USAF Admit to GORGON/MEDUSA STARE Surveillance to petrify humans

[Dig]

Now an entire city is a Nazi concentration camp thanks to dehumanizing technology that the US Military has been likely using for the past 25 years...

This new crime against humanity fits in nicely with the other warcrimes including but not limited to torture, illegal rendition, genocide, mass murder, spontaneously cumbusting infants, depleted uranium, poisoning or air/water/land, white phosphorous, vote rigging, control over natural resources, rape, pilaging, theft of art, mind control, electronic dog colars, radiation, forced poison vaccines, limitations on speech, limitations on privacy, food as a weapon, false flag bombings, child sex slavery, separation of parents from children, etc.

So why wouldn't NATO continue the acts only hades would approve by imitating god himself with an ALL-SEEING-EYE...


‘We can see everything’: USAF launches ‘airborne surveillance system’
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/we-everything-usaf-launches-airborne-surveillance-system/
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011 -- 2:22 pm


WASHINGTON — The US military plans to deploy a new intelligence drone in Afghanistan, which military experts say will allow US troops to monitor much larger operational theaters than before, The Washington Post reported Sunday. The newspaper said the airborne surveillance system is called Gorgon Stare and will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town. In 2010, a total of 711 international troops were killed in Afghanistan, according to independent website iCasualties -- the highest annual death toll since the war began in 2001. The system consists of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, which can can transmit up to 65 live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements, the paper said. By contrast, current Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a narrow area the size of a building or two, The Post noted. "Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything," the paper quoted Major General James Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as saying. There are around 140,000 international troops fighting the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, around two-thirds of them from the United States.

[Dig]

Check it out...the autonomous software system determines what is a threat and what is not...NO HUMAN INTERVENTION REQUIRED!


Reaper Sensors Called “Gorgon Stare”
http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/reaper-sensors-called-gorgon-stare/


The Air Force plans to install a wide-area airborne surveillance sensor under its MQ-9 Reapers that lets troops look at more of the battlefield from more angles. Ten of the service’s Reapers will start getting the sensor in spring 2010.

The $15 million sensor will film an area with a four-kilometer radius underneath the Reaper during both day and night operations from 12 angles, said Robert Marlin, technical adviser for Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

The Army started using a similar wide-area surveillance sensor, the Constant Hawk, in 2006 and the Marine Corps followed suit with an upgrade called Angel Fire in 2007. Those sensors are mounted under manned aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan

The Air Force now has improved on Angel Fire with its Gorgon Stare, named after Medusa’s gaze that turned her enemies to stone. Gorgon Stare allows any user to choose from the 12 angles that it can broadcast simultaneously, Marlin said; Angel Fire allows multiple users to view its imagery but can broadcast back only one at a time. Angel Fire is also limited to day operations.

Gorgon Stare will allow a combat controller on the ground, a commander at headquarters and an intelligence officer back in the U.S. all to choose a different angle from the same Reaper, said Maj. William Bower, deputy program manager for the MQ-9 Reaper.

The sensor will supplement but not replace the multi-spectral targeting pod aboard the Reaper and the MQ-1 Predator that records full-motion video, Marlin said. He described the Gorgon Stare’s feed as “motion imagery, which will be like a slow, jumpy version of the full-motion video feed.”

Viewing that wider area, though, will allow airmen to “see the bigger picture” and have a better idea where to point full-motion video sensors, Marlin said.

Reapers and MQ-1 Predators are often called on to track vehicles and hover over buildings to watch for “squirters,” or insurgents running out of buildings during U.S. operations. Airmen controlling the sensors sometimes lose track of those vehicles or squirters if they drive or run out of view too fast.

Gorgon Stare will be invaluable in such instances, Bower said. Even if a vehicle drives out of the view of the full-motion video sensor, it will still be within Gorgon Stare’s range. Even if 12 squirters run in 12 directions, Gorgon Stare could dedicate one angle to each one, Marlin said.

