What are Drones?

[Woodrow]

I am posting this in World affairs as I often see them mentioned in WA stories especially those about Pakistan.

Simple Definition: They are unmanned aircraft. Piloted remotely from somebody on the ground.

There are two primary types used by the US military. the majority are flown by enlisted men in the army and are essentially flying TV cameras the army uses to do observations over an area either to find targets or to find an escape route. They are small, low cost and normally considered expendable and for one time usage. They are currently being issued to quite a few ground soldiers.

The larger "Predator" is an unmanned bomber, capable of carrying a number of bombs they are flown by commissioned officers, have a long range and are used very similar as a manned bomber and do fly many missions returning to be refueled and reloaded. I do not know how many are flown by US pilots or if any have been given out to other military forces. It is possible some are flown by the Pakistan and Turkish Air forces.

There has been some squabble about them by disabled American Veterans who flew in Korea, WW2 and Vietnam that have not had a cost of living increase for 2 years, while the pilots of the drones are drawing combat pay while sitting at a desk thousands of miles from any danger and flying them on a computer screen. Yet this is probably the future for what will become the standard combat aircraft of the Air Force. Looks like the day of the combat pilot is over and is being replaced by computer nerds sitting safely in luxury hotel rooms.

The "drones" flying over Pakistan are no different from manned bombers, except there is no pilot at risk of being shot down. The plane can be shot down, but there is no crew on board. The crew most likely is sitting in a nice comfortable room thousands of miles away, sipping on their fresh made cappuccino and flying on a computer screen, like they are on a computer action game.

 

[Endymion]

Thanks for sharing.It was informative and it made me sad how much time,intellect and energy human beings spend in killing humans like them And they enjoy it like video games,how cheap human blood actually is

 

[Woodrow]

I found some pictures to add:

The typical Drone used by the US Army:

The A-1 Reaper an MQ class of Drone upgraded to be used as an offensive bomber. About the same size as a Boeing 737 rapidly becoming the most common aircraft in the US Air Force, Long range capability some are known to currently be in stationary patterns over Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Bosnia, Syria and Yemen. Can hover in one location for 14 hours or longer. The MQ class of Drones first began being used in 1994.

The newest MQ is the Class C Avenger it is Jet propelled known to have at least a 20 hour range and all pictures of it are classified and not available.

Reaper crews over 10,000 miles away from the planes they are flying.

 

[Woodrow]

I found a bit more information about the Class C Avenger I briefly mentioned above:

Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that “a new, reduced-signature, unmanned aircraft – the long-rumored, 20-hr.-endurance, pure-jet Predator C Avenger – has emerged from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ workshops after a 3½-year gestation period paced by massive growth in UAV production and the use of unmanned designs in combat.”

It is reported to carry 3000 lbs of total payload, primarily 500-lb. bombs with a GBU-38 JDAM tail kit and laser guidance.

Pratt & Whitney developed the engines and has developed an S-shaped exhaust that offers protection from radar observation and provides cooling to reduce the IR signature. With a 41-foot long fuselage and 66-foot wingspan, the Avenger aircraft can achieve an airspeed of at least 400 kt or higher and its operational altitude is up to 60,000 ft. Aircraft sensors will include a GA-ASI Lynx® Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and various Electro-optical/Infrared (EO/IR) camera systems. A system based on Lockheed Martin’s F-35 FLIR is currently being evaluated, as well as an in-house full-motion video sensor. A pure reconnaissance version will be capable of carrying a wide-area surveillance system internally for special mission applications.

Aviation Week reports that the Avenger has the capbility to be launched and retrieved from an aircraft carrier

SOURCE

 

[aadil77]

How do they manage to have such long flight times?

 

[MustafaMc]

Could this technology have been used to fly unmanned airplanes into the WTC and the Pentagon?

 

[Cabdullahi]

Could this technology have been used to fly unmanned airplanes into the WTC and the Pentagon?

^ exactly!......MC i have something for u...check this out.

Well, it's all happening today, here's CIA Asset Susan Lindauer blowing the whistle on 9/11 and Iraq, and Israel.

It's a properly amazing audio interview from Kevin Barrett @ Truth Jihad, here's the blurb and a tasty sample:

Susan Lindauer, author of Extreme Prejudice, is the first CIA asset to have spoken out, under her own name and for the record, on Israeli complicity in 9/11, the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center, and the specific, detailed foreknowledge of the time, target, and means of the 9/11 attacks held throughout the months prior to 9/11 by the CIA in general and Lindauer's CIA handler, Richard Fuisz, in particular. She has also exposed her first-hand knowledge of pre-war intelligence and negotiations showing that Iraq was willing to give the US "anything it asked" and that the war was therefore--from the perspective of US interests--not only utterly unnecessary, but wildly counter-productive. Lindauer's evidence points strongly to 9/11 being a coup d'etat by hard-line Zionists determined to steer the US into a self-destructive war on Israel's enemies.

