OMFG!*!*! . . . . . DRONES . . . . . Call Congress Right Fucking Now
Okay, the thread title is hyperbolic and intentionally over the top.
Mostly.
For some.
Anyway. This thing about drones in our domestic skies. That train, it seems to me, left the station a long, long time ago.
Every big city police department, every state police force, even some private land owners, are flying helicopters pretty much everywhere. Between cop choppers and nooz choppers, no self respecting third rate criminal dares to leave home without stage makeup suitable for the eleven o'clock nooz.
I don't really like all these air forces. Until they do some good. And they do.
They also all have cameras. They record a lot of stuff. In most big cities, Cop One is airborne pretty much 24/7.
While a rarity, when these things crash, it has every potential to be a Very Big Deal. Burning jet fuel in a tight, densely populated urban environment is surely under the heading "Worst Case Scenario."
When the word "drone" is used, it conjures up images of Predators and Missile Strikes and the Middle East and lots of dead civilians.
But Predators are not the only drones out there. Any high school science fair winner can tell you how to build a drone. Add an iPhone to it and you can get telemetry. Film At Eleven. The drone can be as big as the ten cent balsa wood gliders we bought when we were kids.
Radio controlled aircraft is a hobby of very long standing. Probably millions of people fly them every weekend.
Those are drones. Really. No exaggeration. They are no shit, honest-to-gawd drones. Nowadays, many of them carry cameras. Some even carry some ersatz "fire power."
And they don't cost very much at all. Lots less than a helicopter. With a pilot and maybe a copilot. And a ground crew. And a place to send it for FAA-required maintenance.
Little drones can do every bit of the jobs of piloted helicopters except transport the injured.
Since drones are already here and already watching us, and since there is simply no way we will ever put that horse back in the barn, why not at least do it smarter and cheaper.
And don't tell me they can be armed. We all know they can. Just like the real, big helicopters they'll replace.
I oppose a whole lot of mission creep in government. I oppose TSA. I oppose escalating wars. I oppose Security Theater 2000 broadly.
But I also support the notion that we're a nation of laws and that police departments are necessary. We citizens need to stay involved in watching what they do, but not opposing anything just for the sake of opposition.
This "drone" thing doesn't bother me very much.
Tasers bother me more.
But that's for another thread.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I agree in itself its no big thing whether the pilot of the traffic copter is on the ground or in the craft. But there is real dynamic here, involving the replacement of skiled humans with machines in law enforcement that is dangerous. Tech brings benefits from small solutions to big problems, but small solutions are easily changed, the minds of a skilled police force are not. So youll never have a city lose its human police force for a week because some kid hacked their minds...
At least I hope.
Drones are remote piloted vehicles.
RPVs, if you will.
The Air Force is already replacing manned fighters with them.
And it makes sense.
You can replace a highly trained (mega bucks) Fighter Pilot with an 18 year old skilled at computer games.
In a trailer in the Nevada desert.
Or anywhere else you choose.
And they can control multiple RPVs anywhere in the world.
The 'job' of Fighter Pilot will soon go the way of Flight Navigators and Flight Engineers.
As crew members, they don't exist any more.
Not in the military and not in civilian aviation.
Well, why not Bomber Pilots too?
You can just as easily run a B-Whatever from the same RPV site.
The next step will be cargo.
No passengers, just 'stuff''.
Again, why not?
if a plane should go down, no life would be lost...on the plane.
Once these three scenarios come to pass (and they will), just the camel's nose isn't in the tent, the entire front-quarters up to the hump(s) are in.
And this is what I see...
"Hey dudes, this is Captain Jeremy speaking. I'll be piloting your plane today. I'm working from my family's basement in Green Bay Wisconsin. GO PACKERS! CHEESEHEADS RULE!
Heh, heh, heh.
I'll be playing Call of Duty: Black Ops and Gears of War 2 on my Xbox 360 while I guide your flight from...where?...um...just a sec here...oh yeah...Chicago to...uh...LA! Yeah, Los Angles. The City of Angles. 45 degrees? 90 degrees? I dunno, but we'll fer sure get there.
You can play the games right along too on the seatback screen.
Just sit back and relax, 'cause Captain Jeremy's ON THE JOB! Yeah!"
