I need to get back to writing my UAV proposal. UAVs are one of the hottest military technologies these days. It's not surprising that the commercial and civilian sector is starting to take a look at how these maturing drones can be used to solve their problems.
GMD
You must. (Score:5, Interesting)
Closing down of airspace (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like this class might be eliminated completely to allow drones to fly around anywhere. Which means a general aviation airplane will have to always file a flightplan and possibly remain on IFR, except on airport approaches, where they can request a VFR type approach. Flying will never be the same.
Its easy to sell this to the general public. "We dont want to let anyone fly just anywhere" and "we could use the extra security" and "War against terrorism" whatever that means. But somewhere in the future Americans will realize what they lost.
Licensed Pilot and am concerned (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Israel does this already... (Score:5, Interesting)
...and NASA plans to do it too for terrain mapping purposes (presumably within US borders):
http://esto.nasa.gov/obs_technologies_uavsar.html [nasa.gov]
UAVs are something we're going to have to get used to. Up next: pilotless passenger planes. Most modern aircraft are already equipped with auto-takeoff, auto-pilot (cruise), and auto-land. What more do you need? The ability to control them from the ground? That's being worked on for security reasons.
-Oliver / TreasureTunes.com [treasuretunes.com]
Re:BY and FOR the people? (Score:4, Interesting)
No steel framed buildings have EVER collapsed due to fire before 9/11 even though much fiercer and hotter fires have occurred within them.
Here's a link to respected scientist Dr Steven Jones paper on his doubts. http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.ht ml [byu.edu]
Simple physics tells us the melting point of steel is 1100-1600C and a kerosene fire can go up to 600C with good oxygen flow. Why did the ( heat shielded) steel buckle? No warping of the buildings structure was observable before collapse.
Re:Time to move... (Score:2, Interesting)
But where to go?
If you pick another Western democracy (Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, even Canada) they all seem willing to follow the US's lead on removing civil liberties and spy on their citizens. See the recent National ID card for the UK.
Plus Canada's too close for comfort if things start flaring up in the US.
If you pick a country most like to be able to stand up to the US (China) -- well, the human rights in China are already not so great.
If you pick a small, third world nation, either they will not be able to protect you, or they have high levels of corruption, etc. Even at best, you are most likely simply delaying the problem until survalance and tracking technology reachs there in another 30-40 years, when your children and grandchildren will have to deal with it.
India has potential, but then again, they also have a semi-hostile nuke-packing neighbor in Pakistan.
So here is the question I ask the great slashdot masses: if an average income citizen wanted to leave the US, to what country should they be applying for immigration?
You're right, and that's the reason you're wrong. (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, he wasn't giving those as examples of why UAV surveillance is evil. He was giving them as examples as to why nobody will stand up to the government if they believe that UAV domestic serveillance is evil. One of the reasons peaceful protests are a thing of the past are because people are quite ignorant. You just helped that point along. Read his statement carefully. Heh, and I'm not even for OR against this as I haven't looked it up. This pertains more to your response to his response.
Re:Israel does this already... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I am mixed on this program, I believe that border security needs to be strengthened but at a pilot I am kind of scared of being forced to share airspace with UAVs, and the pop-up TFRs that go with them.
TFRs are the bane of private pilots because they are often short notice, large enough to be an inconvenience, but small enough that you can transit most of the center of what they are trying to protect in under a minute, and Part 121 and often part 135 traffic is most often exempted (the aircraft that can do the most damage). Here in Florida for the shuttle launches we have 24 hour TFRs (the TFR is post 9/11 NASA had used a set of restricted airspace that was much smaller or oriented downrange), that are so large that it cuts off East coast VFR corridor between Orlando's Class B airspace and the ADIZ. Forcing pilots to fly an obstacle course of TFR, restricted, and controlled airspace to get to their destination.
I've done it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You must. (Score:3, Interesting)
By locking yourself in a room you have not relinquished any essential liberties (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) since, one, you're not dead, two, you are still able to say what you want, practice whatever religion you want, walk back out through the locked door (available option, however ill-decided), and three, you still have the ability to pursue happiness, even if it includes using the firearm you keep in the room (thanks to the liberty to bear arms) as the other replier to this parent suggests doing. No loss of freedom.
The quote, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," is not sickeningly overused, but rather unobserved too many times. By that I mean the message is not considered, only the imediate implication. It does not stand for "no police! no guns! no survelance," but something closer to "the government is for the people, not the other way around."
But, since you've decided neither Lost Penguin or I know what Benjamin Franklin intended his audience to understand, please, enlighten us. Also, how is it (the quote) totally incorrect? I'm curious.
