Skynet: One in Three U.S. Warplanes Is a Robot;
7,494 Drones and Counting
by
Mac
Slavo
SHTF
Plan
Recently
by Mac Slavo: North
Korean Invasion – Red Dawn Release Date Confirmed for 2012
We may be pulling
people out of war zones, but our dependence on robotic weapons systems
is growing rapidly, with sales of drone related technology rising
significantly over the last decade, and especially in the last year.
According
to the CEO of AeroVironment, a government contracted drone manufacturer,
sales “actually increased as troops were drawn down from Iraq,
supporting our notion that a drawdown is not necessarily unfavorable
to our business.”
A Congressional
report
obtained by Wired Danger Room says that unmanned surveillance
and strike technology in use by the military has been growing exponentially
over just the last several years:
Remember
when the military actually put human beings in the cockpits of
its planes? They still do, but in far fewer numbers. According
to a new congressional report acquired by Danger Room, drones
now account for 31 percent of all military aircraft.
To be fair,
lots of those drones are tiny flying spies, like the Army’s
Raven, that could never accommodate even the most diminutive pilot.
(Specifically, the Army has 5,346 Ravens, making it the most numerous
military drone by far.) But in 2005, only five percent of military
aircraft were robots, a report by the Congressional Research Service
notes. Barely seven years later, the military has 7,494 drones.
Total number of old school, manned aircraft: 10,767 planes.
A small
sliver of those nearly 7,500 drones gets all of the attention.
The military owns 161 Predators – the iconic flying strike
drone used over Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere – and Reapers,
the Predator’s bigger, better-armed brother.
But even
as the military’s bought a ton of drones in the past few
years, the Pentagon spends much, much more money on planes with
people in them. Manned aircraft still get 92 percent of the Pentagon’s
aircraft procurement money. Still, since 2001, the military has
spent $26 billion on drones, the report – our Document of
the Day – finds.
When President
Obama announced that he was scaling down troop levels in the middle
east citing success, cost, and the need to focus more on protecting
the homeland, what much of the mainstream media failed to report
is that the new military planning strategy under Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta is the expansion of our capabilities and influence
in Asia. This particular deployment of military assets, however,
is unprecedented in its scope:
The U.S.
military has become so concerned at China’s rapidly growing
arsenal of anti-access and area-denial weapons that just over
two years ago it authorized the navy and air force to collaborate
on ways to off-set the Chinese challenge to America’s capacity
to project power and sustain its alliances and military partnerships
in Asia.
…
To move out
of harm’s way, the United States aims to deploy sea-based
drones on its aircraft carriers in the Pacific by 2018. “They
will play an integral part in our future operations in this region,”
according to Vice Admiral Scott Van Buskirk, commander of the
U.S. 7th Fleet in the Pacific and Indian oceans. “Carrier-based
unmanned aircraft systems have tremendous potential, especially
in increasing the range and persistence of our intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance operations, as well as our ability to strike
targets quickly.”
At present,
jet fighters and bombers on U.S. carriers must take off within
800 km of their target, leaving the carriers within range of land-based
missiles and combat aircraft. However, the new generation of sea-based
drones being developed by the U.S. could operate as far as 2,500
km from the carrier, putting the ships out of range.
Source:
Maritime
Security
The popularity
of a technology capable of seeing targets by their heat signature,
zooming in on situations-of-interest from thousands of feet in the
air, and the ability to kill or disable those targets when necessary
is no longer restricted to just the U.S. Department of Defense.
It has also
been tempting the domestic law enforcement sector, which by some
accounts is now considered by the Department of Homeland Security
and Congress as the
new battlefield against terrorism. The FAA recently granted
approval
for widespread use of drones over U.S. airspace, and local sheriff’s
offices and metropolitan areas are now regularly deploying
re-purposed drones from the Middle East theater of war to their
localities in the interest of maintaining safety, security and a
watchful eye over the American people. Since, according
to DHS chief Janet Napolitano, the terrorist threat has “shifted”
to lone wolf attackers living in the United States, domestic deployment
of military drone technology has and will continue to increase.
With the success
of robotic ‘soldiers’ on the battlefields of the middle
east and north Africa, and the passage of the National Defense Authorization
Act solidifying government’s seal of approval for domestic
war-time and surveillance operations, Americans can expect that
our own law enforcement fleets will soon see marked increases in
the use of these weapons and technologies.
The only question
now, it seems, is who is flying these unmanned vehicles over
America?
Any drone
flying over 400 feet needs a certification or authorization from
the Federal Aviation Administration, part of the DOT. But there
is currently no information available to the public about who
specifically has obtained these authorizations or for what purposes.
EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act request in April of 2011
for records of unmanned aircraft activities, but the DOT so far
has failed to provide the information.
“Drones
give the government and other unmanned aircraft operators a powerful
new surveillance tool to gather extensive and intrusive data on
Americans’ movements and activities,” said EFF Staff
Attorney Jennifer Lynch. “As the government begins to make
policy decisions about the use of these aircraft, the public needs
to know more about how and why these drones are being used to
surveil United States citizens.”
Source:
Blacklisted News,
The Daily Sheeple
Due to the
secret nature of these local law enforcement operations, for all
we know these vehicles are being operated by military personnel,
which would suggest that the US military has already been deployed
over the streets of America.
Reprinted
from SHTF Plan.
January
14, 2012
Mac
Slavo [send him mail] is a
small business owner and independent investor.
Copyright
© 2012 Mac Slavo
The
Best of Mac Slavo
|
