The Drone News and Discussion Thread

Can't say I'll be shedding many tears for FARC. They've been very far removed from anything approaching a socialist program for years, and even during the years of the junta were a pretty typical pro-Soviet organization. I'm sure Karl Marx would be just thrilled by the prospect of illegal gold-mining, cocaine-production, and kidnapping as a path to worker's revolution. Not.

Taira: Same shit different aircraft. Better results though. Bet you money their collateral is lower because the FARC guys they are likely to target operate out of military camps or shelters rather then deeply embedded into the civilian populace.

Also their strikes are a lot more thorough. First the smart bombs, then a pattern of dumb gravity bombs, then a gunship attack, and finally an infantry assault.

edited 30th Jan '14 8:28:06 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The state of California is on the verge of enacting some of the strictest standards in the nation concerning the use of drones.

Beer drone grounded by FAA.

I found this to be amusing. Mr Jesse Ventura has "Gone off the Grid" to hide from drones. Never mind that is the sort of searching drones specialize in. Also when you go off the grid that includes ceasing to make painfully obvious and trackable transmissions for your tv show. Oh and your general location is known.

edited 5th Feb '14 4:46:33 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Oh Jessie, you so crazy. It's like the paranoia over the "metal" strips in US currency. Or how some people would peel the label off their cans because The government vans would shine lazers into their houses and count the cans in the cupboard!!111eleventy!!

edited 5th Feb '14 5:15:03 PM by TairaMai

I really shouldn't be surprised this is the same nut job who pushes the FEMA death camp conspiracy despite a thorough debunking.

You can hide from drones but it takes lot more effort then Mr Ventura is putting into it. Never mind he is putting out regular transmissions, hauling around the gear to do so, and utilizing solar panels you know highly reflective and obvious man made structures that can be visible for many many many miles to observers in the air.

Someone should now get a private drone and buzz his house, for lols

Better yet, use him to train new military drone operators. "Now, cadets, the final lesson: your mission, should choose to accept it, is to locate Jesse Ventura and annoy him by any means necessary."

Jesse would love it if a bunch of drones started flying around his house. More publicity for him, and opportunities to criticise The Man or demonstrate how he's gonna shake 'em off.

As Jesse says, he's a job creator for local Mexicans. And for that to continue, his company needs publicity and attention.

Well be careful - he's probably still a really big guy :p

edited 6th Feb '14 2:53:42 PM by betaalpha

I just want to smack him and say "Stop flattering yourself!"

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/

Faulty intelligence is behind most of our drone strikes.

We've known that for years. Rogue Warrior author Richard Marcinko pointed out the CIA's love for technology at the expense of good human intel. Robert Baer wrote about how out of touch the CIA is with regards to the non-west.

And thus, I am now fully swayed.

We are awful in operating drone strikes. Either a huge change or total abolishment of the military capabilities is in order.

Ban all drones? Target Drones? Civilian Drones you can buy for less than $500? That cat's out the bag, and it has been for years — early recon drones were used in The Vietnam War.

edited 11th Feb '14 12:25:57 AM by Greenmantle

The British launched Queen Bee target drones off HMS Argus way back in the 1930s. "Abolishment of military capabilities" is silly. We don't take the US Army's guns because they sometimes shoot the wrong people.

I agree with Achaemenid and Greenmantle, it's too late. The US could ban all military applications for drones tomorrow, but that won't stop other countries from developing them. Investing a larger percentage of the money into human espionage is more of a goer, but then those various militant / terrorist cells are remote, insular, deeply paranoid and distrustful of strangers, and all-in-all extremely hard to infiltrate.

edited 11th Feb '14 2:43:28 AM by betaalpha

For example, see The Other Wiki's List of unmanned aerial vehicles of China — a few are even of the Predator and RQ-170 sort.

