Re: OT ~ 21st Century Armchair Combat

Bob Giddings wrote:
On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:42:10 -0400, bill horne <redydog@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

Bob Giddings wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:05:58 -0700, "JanOrme99@xxxxxxx"
<JanOrme99@xxxxxxx> wrote:

The new "Reaper" hunter-killer drone will be operational soon.

Robot Air Attack Squadron will be used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The "Reaper" is the latest, larger and improved version of drones.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070715/D8QD61V80.html

It hunts bad guys while controlled from 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

Jan Eric Orme
Hmmm. At that distance, how does it know who the "bad guys" are?
Or were?

Sounds like something ripe for abuse.
What kind of abuse do you envision?

Are you kidding?

7000 miles is room for a lot of local, even personal vendettas to
appropriate our very expensive offensive capabilities. Remember
how the Iraqui ex-pats maneuvered the defense department by
telling them what they wanted to hear? Settling their scores
turned out not to be in our national interest.

There will be a tendency to use this thing because it is easy to
use (as opposed to local intervention on the ground with
follow-up to determine effectiveness) and the inevitable misuse
will be covered up.

It's like the hand of God, when God is too far away to know what
He is doing, resulting in a general smashup without accounting.

This thing has a gee-whiz goggle-eyed enthusiasm behind it that I
don't trust. It's actual usefulness will probably be rare. It's
use may not be.

That you can ask that question illustrates my point.

I fail to see how any of that relates to the location of the cockpit of the airplane.

--
bill
Theory don't mean squat if it don't work.
.