Re:what happens? (Score:2, Interesting)
I was waiting for someone more informed to post. I'm one of those people who know little more about the subject than I learned in TFA, but in my defense this is my first post to this topic and I am neither spreading erroneous information nor claiming superior knowledge of the subject. Most of the posts so far have been knee-jerk Orwellian nightmares - I know I'll get grief for that sentence, but to be perfectly honest I am less concerned about the government watching me do things and more concerned about keeping them from limiting the things I can do. My votes and donations can only go so far.
However, I was disappointed by your post. You say that posters have it all wrong, but you don't supply a single detail about what they are getting wrong or what the truth of the matter is. Would you care to back up your claims and do so?
That is, of course, unless they are government secrets and if you told me you would have to kill me :-(
Re:BY and FOR the people? (Score:3, Interesting)
All I saw you responding with was an almost verbatim repitition of a NOVA story on the subject of the rafters being the cause of the building failure. A theory that has since been realized to be faulty in many ways, by such 'radical crazies' as, FEMA, and the NIST. For instance, the NOVA video shows nothing of the 47 steel pillars in the center of the building. The pillars are completly left out of the video(actually its a computer animation, you shouldnt be using that as 'evidence' to begin with).
Also, as a result of simply repeating what you have been told(thats science to you?), you seem to be missing the obvious point you are making about the buildings collapse. In one statement, you claim that the exoskeleton of the WTC towers is what supported all the weight(false, 47 center pier pillars did), and when the trusses on those failed, the whole building collapsed. And not a few sentences later, you use fire damage to explain the collapse of WT7. Yet that building was not what you claim to be an 'exoskeleton' framed building.
There are enough questions, and enough contradictory explanations in my mind to warrant further inspection of the conjecture that the US government actually was involved in this, or is at the very least involved in not telling the whole truth. And when you come to argue the point of such questions by demanding science, and then simply repeating a story you heard someone else tell you upon which you did no further investigation on, hardly gives me the impression that you are aware of what science actually is.
Perhaps before you approach different ideas with a condescending attitude of 'lets try science' you should be aware exactly what science is. Dont believe me? Tell you what, you research what I said, and I will research what you said. Although, it may be hard doing research on some of your facts presented, as one of the sources is said to have been 'if I remember correctly'.
Who is flying them? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a clear violation of airspace safety in which the pilot is ALWAYS reponsible for avoiding other aircraft. It's the most basic rule you learn when you become a pilot, and it's what every examiner checks for before each maneuver during the practical exam. Unfortunately, the engineers designing these things aren't pilots or air traffic controllers and have no idea how our airspace works. (They work fine in Iraq, but that's a war zone with no civilian aviation.) Apparently engineers do know how to weasel our tax dollars to fund their overpriced remote control toys.
If AI was smart enough to fly an airplane, why aren't they flying airliners? They'd be way cheaper than pilots. If there's no pilot, there's no see-and-avoid. When a camera can see and process as quickly as a human, then it might work, but before then, the only way to do this is to not allow them to fly anywhere near humans fly.
There's currently no FAA-approved technology to relieve a pilot of her duty to see and avoid other aircraft whether or not the AC is on an IFR flight plan. Next time you're on an airliner, listen to the channel with the pilots talking to TRACON or CENTER. There's a lot of human interaction.
In the late seventies, CIA funding changed from human intelligence gathering to satellite intelligence gathering. We can see every place in the world and pick up all their signals, but we still couldn't tell India was testing an Atomic bomb. With all the billions of dollars spent on overhead technology, we still haven't found Osama. Now the people selling the things tell us how similar technology will solve our crime problem...
problem is not 'accidental' (Score:5, Interesting)
The way I see it, the problem is by design. It's well known that there's been a lot of "media consolidation" over the past few decades, so that the major outlets are controlled in the hands of a few corporations (e.g. Clearchannel).
John Taylor Gatto [johntaylorgatto.com] tells us in his books & presentations that the government's schools were set up to provide workers for industry. Before government schools, the American dream was an independant livelihood. After government schools, the expectation shifted to finding employment with a good company with good benefits.
The problem is that the same group of people are behind both efforts. Is it really so odd to propose that a small, dedicated group of families has been steadily concentrating wealth in their own pockets for centuries?
Furthermore, why is it that the same group of rotten scoundrels install themselves in government? George H. W. Bush was in the CIA at least as far back as the 60's. Head of the CIA, Vice President for 8 years, president for another 4.
Donald Rumsfeld [wikipedia.org] was in the Nixon, Ford & Reagan administrations, according to Wikipedia. He even got his picture taken [gwu.edu] with Saddam Hussein back in 1983. Now he's secretary of defense. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense under Papa Bush, and before that he got himself elected as representative from Wyoming.
I'm sure there are more examples. The problem, as I see it, is that the same rotten bastards keep getting recycled through the political system. Watch for the keywords: Project for the New American Century, Bilderburg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, etc... And that's not even mentioning the more secretive enclaves. See The Controllers: Secret Rulers of the World [amazon.com] for a timeline of the consolidation of power over the last 100+ years.
