What is their range and top speed? Can content be cooled, how is weather affecting the uav?

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We really don't have sufficient driver's ed to be throwing down spike strips for cars going over a hundred while driven by the typical pleb.

Typical pleb should be a much better driver before this is a policy.

Otherwise it's more risk of harm than letting the typical pleb speed with his tyres in one piece.

That is, if public safety is a priority. Not saying that it is. Maybe this is a good use case for civilian uav air strikes. A mini hellfire would work well. (sarcastic/cynical comment, yet would not be surprised if in 20 years it becomes reality. "lol").

-scheherazade

Well that looks utterly stupid.

So... they have bug UAVs and hummingbird UAVs, yet they're targeting the bad guys with antiques?

Also, it's not like this is some imaginary moral dilemma. US forces can, have, and will target innocent civilians WITHOUT confirmation that their actual target is on site. Hell they've attacked wedding parties and hospitals just for shits and giggles (well not quite, but "because some Afghan guy said so" is close enough).

Thats Reed Timmer. He was one of the 'stars' of the Discovery show, Storm Chasers. He does a LOT of tornado research using doppler, probes, uav's, etc. He has a Ph.D. in meteorology. Very interesting guy and has done a lot for progressing storm safety and early warning systems.

Absolutely. It's a mistake to make assumptions about what AI will be like. The doomsayers too often attribute human qualities to it. It's like speculating about alien intelligence. It will come in bits an pieces as we understand it more. My own guess is that, not weighed down by long obsolete genetic imperatives and human psychological pathologies, it will most likely be (in its higher form) an extraordinarily capable problem solver and prognosticator. It will lack the human flaws that typically motivate the killer AIs of science fiction. Of course, it will probably have it's own unique flaws. I do think it's wise to be wary of software that has developed beyond our capability to understand it (much as we don't understand the workings of our own consciousness).

Probably my primary concern about robotic weapons comes from a DARPA proposal I read about some time in the past. What they wanted was an autonomous, bird sized UAV. It would contain surveillance equipment and sensors, and be able to share the data it collects through a mesh network established with it's fellows and the commanders as well as receive orders. It would be intelligent enough to find a suitable strategic vantage point and hide itself. From there it would simply observe. With a large enough swarm of these, perhaps many thousands, you could send them into a city at night. They would each also potentially carry a small warhead allowing them to launch themselves at and destroy threats. Once these robots were entrenched, which might only take an hour or two, whoever controls them would effectively rule the city. Even if they were cut off from their command structure, they might still retain enough intelligence to recognize a particular individual, someone in a forbidden area, someone holding a weapon, or someone not brodcasting the right IFF signal, or any number of things. There might be no defense against such a thing (though there probably will be).

To me, that concept is terrifying. It's not huge hulking terminator-like war machines that could be the greatest threat, just flying, self-guiding, intelligent hand grenades. All someone would need is the capability to manufacture them. No raising an army, no speeches or threats, just a factory and a design. It's also not too far fetched to believe this capability might be available in just a matter of a few decades. They'll be easier to build than nuclear weapons, and oh so convenient and easy to deploy.

Um.... anyways, I dunno where I was going with that. Just lots of random pontificating, but because it's technology, it's silly to try to stop it with legislation. It will happen, as ChaosEngine rightly points out, the best course of action is to be on top of it and to understand it.

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Russian MIG shoots down a Georgian UAV has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims.

*related=http://military.videosift.com/video/Russian-MIG-shoots-down-a-Georgian-UAV

Hmm, for ingenious I think we need to think more like UAV..... so.... the dude is in the tank.... why? Impossible to control from a trailer 20 miles away?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'al jazeera, people, power, drones, UAV, air strikes, due process' to 'al jazeera, people, power, drones, UAV, RPA, air strikes, due process' - edited by calvados

Tags for this video have been changed from 'al jazeera, people, power, drones, air strikes, due process' to 'al jazeera, people, power, drones, UAV, air strikes, due process' - edited by calvados

That approximation of civilian casualties alone is reason enough to question the intent of this video: objective journalism or propaganda?

Add the "almost supernatural effectiveness" or the grossly misleading "inherent right to self-defence under international law" and I'm inclined to say that this is a disgusting propaganda piece.

When he emphasized the "humane" behaviour of operators (let the children leave before pulling the trigger) and the insinuation that victims of drone attacks are actually thankful for it, well that's just icing on the cake.


What he fails to mention:

-- low rate of civilian casualties: every male of fighting age in the target area is now considered a militant, so everything you hit is a target, unless there is concrete intelligence to prove otherwise, posthumously.

-- pinpoint accuracy: UAVs hit their targets, but the targets themselves are defined as such by piss-poor intelligence or no intelligence at all.

-- guilt by proximity: if you are near a suspect or, generally speaking, in a strike-zone, your mere presence makes you a suspect yourself, as defined by the Obama administration. Now try to square this definition with previous accusations that terrorists embed themselves into the civilian population.

-- double-tap: again, your mere presence at the site of a strike, even if your intent is to provide medical assistance, turns you into a target (eg Collateral Murder). And better stay away from funerals as well, or else they send you a present.

-- US citizens Anwar al-Awlaki, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were intentionally killed by drone strikes, without trial.

-- collateral damage: when you kill a person's family, you provide that person with a non-ideological reason to fight the US, a personal vendetta. Recent drone attacks in Yemen increased the numbers of AQAP members by killing civilians left, right and center.

-- covert killings, proxy warfare: the use of UAVs, particularly in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, reminds us of the good old days. Death from above or how I learned to love the drone.

Odd that photos of China's new drone the US's 'secret' drone both leaked in the same week.
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2011/12/picture-chinas-wind-blade-uav.html