Time to Snuff this Drone Bullshit ...NOW!

The time is sometime in the near future....after more than 18,000 unmanned drones have been allowed to roam freely in our skies.....sent aloft by every Tom, Dick and Harry... from farmers, to cops, to utility companies to corporate industrialists seeking to spy on competitors. At this particular junction of time and space, a large commercial aircraft has just taken off with 220 souls on board when.....three minutes later and during its ascent....a massive fireball erupts over a large municipal airport.

After months of tedious investigation and recovery of the black box - which referred to a "bogey at three o'clock" the FAA concludes the plane was struck 2 3/4 minutes after takeoff by a "Dragonflyer X6" drone dispatched into the skies by local law enforcement. While much more intensive scrutiny is promised and a possible congressional investigation....mostly unheard were the screams of thousands who said: "I told you fucking SO!"

Fantasy? Hyper imaginatiive paranoia? Don't believe it for one second! The above horrific scenario is very plausible if our lawmakers continue to sit on their fat, overpaid, useless asses and do nothing while the drone manufacturers of the military-industrial complex seek to transfer their market share to domestic drones...now that the occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq are winding down.

In a previous blog I warned about this and gave the background as to who is pushing it:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/02/no-to-more-drones-in-us-skies.html

In that blog, I noted, from a piece in The Wall Street Journal ('U.S. Skies Could See More Drones', Feb. 4, p. A7) that:

"Barely hours after the 374-page bill became public pilot union officials urged a more deliberate approach. Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 53,000 pilots across North America, said his organization remains worried about safety issues such as training and certification of those unmanned aircraft."

And further (ibid.):

"Safety experts also have raised questions about the ability of sensors aboard unmanned aircraft to properly detect a nearby plane, and to assure immediate action to avoid a midair collision".

But is anyone listening or doing anything? Hell NO! According to today's paper (Denver Post, p. 2A, 'Domestic Drones Take Off!') it's damned the torpedoes (or drone safety in the air) and full speed ahead. The dollars are calling and the military industrial fuckers need new sources to ply their wares since they won't be able to churn out machines by which hidden "warriors" (thousands of miles from danger) fire on Afghan wedding parties any more. So, every two bit manjack now has a hard on to get one....even a little 'hummingbird' scale gizmo "that weighs less than a AA battery" - which can "perch on a window ledge to record sound and video"....

Hmmm ....to what end? To spy on neighbors?

Others demand the "Global Hawk" with its 116 ft. wingspan ....which at least in the case of a near mid air collision encounter should be possible for an able pilot to dodge.

As for congress? What do you expect of these bought and paid for whores? Mainly whores to the military industrial complex (the Repuke whores, get this, actually want to DOUBLE the military presence in Afghanistan after the outrage that erupted in the wake of the accidental Koran burning. In fact, this ought to be the alarm signal to get the hell out! That war is lost, hearts and minds all gone....deal with it! No more pissing $10 billion a week into the toilet). Anyway, according to the Dpost article:

"Congress has told the FAA that it must allow civilian and military drones to fly in civilian airspace by 2015"

In other words, congress is inviting a slew of mid air collisions and near collisions! All for what? MONEY! Each drone that gets made and put into the skies will put lobbyist money in their pockets, likely from the "Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International"...the industry trade group that has pushed this bullshit down the FAA's throat and used congress as the Trojan Horse to do it....with billions of dollars of money in the background. You know how that works! ;

According to one government public relations manager for the same outfit, a Ben Gielow - who could barely control his drooling:

"The potential civil market for these systems could dwarf the military market in the coming years if we can get access to the airspace.."

Yes, and at what future cost in lives?

See, these capitalist grabbers make it to be about personal privacy, but while that is definitely a worry it pales beside the insecurity of air travel with thousands of these (mostly unregulated) things in the skies and no controls. It is also colossally stupid, when you have TSA officials doing everything to protect the flying public and meanwhile,....a huge gaping security hole ten miles wide opens up in the skies because our lawmakers are craven whores. Where's the sense in that?
Make no mistake all of this is driven by money! It is all about handouts to congress via lobbying by industry swine and then congress kowtowing to the swine to issue orders to the FAA to open up "air space"......errrr...... new capitalization opportunities and higher shares for the makers of these stupid unmanned drones. Even the Defense Dept. has bought in, but then they've always been the biggest whores for the defense contractors, drone makers. They insist:

"the demand for drones and their expanding missions requires routine and unfettered access to domestic airspace, including around airports...."

