Drones Increasingly Used in U.S. for Law Enforcement

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902347.html

Drones Raise Safety Issues as Service Roles Multiply

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 20, 2007; Page A03

From the comfort of a control center at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California, pilot Mark Pestana will gun the throttle of his unmanned aircraft, pull back on the stick and gently guide his plane into the sky next month.

But he will not be using the high-tech modified Predator B drone to seek out and kill insurgents in Iraq or Taliban in Afghanistan.

Instead, his mission will be to comb the western United States for forest fires and to relay infrared images and photographs of the blazes to firefighters on the ground.

Routinely seen and heard in the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan, drones are being flown in growing numbers in the United States on a variety of missions, including probing hurricanes and spotting illegal immigrants crossing the border.

The increasing use of unmanned vehicles, which range in size from those that can fit in your hand to twin-engine jets, has met resistance from federal regulators struggling to safely incorporate the devices into the nation's airspace. The drones have also raised fundamental questions about the nature of flight and what it means to be a pilot.

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[C_U_L8R]

1. That would explain Chertoff