[Update: Thanks to Tom Avril who, in the comments, pointed me to a valuable defense of drones in Slate; I've worked a mention of it into the post.]
A law signed by President Obama in February, 2012 "directs the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to throw American airspace wide open to drones by September 30, 2015," writes John Horgan in the March National Geographic. It's now only a matter of time, Horgan writes, until many police departments are flying drones–also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs–along with farms, weather forecasters, traffic control officials. And, yes, journalists.
The headquarters of what's becoming a boom in drone design and manufacture is not in Silicon Valley or Southern California or any other hub of military research, division, and manufacture. It's in Dayton, Ohio, "cradle of American aviation, home of the Wright brothers and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base," Horgan tells us.
Horgan is able to watch a few test flights. He talks to officials about the value of drones, and thinks about the security, safety, and privacy issues that will arise from the expanded use of drones.
This vision of a drone-filled world is both intriguing and chilling. One of the most disturbing aspects of the research is the development of hand-held drones–Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs, as seen in the picture above–that can invade cities, fly into buildings, absorb power from the sun or power lines, and remain dormant for months, if necessary, until they are called on. The Air Force would not let Horgan into the "micro-aviary" at Wright-Patterson where is tests small drones. But they did show him an animated video of MAVs on a mission. That video is now available on Mashable.
It might be worth a year's subscription to the Geographic to see Horgan's story in the magazine to see it with Joe McNally's photos, some of which are reproduced online.
For an interesting take on drones, see also the post by William Saletan in Slate pointing out that concerns about civilian casualties are not a reason to be suspicious of drones. Drones, he writes, "are the worst form of warfare in the history of the world, except for all the others." They produce far fewer civilian casualties than any other form of warfare, he writes. Saletan links to previous pieces he's written raising worries about the use of drones (which are worth checking out), but their ability to zero in on their targets and mostly avoid civilian casualties, he says, "is the best thing about them."
Horgan tells his tale without the angst and drama that I'm trying to whip up here, leaving the reader (me, in this case) to generate his or her own angst and drama.
Despite his neutral voice, the picture Horgan paints is a disturbing one. Watch the video, at least until you get to the part when a MAV resembling the one in the picture above flies behind a sniper, comes to rest gently on the back of his head, and kills him with a shot through his skull. One hopes the MAV's machine vision got the right guy, because this one isn't coming back.
-Paul Raeburn
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