Killing real people from your Barcalounger

MQ9 Reaper

i've mentioned in previous posts that for the past two consecutive summers, i've parked my rv in a park right next to military folks who were either flying or commanding drone missions in afghanistan and pakistan... both were very, shall we say, strident in their support of the u.s. military mission in general and of the need to "eradicate" terrorists in particular, so in my conversations with them i had to be somewhat circumspect about revealing my true political leanings... i was mostly interested in being a good neighbor and also learning a little bit about what they did... they confirmed what i already knew, that they were basically fighter pilots operating out of the same schema and under the same command and control structure as fighter pilots... the big difference, of course, was that they could come home every day to their wives and families, order pizza, watch tv and shop at walmart, rather than do duty in a combat zone or at an air base or aircraft carrier far from home...

this morning, as i sit in my office here in kabul, afghanistan, and look out the window at a sunny, springtime scene, fresh after a day of steady drizzling rain (somewhat of a rarity in this arid climate), i can't help but sweep the skies for a glimpse of a predator drone and reflect on this la times story...

Combat by camera

Anatomy of an Afghan war tragedy

rather than extract from the article, i suggest you go read it... it will break your heart...

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One step closer to the Panopticon - reality intrudes on optimism

as much as i would like to pursue a thread of optimism in this new year and as much as i'd like to keep the ugliness of current reality at bay, i guess i'm not genetically equipped to stick my head in the sand...

when i was last in afghanistan, i noted a surveillance dirigible hovering over kabul that i hadn't seen in any of my previous visits... my afghan friends told me that it had been there for just a few months but, despite being a new arrival on the kabul scene, they had been a common sight over u.s. military bases around the country for a couple of years... here's a photo i took of it a year ago september...



the local wisdom was that it was loaded with surveillance equipment and that our emails were probably being scrutinized on a regular basis... while we all chuckled at that possibility, i, for one, had little doubt that was the case...

interestingly enough, the previous june and july, after i had bought my rv and parked it in an rv park close to my son's house, i became acquainted with an air force officer and his family whose rv was parked across from mine... he was on his way to train to fly unmanned drones and ultimately to be stationed at an air force base in the southwest... as appalled as i am at the whole concept of death and destruction no matter what form it takes and particularly when it's delivered remotely by a pilot comfortably ensconced 10,000 miles away, i was nonetheless able to suppress my feelings, maintain a cordial relationship and learn a little bit about what he was going to be doing... as a result, he's kept me on his general info mailing list and i found out that he recently started flying the next generation drone, the mq9 reaper (see my previous post here)...



in today's wapo, i see that yet another next generation drone, the "gorgon stare," has been announced...

This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a "soda straw" area the size of a building or two.

i have no doubt this rapid high-tech evolution will continue and, as with all defense and war-spurred innovations, will soon be commonplace tools for domestic use... just one step closer to the panopticon...

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."

Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."

great news for the new year, eh what...?

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The MQ9 Reaper, a hunter-killer UAV

MQ-9 Reaper

the reaper is the latest generation of unmanned aerial drones we're using to wreak destruction across vast stretches of afghanistan and pakistan and is undoubtedly one of the reasons pakistan has decided to block the nato supply route over the khyber pass in retaliation for u.s. attacks on pakistani soil...

wikipedia...

The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper (originally the Predator B) is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) for use by the United States Air Force, the United States Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the Italian Air Force. The MQ-9 and other UAVs are referred to as Remotely Piloted Vehicles/Aircraft (RPV/RPA) by the U.S. Air Force to indicate their human ground controllers.^[3][4] The MQ-9 is the first hunter-killer UAV designed for long-endurance, high-altitude surveillance.^[3]

The MQ-9 is a larger and more capable aircraft than the earlier MQ-1 Predator, although it can be controlled by the same ground systems used to control MQ-1s. The Reaper has a 950-shaft-horsepower (712 kW) turboprop engine, far more powerful than the Predator's 115 hp (86 kW) piston engine. The increase in power allows the Reaper to carry 15 times more ordnance and cruise at three times the speed of the MQ-1.^[3] Although the MQ-9 can fly pre-programmed routes autonomously, the aircraft is always monitored or controlled by aircrew in the Ground Control Station (GCS) and weapons employment is always commanded by the pilot.

i just received an email from a friend who camped across from me last summer announcing that he is now fully-qualified on the reaper and will begin operational missions tonight... i enjoyed getting to know him and his family despite the vast chasm between his liberal-hating, hard-ass, neo-con mindset and mine... he provides me with occasional updates and a window into a world that i wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to see...

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