Party Vibe

@Pat McDonald 502374 wrote:

BBC News – Drones set to share sky with domestic air traffic

I can think of no other reason why an armed drone would patrol the skies over the USA. Can you?

Given recent history I would say to intercept hijacked passenger planes, more general border patrol would seem a natural extension.

Bombing US citizens seems a bit of a stretch, my concern would be hacking, you tell a pilot to bomb civilians he/she can disobey if the order is immoral, you tell a Drone to do it, the Drone obeys without question.

@Pat McDonald 502526 wrote:

Drones don’t fly fast enough to intercept even a single engine civilian monoplane. Plus, their munitions are strictly air-to-ground, not air-to-air. They could not fulfill such a mission.

Hacking concerns are real, but I understand that the control net is via geo-synchronous commsats, sat about 25,000 miles above the earth. Not exactly easy to hitch hike to. Point taken about autonomous option, but there was an article in defence weekly a few years back about drone pilot combat fatigue – article has since been withdrawn as it represents an unpleasant military truth.

Quite frankly, so does having planes orbiting with Hellfires “For your Own Protection”. Next I’ll have a gun pointed at my head (again) “For your Own Protection”.

The speed thing surprises me, not a subject Im knowledgeable about but I always assumed a drone which without the need for a onboard pilot and that pilots support systems with all the space/weight they use would be faster a plane, or at least faster than commercial planes which could potentially be hijacked.

Also on the weapons, I see no reason why a drone couldnt carry air to air missiles, a drone is just another airboard platform

@Mezz 502417 wrote:

Given recent history I would say to intercept hijacked passenger planes,

Don’t you mean kill innocent people? The american government have a slightly checkered history when it comes to genocide…..Vietnam, Hiroshima, gulf war 1&2, Afghanistan……But that’s not to say they don’t get there ‘man’.

@cheeseweasel 502804 wrote:

Seems pretty far-fetched to me. Why would the US government want to bomb its own people?

Because there moral compass is so fucked up, it couldn’t find its own arse…..maybe

@cheeseweasel 502811 wrote:

Nah still all sounds a bit tinfoil hat to me.

My tinfoil hat is very daper I’ll have you know :laugh_at:

Everyone makes a big deal about the A-bombs but those didn’t kill nearly as many people as Dresden or Tokyo or the Rape of Nanking.

In reality there’s no such thing as “rules” in foreign policy, just what’s expedient to your own nation’s interests. Killing one’s own people does not factor in there.