Tag Archives | Drones

Virginia City Is First To Pass Anti-Drone Legislation

By on February 17, 2013 in News 2

Three years from now, will we be trusting urban police forces to use drones equipped with “Tasers and tear gas”? The Los Angeles Times reports:

Charlottesville, Va., home to the University of Virginia, has taken action against the use of police spy drones, ordering a two-year moratorium on the citywide use of unmanned aircraft. It is the first city in the nation to do so, supporters say, and its move may prompt other municipalities to act. City officials said anti-drone measures are winning support in the Virginia state legislature.

Seeking tough regulation over the future use of civilian drones in U.S. airspace, the City Council passed a resolution that prohibits police agencies from utilizing drones outfitted with anti-personnel devices such as Tasers and tear gas. The measure comes in response to last year’s congressional mandate to integrate the nation’s airspace with robotic aircraft by September 2015.

 

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Pentagon Unveils New Honorary Medal For Heroic Drone Operators

By on February 15, 2013 in News 19

The previously discussed ‘Distinguished Warfare’ medal for the people pressing the kill button for unmanned drones is now a reality, CNET News reports:

This would be a first. The Distinguished Warfare Medal, a nearly two-inch-tall brass pendant below a ribbon with blue, red and white stripes, will be handed out to people judged to have racked up “extraordinary achievement” directly tied to a combat operation but at a far remove from the actual battlefield. This is said to be the first new combat-related award since the 1944 creation of the Bronze Star.

In taking this step, the Pentagon is explicitly recognizing the increasing importance of cyberwar and drone activities to the nation’s defense complex. Indeed, the U.S. Air Force is on record predicting that by 2023 one-third of its attack and fighter planes will be drones.

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More Than 80 Public Entities In U.S. Requested Drone Authorizations In 2012

By on February 14, 2013 in News 2

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

As White House officials spent the week defending targeted assassinations via drone strikes, the FAA released a new drone authorization list which highlights law enforcement agencies and other entities nationwide who have applied to use drones in domestic airspace for surveillance. Thanks to a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the release shows several sherrif’s departments, The State Department and several community colleges requested drone authorizations in 2012. Coupled with the FAA’s original list, 81 entities through October of 2012 have requested drone authorization.

Together with the website MuckRack, the EFF is building a database of drones authorized to fly in domestic airspace. So far, MuckRack has filed 275 public records requests to federal, state, and local agencies nationwide.

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The Next Job Boom: Drone Pilot

By on February 12, 2013 in News 8

Colleges across the country are starting to offer UAV piloting programs in anticipation of the coming drone boom. NBC News writes:

Randal Franzen was 53, unemployed and nearly broke when his brother, a tool mentioned that pilots for remotely piloted aircraft – more commonly known as drones – were in high demand. He landed at Kansas State, and graduated in 2011 with with an offer “well into the six figures” as a flight operator for a military contractor in Afghanistan.

While most jobs flying drones currently are military-related, the FAA predicts that 10,000 commercial drones will be operating in the U.S. within five years. At the moment, 358 public institutions – including 14 universities and colleges – have permits from the FAA to fly unmanned aircraft. Among the possible applications: Monitoring livestock and oil pipelines, spotting animal poachers, tracking down criminals fleeing crime scenes and delivering packages for UPS and FedEx.

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The CIA Has A Secret Drone Base In Saudi Arabia

By on February 11, 2013 in News 5

I wonder, what other news is hidden from the public under an “informal arrangement”? The BBC reports:

The CIA has been operating a secret airbase for unmanned drones in Saudi Arabia for the past two years. US media have known of its existence since then, but have not reported it. The New York Times published its report on Tuesday night, ending an “informal arrangement” among several news organizations not to disclose the location of the base.

The facility was established to hunt for members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen. A drone flown from there was used in September 2011 to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who was alleged to be AQAP’s external operations chief.

Construction was ordered after a December 2009 cruise missile strike in Yemen. It was the first strike ordered by the Obama administration, and ended in disaster, with dozens of civilians, including women and children, killed.

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The All-Seeing Eye Of DARPA’s Drones Revealed

By on February 5, 2013 in News 9

Surreal dystopian science fiction come to life: from the PBS Rise of the Drones series, the Pentagon’s ARGUS 1.8-billion-pixel surveillance sensor allows airborne drones to capture unending, minutely-detailed video streams of everything occurring far down below on Earth. The idea is to avoid “mistakes” like the killing of 23 Afghan civilians because a drone detected that one was holding an indeterminate object shaped somewhat like a rifle:

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Drones Soon To Be Used To Watch Over U.S. Highways

By on February 1, 2013 in News 8

Ah, the open road…no one around but you and the drone watching you. Via Yahoo! News:

Drones could help human workers safeguard the 4 million miles of U.S. highways crisscrossing the country. The flying robots could inspect bridges and roads, survey lands with laser mapping, and even alert officials to traffic jams or accidents.

One such project focused on studying the use of drones recently received $74,984 from the Federal Highway Administration and the Georgia Department of Transportation. Researchers plan to spend the next year figuring out how drones could help workers as they go about inspecting and maintaining the safety of public roads and highways.

Georgia represents one of several states considering how civilian drones could do some jobs for transportation departments, the police and firefighters. Drones of all sizes and shapes could help safeguard state roads and bridges, said Javier Irizarry, director of the CONECTech Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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U.S. War On Terror Shifts Towards Africa With Plans For Drone Base

By on February 1, 2013 in News 7

Uh oh. The New York Times reports:

The U.S. military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

The move is an indication of the priority Africa has become in American antiterrorism efforts. The United States military has a limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in the country of Djibouti. If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger.

A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. The plan could face resistance from some [officials] who are wary of committing any additional American forces to a fight against a poorly understood web of extremist groups in North Africa.

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Designing A City Impenetrable To Drones

By on January 31, 2013 in News 2

Chapati Mystery lays out plans for the hypothetical Shura City, a place of beauty and atmosphere and freedom of movement, but no fear of U.S. drone strikes:

Drones work by detecting patterns, identifying individuals, and extracting data. I dreamed up Shura City to fight against drones with humanity and community. The city is a “black box” impenetrable to data miners and military-trained individuals but it is not a prison.

It is at best expensive and at worst impossible to build armor that can deflect any American bomb. Shura City instead uses inscrutability as its armor. Its windows are protected by computerized mashrabiyas that blink and recombine into various QR codes to jam leering cameras. Its expansive courtyard is protected by latticework with backlit (by color-changing LED) windows that allow for sunshine for children and stars for young lovers, but also make face detection tricky with color blocks and changing shadows.

Badgirs and minarets do their part to provide wild fluctuations of temperature (so that individual bodies are difficult to identify with infrared) and to provide high-wattage radio towers to interfere with wireless communication.

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Navy Planning To Stash Drones On The Ocean Floor Around The World

By on January 19, 2013 in News 7

Via NBC News, the Navy is working on making the bottom of the sea less peaceful:

The U.S. Navy wants to pack aerial drones and other intelligence-gathering technology into special containers built to withstand deep ocean pressures and distribute them around the world’s seas. The containers will rise to the surface when called into service from a remote location.

These “upward falling payloads” are seen as readying the Navy to address conflicts in corners of the world where it is too expensive or complex to establish a forward operating area, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) explained in a call for proposals.

The containers would be stealthily deployed well ahead of time and designed to stay put on the seafloor for years.

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