What's more, anytime this sort of observation comes up, the masses have been conditioned to just snicker and dismiss the messenger as a "conspiracy theorist". But how do said masses know that there is no conspiracy? They don't "know", but social conditioning has implanted a nearly impervious belief.
Expose the so-called "illuminati" and their plots, and the problem will begin to go away.
"illegal invasions" clarified (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm less clear on the Afghanistan front, but the gov't there was officially harboring the group which killed ~3,000 civilians on our soil, etc.
As for Iraq, that is easy. The USA has been in the region since '91-ish, which if you recall, was when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was making eyes at Saudi Arabia next. Iraq was the military powerhouse in that section of the world, and no one there had the military might to stop Iraq. That's where the USA came in. Saddam surrendered and signed a peace treaty, the violation of which legally allows the USA to continue the previous war as though it had never ended. If you watched the news during the early '90s, you most assuredly saw near-constant reports of missiles fired at our patrolling planes, etc., in violation of said treaty.
Sure, maybe the given reasons for the Iraq invasion were a mistake, intelligence failure, lie, whatever... but whatever else the Iraq invasion is, it is most certainly not illegal.
Re:"Security" makes it all OK? (Score:4, Interesting)
1.) Not every American has a gun. In fact, there are many who think that noone should even have so much as a pointy stick. We also have to go through an extensive (by some measures too extensive, by others not extensive enough) system of registration and permit application, depending on the class of weapon. We ban the mentally ill, criminals, and many other people from owning firearms.
2.) Depending on the numbers you use, the United States has fewer violent crimes than many other nations (I don't remember the exact details, however. I am sorry), and that crimes such as muggings and home invasions are down due to the fact that many criminals are afraid of being shot. Of course, like many numbers, these are subject to debate, so we can practically ignore them. But still, it is a compelling possibility. However, it is a documented fact that in many countries where gun possession is illegal, knife and other weapon crimes increase substantially.
3.) So most of the rest of the civilized world thinks our gun policies are "ludicrous"? Switzerland [wikipedia.org] actually has a required period of military service for all able males, and many afterwards serve in a militia capacity, and are therefore ISSUED an assault rifle by the government. Also, it is the "only country in which it is lawful to make your own black powder". From what I gather they have quite a low crime rate. Australia [wikipedia.org] also has historically lax laws on guns due to high need for guns as pest control and a low crime rate, which is kinda funny for a nation decended from a penal colony. That is changing due to increased crime rates in some areas, but still, they're relatively hands-off on guns. Finland [wikipedia.org] also has similar gun laws, as they have alot of huntil in their nation. They are also one of the few countries where silencers are completely unregulated (here in the US I believe you can apply for a permit, but not always, and it's very difficult to get). Many of these countries also have a high emphasis on gun safety, which many of the true hardcore gun people in the US would also say is very important.
In conclusion, our gun laws may be among the more "loose" or "unrestrictive", and there are many unfortunate things that happen due to this. Personally, I think we could due to have slightly better control of the situation and tighten certain parts of our gun laws up. But we're not the only ones who like our guns. There are a number of other, well respected nations, that have fairly loose gun laws, much like our own. We're only a target on this matter because we're the biggest nation of the bunch, and we have a large imprint on the world scene in other matter.
drugs (the war on drugs can be won, all pot smokers are criminals, drug abuse is a disease (for crying out loud))
It could be won, but even if it can't we should still fight it to at least reduce the damage done. Drug abuse is a disease, much like manic depression and other mental disorders are diseases (for example, cocaine abuse renders the brain incapable of gaining any joy from anything but cocaine. That's why it's called abuse, boys and girls. As for the pot-heads, perhaps our laws are a bit too heavy on them, and that maybe it should be legalized along the same lines as alcohol and tobacco, but frankly I don't know enough about the situation to make a judgement.
You don't care about corruption at home (e.g. Florida vote rigging), you don't care about inaction at home (e.g. New Orleans)
O RLY? I was pretty sure I heard much angry debate about both issues over here!
and you actually voted in George W. Bush. Is that guy really the v
Re:BY and FOR the people? (Score:3, Interesting)
Since this is something that you claim to "know", perhaps you could point to one other example of a fire causing a building to collapse in such a fashion.
And if this never happened anywhere else ever, you might want to ask why it happened three times on 9/11.
Re:"Security" makes it all OK? - Talk about Guns (Score:1, Interesting)
low-quality history lessons (Score:1, Interesting)
The key feature was that a law was passed exempting it from judicial oversight. All the famous horrors seem to be able to be traced back to that law, and to have been committed by an extremely small percentage of the staff, most of whom were law-abiding, patriotic desk-workers.
It sounded strangely familiar. But I'm pretty sure I never learned that in school.