Or ban 4x4s or cars because the military uses them...

edited 11th Feb '14 3:31:23 AM by Greenmantle

The problem is twofold:

• Terrorists and other baddies love to hide among civilians, dress as them then whine when we hit them.

• Even the best SIGINT can't take into account that the situation on the ground changes. As much as they love stats and drones, the delay in signals causes them to hit the wrong people or make the wrong decisions.

What's the numbers difference between CIA strikes and USAF strikes in civilian casualties and other collateral damage? If I remember right someone in this thread (probably Barkey) said that the system for authorising a strike is pretty different between the two.

Silas: It was. We covered it a while back. The CIA authorized drone strikes have a much higher instance of collateral damage and injuring or killing by standers. The military Drone Strikes though had very low incidents of collateral and civilian casualties. In fact the military using drones more then traditional strike craft lowered the number of civilian casualties from air strikes quite a bit.

Other then not getting the best intel possible other problems with many of the drone strikes is they are using sledge hammers to kill a fly. I have been over this in this thread a few times now.

They like to use 500lb guided bombs and Hellfire missiles. Both which have fairly large foot prints. We developed a series of precision weapons which have much smaller foot prints that would work just as well but wouldn't knock down two or three houses and splatter people standing across the street.

So to summarise, the problem isn't drones, it's the CIA inability to not use the biggest missile it can gets its hands on, even when a smaller one is more appropriate.

And to use sketchy intel even as the situation on the ground changes. The All-Solving Hammer indeed.

edited 11th Feb '14 7:07:10 PM by TairaMai

Ninjad.

It really isn't the existence or use of drones. Even if they used manned aircraft using the same weapons and sloppy intel the problem would be the same.

As Taira noted the CIA has gotten very sloppy with their gathering and use of intel. Compounding the problem is the larger weapon foot print from the big weapons being used to carry out the strikes when smaller precisions munitions are available that would get the job done just as well.

Not only are the FARC Guerillas not embedded in the civilian population they operate out of military camps. The Strikes used start off with smart strikes to kill the key target leaders, followed up by a wide area series of strikes from dumb munitions, a gun ship strike to kill anyone hanging around, and then finally finished off with an airborne infantry assault.

Part of what made it possible is that unlike the Drone Strikes in Pakistan they are gathering good intel to find their targets. Especially notable for targets that are hard to pin down and are very mobile in a jungle environment.

Strikes used in Afghanistan were also done similarly and proved very effective at killing of insurgent leadership and key specialists.

With Pakistan the CIA is just being sloppy and lazy.

Now I can understand targeting people who work for the insurgents but they are embedded in built up areas and amongst the population. They don't stand out as much or as clearly. If they want to use the drones with minimal impact they need to use smaller precision weapons and do a lot more intel work to develop better strike plans.

The military has been working quite intensively on designing munitions to be used inside of built up areas that are lethal and accurate but won't take out the block when they hit. The military needs this tech and needs to embrace it to a high degree. Many future conflicts regardless of context are likely going to involve fighting amongst civilian populations in urban or other built up settings.

edited 11th Feb '14 7:30:21 PM by TuefelHundenIV

For a bit of history, here's an article on the DH-82B Queen Bee◊, one of the first "Drones". From The Other Wiki:

Neat.

There is an article floating around from a fairly old late 19th century magazine, where it describes someone piloting a zeppelin drone demonstrator. The idea would be a smaller bomb laden Zepp with a command cable would launch from the mother ship and drop the bombs. It was a sacrificial carrier/remotely operated parasite craft.

Found my info. It comes in two bits.

Ernest Wilson, an Englishman, was granted a British patent on a system for the wireless control of dirigible in 1897.

More developed idea using the above mentioned parent/drone concept

An older blog post that has pictures from an old news article

Before that in 1849 Austrian unmanned airships carried bombs over Venice. This article is rather good and has a list of good source material and some good pictures

Military Drones have been around for a very long time.

edited 19th Feb '14 3:54:56 PM by TuefelHundenIV