Appended: Associated Press report:
"Drones pushing humans out of cockpits:
pilotless aircraft technology reduces risk of losing
personnel on missions."
(11/23)
CloudRider's comment [Dick Farley, Washington, DC USA]:
UFO buffs, "Be Alert!" (The world needs more lerts! ;-)
Note: It was CIA which developed the armed Predator. Now, perhaps this is
one of the primary reasons the Pentagon was among the "clueless" about some
"UFOs" of the UAV or RPV (remotely piloted vehicle) variety, stealth aerial
weapons platforms that some UFOs are? It isn't as sexy or heroic, nor nearly
as expensive, if air power is projected by robots or a video-game interface
connected via satellite, perhaps interfaced also with a human brain in the
head of a terrestrial operator who is not a "fighter jock."
As John Lennon and Yoko might say, "Imagine." A CIA operator hones in on a
real terrorist using real-time "recon" satellite guided Predator drone or a
big Global Hawk (jetliner sized) UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), then fires a
Hellfire missile and takes out the target. No medals, no hero! Just a kid
good with videogames who grew up to be an effective "console jockey" for CIA?
Now, wouldn't YOU keep that a secret if you were in Pentagon procurement?
(Anybody see the film "The Last Starfighter?")
So, who might the "prime suspects" be for whatever's still secret out at
"Area 51?" And why might "ET-loving peaceniks" of the globalist stripe
(painted yellow) want to drag such secrets "out of their hangars" and
subordinate them to UN "treaties" or broker them into uselessness by
compelling us to share our technologies with our "friends" among the
European weenies craving a world safe for industrial oligarchs? We're not
making this up. See the AP story below. Now, do reconsider UFO ETs?
That's not to say there aren't any "high strangeness" episodes illustrating
where our science has many as yet unanswered or even ill-defined questions
yet to study. But across the board, shaving the issue with Ockham's Razor,
think of all the options. It may well be that Earth and humanity have been
and are "under the influences" of a range of interdimensional or
intradimensional "intelligence complexes" having varied worldviews or
intentions about humankind and/or our planetary habitat. If so, we'll have
to learn how to deal with that, just as we figured out germ theory and coped.
http://www.headlinebooks.com/chapters/mental.html
We told you so, didn't we? But no, you didn't want to hear it. "New
Religions" are so much more fun to espouse. But this planet does not need
any more "gurus" or ET prophets and prophecies, "revealed truths" or
competing elites driving new religions.
Drop back to the "Star Wars" era of the mid-1980s, when the competing
factions of space weaponization and "global peace" were warring about "Star
Wars" with Carl Sagan's & John Mack's campaign to promote fear of "nuclear
winter" Armageddon. That they and their acolytes segued into "UFO ET"
advocacy was not coincidental.
Follow the money. Watch the skies for lies. Believe only what YOU see
personally, and even then, don't jump to conclusions beyond our scientific
and political reality.
Dick Farley
Washington, DC USA
- - - - +
Fighter Pilots Days May Be Numbered
By JIM KRANE
.c The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - The dashing fighter pilot, with his white silk scarf and
burnished leather jacket, is among the most celebrated icons of American
military lore. Slowly, however, technology is pushing the fighter pilot out
of the cockpit. ``I think his days are numbered," said Glenn Buchan, a RAND
defense air power analyst.
In the not too distant future, trained fighter pilots may find themselves
sitting at a computer on the ground, controlling an unmanned aircraft - or
as many as a half-dozen of them - that may be flying over another continent.
The transformation is already under way.
In Afghanistan, the United States has used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, long a
tool of reconnaissance, in an attack role for the first time. In a few
instances, a Predator UAV controlled remotely by CIA personnel on the
ground, fired Hellfire missiles as part of air strikes on al-Qaida and
Taliban targets. The strikes killed dozens, including al-Qaida military
chief Mohammed Atef, U.S. intelligence officials said on condition of
anonymity.
"There's no doubt we're going to do more and more of this as time unfolds,"
said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Military experts say advances in sensors, communications, imaging and
artificial intelligence will soon allow pilot-less aircraft
to do everything a manned aircraft can, at a fraction of the cost and
without risking pilots'
lives.
The unmanned planes may take over ground attack, and perhaps even
dogfighting roles currently performed by planes such as the F-15 and F-18.
"We see no future fighters with humans in them," said Buchan, author of a
recent RAND study on UAVs that was just classified by the
Air Force.
Although the Pentagon plans to purchase up to 3,000 of its next-generation
fighter, Lockheed's Joint Strike Fighter, Buchan said RAND found "no
compelling reason to have humans on board" certain military aircraft - and
often good reason to replace a human with a machine. "It's not clear that
the human's adding anything, and his biological shortcomings limit the
capabilities of the aircraft," he said.
The use of drones dates to the early 1960s, when the United States flew them
to spy on China and drop leaflets over Vietnam. In the early 1970s, the U.S.
military experimented with an armed drone called the Firebee, using it to
drop bombs and fire missiles in tests.
Israel may have been the first to use armed drones in a combat ground-attack
role, according to research published by the U.S. Air Force. It used drones
in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and also sent UAVs to scout Syrian air defenses
in its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Until it was modified by the CIA, the
U.S. Air Force's Predator, a $2.5 million UAV built for spying, wasn't
intended to fire missiles.
In January, the Air Force will test-fly the first U.S. drone designed for
combat. The Boeing-built UCAV, or Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, is
designed to handle one of the most dangerous missions, attacking enemy air
defense sites like radar and surface-to-air missile batteries.
The X-45 model UCAV is designed to fly a 650-mile round-trip mission,
loitering perhaps a half-hour over a target, and drop 3,000 pounds of
guided bombs, said Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher. If the UCAV's tests go
well, some predict the drone will eventually put planes and pilots out of
work by stealing some ground attack duties from the forthcoming Joint
Strike Fighter.
At $10-$15 million apiece, the X-45 UCAV, without all the expensive human
requirements for life-support systems and visual instruments, would cost
about a third as much as the $45 million JSF.
The bat-shaped X-45 will be much tougher to shoot down than the General
Atomics Predator, a simple propeller-driven plane designed to fly at around
100 mph and no higher than 25,000 feet. A third of the Air Force's 60
Predators have already been lost, mostly downed over Iraq, the Balkans or
Afghanistan.
The X-45, by contrast, is jet-engine driven, flies six times as fast as the
Predator, at altitudes of 30,000-40,000 feet. It is also stealth-capable,
meaning it won't be easily tracked by radar. It carries an artificial
intelligence-fueled computer that allows it to track, identify and bomb
targets on its own - if humans permit, Blecher said.
"At least initially, it would rely on a human in the loop," Blecher said.
"But theoretically, you could do it either way. You could pre-program it to
drop its weapon when it finds the target, using artificial intelligence."
For Capt. Brad Smith, a proud F-15 fighter pilot who trains at Virginia's
Langley Air Force Base, the idea of killing people with a flying robot is
beyond the range of acceptable warfare. "I don't like the idea at all. You
always want to have a human being involved in the decision to take another
human being's life,"said Smith, 29, of Tulsa, Okla. Smith doubts the UCAV
is a viable replacement for a pilot, especially a fighter pilot who engages
in air-to-air combat.
"My own two eyeballs looking out of the cockpit is much different than the
small field of vision you get from a camera on a computer screen someplace,"
he said.
On the Net: Boeing X-45: http://www.boeing.com/phantom/ucav.html
General Atomics Predator: http://www.ga.com/asi/aero.html
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