Just one question here, cheeseballs: WHO or what agency is going to regulate these fuckers to ensure they comply with flight safety parameters, guidelines and they don't careen into commercial aircraft? Or are you too blinded by the green stuff to see your way to an answer?

NO, to More Drones in U.S. Skies!

The story in The Wall Street Journal today ('U.S. Skies Could See More Drones', p. A7) came as a shocker of sorts. First, because it disclosed yet another federal agency (FAA) held hostage to the corporatist-industrial complex, now attempting to find new avenues for drone production since the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan are ending (well the first has officially ended, the second nearly so). And second, because it discloses how secretive this corporate-benefiting information is, much like the recent news that 38 salmonella food poisonings were due to "restaurant chain A" (in FDA jargon) but only lately identified as 'Taco Bell'.

And we already saw a couple years ago, how deep in bed the SEC was with Madoff, and how they missed warning investors of this guy's Ponzi scheme. It appears that, one by one, fed agencies are being held captive to corporate interests, while the public general welfare takes a back seat.

In ths case of this new FAA bill, worth some $63 billion (and already four years in the lobbying and rewriting phases), U.S. skies would be inundated with tens of thousands of unmanned drones sharing airpace with commercial planes - and recall these are already at the beck and call of overworked air traffic controllers, as gauged by nearly 300 near misses per year. Imagine if they now had to contend with thousands of these unmanned drones flying who knows where?

Certainly the commercial pilots themselves aren't too enthused. As the WSJ article observes:

"Barely hours after the 374-page bill became public pilot union officials urged a more deliberate approach. Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 53,000 pilots across North America, said his organization remains worried about safety issues such as training and certification of those unmanned aircraft."

The article continues by noting that: "Safety experts also have raised questions about the ability of sensors aboard unmanned aircraft to properly detect a nearby plane, and to assure immediate action to avoid a midair collision".

This is not just small potatoes and - by all rights - ought to be raising as much of a firestorm among the safety aware public as the Komen fiasco a few days ago. Moreso, because our lawmakers have sought to keep all this under wraps until it's almost a fait accompli!

And just who are these interests pushing for new drones in our skies? Well, according to the WSJ:

"Under the FAA bill proponents envision huge fleets of drones operated nationwide by states, local governments, and companies."

My question, and that of every other right-thinking American, ought to be: 'How the hell can states and local governments be remotely considering $1 billion a pop for a drone....to do whatever... when their own budgets are in the tank and benefits aren't being properly distributed?' As for companies: Why are they splurging (or thinking of splurging) on these damned things while leaving money uninvested for labor hiring and new plant? It's fucking absurd!

And just what is it these expensive unmanned machines are supposed to be doing? According to the WSJ article:

"environmental monitoring, fire protection, surveillance of suspected criminals....checking power lines and tracking equipment"

WHAT!? Needless to say, and I shouldn't have to say it, all of these can be done at much less expense and without requiring unmanned drones. For example, multiple street video cameras mounted all over can now track criminals anywhere. Moreover, the "fusion centers" provided under the Patriot Act make this as easy as companies tracking people using 'cookies' on the web. Nor do we need to risk commercial passenger safety by putting thousands of the blasted things in our skies for the specious reasons cited. In the end this is all bullshit, and the real purpose of this law is to provide an outlet for the defense industry drone manufacturers who will no longer have U.S. occupations within which to ply their trade.

Now, true ...there are limited numbers of drones already operating in U.S. skies. These are "mainly by federal agencies for law enforcement and security purposes" (ibid.) Moreover, as the article notes, they are only allowed to fly in highly restricted areas (like near the Mexican border) and this has kept their numbers low.

What we emphatically do not need is our skies flooded with these fuckers and competing with commercial craft for airspace, and likely creating even more havoc and near collisions, or outright collisions! THAT is not the way to create new jobs!

The tragedy is that the good part of the FAA bill, the one that provides for GPS satellites to reinforce ground air traffic control, is tied up with this corporate welfare drone-for-any-redundant purpose bullshit. We need to send a message to these clueless congress critters to re-do their bill, and leave out the drone manufacture and deployment for every Tom, Dick and Harry and for specious reasons that are basically bollocks.

Footnote: The photo attached, in case readers are wondering, is based on the "frankensteined" insertion of a predator drone image (I felt that was more dramatic) into a photo I took looking out from a first class seat as the flight I was on descended to Miami International in June, 2007.
It is meant to depict the likely sort of near encounters we may experience if the corporate welfare part of this FAA bill goes through!