Barrett: So the question then, is...is it just sheer total incompetence and stupidity and grandstanding and egotism--I'm sure all of that contributes to it, but---uh...well, frankly, Susan, my take on all of this is that 9/11 was a Mossad operation, that it was of course done through Cheney's office. There were no hijackings. The guys that they blamed for it were not terrorists at all.

They weren't even on the planes. There is not a shred of evidence that any of these guys were on those planes, nor is there a shred of actual evidence that there were any hijackings.

Instead, we had a military operation that was essentially a Zionist coup d'état by the Likkud faction that wanted to destroy Iraq so it would never be a threat to Israel. A prosperous Iraq, allied to the US, would actually be terrible for Israel. That's why they wouldn't take the deals that you were brokering. Care to comment?

Lindauer: I think that you are--I do believe in the hijackings, but I believe in everything else that you have just said. One of the things that came out right after 9/11: I've often been asked by people what my CIA handler Richard Fuisz's source was for the 9/11 attack. And he told me briefly, he let it slip. Immediately after the attack, when we were all in a state of shock, he said to me...the first building had collapsed, but it was before the second building collapsed. This is a very important time frame.

He made reference to video tape, which by the way was not released to the public until the next day, but right after 9/11 Richard Fuisz already knows about this video tape! Right after the attack--the first building has collapsed, the second one is still standing--and we're both talking in the living room, we're both shouting--I'm in my living room, he's in his living room, and we're shouting at the televisions--and he blurts out to me: "Susan, how many times do you think a camera is cued up waiting for a car accident to occur?"

He said, "What do you think are the odds that those two people were just standing on the sidewalk with a video camera waiting patiently for the plane to hit the building?" And he said, "Those are Mossad agents.

They knew that the World Trade Center was about to get hit, and they were waiting there for it to happen so they could record it and put it out in the media." Now this is before it has even come out in the media. He identifies them as Mossad agents, and I believe--I'm convinced--that that was the source of our knowledge of al-Qaeda. But what you guys don't know, which I will throw out to you, which comes out in my book, is that from April and May of 2001 onwards, Richard Fuisz instructed me to threaten the Iraqis with war. Now everybody assumes that the war stuff came after 9/11. But it didn't.

They had decided months before 9/11 ever happened that as soon as this attack occurred, this would be the motivation for the war. So they absolutely knew that this attack was coming. They knew that it was going to be in late August or September. And that opens up a whole new dynamic proving what you have just said: That it was a Mossad conspiracy, that there was complicity...maybe that's a better word, complicity...I'm going to go a little softer on the language than you. Mossad complicity.

http://mikephilbin.blogspot.com/2011/01/cia-asset-susan-lindauer-blows-whistle.html



brother woodrow, im sorry to hijack your thread

 

[ardianto]

No more courage in the battle.

 

[MustafaMc]

No more courage in the battle.

How much courage did Paul Tibbets demonstrate when he dropped "Little Boy" from 6 miles above Hiroshima? The fact is that modern warfare is brutal and impersonal.

 

[Zafran]

salaam

war is becoming more impersonal - its like a game.

peace

 

[Trumble]

war is becoming more impersonal - its like a game.

The process is long over, although war is no better 'personal' than 'impersonal'. We have been able to destroy the planet with unmanned missiles for half a century, and it doesn't even need a 'computer nerd' to press the button; the drones seem relatively insignificant in comparison.

 

[ardianto]

How much courage did Paul Tibbets demonstrate when he dropped "Little Boy" from 6 miles above Hiroshima? The fact is that modern warfare is brutal and impersonal.

At least Paul Tibbets and his Enola Gay crew flew over enemy's territory. But what those drones 'pilots' did ?.

Maybe in the future US Army would make infantry robots that controlled by kids who expert in Point Blank.

 

[Woodrow]

How do they manage to have such long flight times?

Looking at the Reaper which has a payload capacity of 3,000 pounds and the plane being nearly the same size as a Boeing 737 which carries 150 passengers over 15,000 pounds and has a nonstop range of 2,600 range. It means you have space for at least 12,000 additional pounds of fuel. That will add on a bit of extra flying distance and flying time for the same size aircraft.

 

[Woodrow]

The process is long over, although war is no better 'personal' than 'impersonal'. We have been able to destroy the planet with unmanned missiles for half a century, and it doesn't even need a 'computer nerd' to press the button; the drones seem relatively insignificant in comparison.

True Trumble. Throughout the 1960-1980's the unmanned missile capacity of the USA was many times larger than what it is today. During that time the USA had a minimum of 10,000 nuclear armed and launch ready ICBMs posed and fully ready. No point on earth was more than 15 minutes away from being hit with an unmanned ICBM. Add to that the estimated 20-30,000 the USSR had on the launch pads at the same time. Today's drones are very insignificant and look like toys compared to that time era.

 

[Woodrow]

Could this technology have been used to fly unmanned airplanes into the WTC and the Pentagon?

Which would have been the logical way to do it by any national, organized military agency .

So quite simply it means Mohamed Atta, would not have had the backing of any industrialized nation or military might. He either acted alone in a badly coordinated and not very smart plot...............or there was something very sinister going on in the background.