Bonus hysteria: the word "atomics" prominently featured!
The Nation soils itself over UAVs and whines the company that makes them is a cybernetic Blackwater. Oh, doesn't everyone involved just wish.
Srsly, were they not watching the last 20 - 30 years? The last 90? I admit, it took Bruce Sterling to show me them but that was in nineteen-frickin'-eighty-eight and he was describing hardware already flying. The first working UAVs appeared in 1916 and a later version blew up the first Kennedy of the generation just passed.
Oh, but it's suddenly a scourge now. 'Cos we might be blowin' up Muslim terrorists with them and everything is a surprise to the ignorant-of-history flutterati.
flutterati... heh!
ReplyDeleteEric Prince was advised on many occasions to lower Blackwater's public profile. You didn't see Triple Canopy or Dyncorps doing his stunts.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, GA has seen the results of a train wreck. When you go to the website sitemap, you can't get the personnel list - CEO, CFO, COO, board members, etc. You can however, get the company cafeteria menu out two weeks. :)
Wow, that was some pretty blatant fear and rumor mongering. Comparing a company that builds drones and then sells them to .mil, who actually control them, to Blackwater?
ReplyDeleteSeems a bit of a weak connection to me. Maybe the dimwit in question should have implied a bit more that the drones were autonomous killing machines with a hardwired bias to kill brown people.
I could understand the hand-wringing if the story was about using UAVs for domestic security/law enforcement/surveillance purposes, but making good tangos out of bad ones without putting any Americans or Allies at risk seems like a Good Thing to me. Of course, I'm just a right-wing whacko gun nut veteran, so what do I know?
ReplyDeleteWV: parpu. That article was PAR for the course, nothing but "PU".
The Nation ought have done some more homework, they could have gotten far more upset. It's in the open press that Blackwater at one time provided some of the security were some of the drones are based.
ReplyDeleteOr horror of horrors, some of the mechanics, the truck drivers, and even food service workers were/are contractors.
So what if a private company is doing the work on the ground? Pumping gas, loading missiles, maintaining them, etc doesn't carry the fight to the enemy. The guy working the controls, and in all probability the guy supervising, are the ones who make the decision to pull the trigger and therefore should be uniformed military. Gee whiz, the military finds a way of doing the job more efficiently and everyone misses the forest for a few irrelevant trees.
ReplyDeleteJim
The hand-wringing is due to the UAV's finally coming of age as an effective weapon.
ReplyDeleteAs long as it was a money-hole under development, All Was Well.
Maybe it's just me, but the $10M price tag (if accurate) is an issue worthy of discussion.
ReplyDelete