Even after a mission is complete, Gorgon Stare will keep providing fresh intelligence by recording each angle. Airmen can then return to a previous mission and view all 12 angles to ensure nothing was missed, Bower said.

Reapers will initially be the only aircraft to fly with the Gorgon Stare, but the RQ-4 Global Hawk and manned aircraft could fly with it later, said Col. Christopher Coombs, 703rd Aeronautical Systems Group commanders, whose unit is in charge of UAV acquisition. The MQ-1 Predator and the Army MQ-1C Sky Warrior could be fitted with Gorgon Stare if Air Force engineers can figure out how to lighten the 1,100-pound sensor, Marlin said

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working with a wide-area airborne surveillance sensor that could provide up to 60 views.

“We’re enhancing this capability and will soon be able to study 30 to 60 targets with one MQ-9 pod,” said Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

What the Gorgon Stare won’t be able to do is replace Reaper and Predator missions, Marlin said.

“I think there is a misperception out there that because it can look at 12 different angles that it will be able to replace 12 Reapers,” he said.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for example, threw their support behind Gorgon Stare in part for “its potential to reduce the requirement for UAS with FMV and to make the latter more effective,” according to a committee report on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

“That’s just not true, but it will be a very powerful tool the Air Force will be able to use,” Marlin said.

The MQ-9 Reaper (pictured), a bigger version of the famed Predator drone, flew its first mission over Iraq on July 18, according to the Air Force. The armed Reaper deployed to Afghanistan in 2007 and first saw combat in the fall of that year. British officers compared the 5-ton bird to a “mini A-10.” The Brits are buying around a dozen Reapers of their own for Afghanistan service.

Reaper’s Iraq deployment is part of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ drive to get more surveillance systems into the fight. The Pentagon’s goal was to have enough deployed Predators and Reapers by 2010 to maintain 21 round-the-clock “orbits,” each requiring three or four drones. By raiding the training unit at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, the Air Force beat the deadline by two years. In May, the service announced that it had 24 drone orbits for the “war on terror,” including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and (presumably) Somalia.

But taking ‘bots from Creech has put kinks in the training system and possibly contributed to several recent crashes.

Defense firm Raytheon says better control stations are the solution. “The [current] Predator ground station displays are like an engineering diagnostics station, with complicated menus and ‘M-keys’ with functions that are easily confused,” said Katie Heilner, a Raytheon engineer. The company is offering new, simplified “Universal Control Stations” that it says will reduce the robot accident rate.

Regardless, Air Force is now aiming to deploy as many as 50 orbits by the end of this year. Lt. Gen. Mike Peterson said he wants most of them to be Reapers, but right now the Air Force has only a dozen of the bigger birds.

You may think your new ten-megapixel camera is pretty hot –- but not when you compare it to the 1.8 Gigapixel beast built for the Pentagon. The camera is designed as a payload for the A-160T Hummingbird robot helicopter now being quietly delivered to Special Forces. It will give them an unprecedented ability to track everything on the ground in real time. The camera is scheduled for flight testing at the start of next year.

Developed under the auspices of Darpa, the camera is the sensor part of Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance – Imaging System or ARGUS-IS. The camera is composed of four arrays, each containing 92 five-megapixel imagers. The other parts of ARGUS are the airborne processing system, which has to deal with a phenomenal torrent of data, and the ground-based element. The airborne part fits into a 500-pound pod.

The Hummingbird is unique in its ability to hover at high altitude (over 15,000 feet) and its endurance of over 20 hours. This means it can park high in the sky and scan a wide area. Robo-chopper camera-maker BAE Systems says that its imager will be able to cover an area of over a hundred square miles. The refresh rate is fifteen frames per second and a “ground sample distance” of 15 centimeters –- this means that each pixel represents six inches on the ground. (The Darpa diagram, above, suggests a smaller area of coverage, 40 square kilometers or 15 square miles, at that resolution.)

The volume of data is too great to be completely transmitted, but users will be able to define at least sixty-five independent video windows within the image and zoom in or out at will. The windows can be set to automatically track items of interest such as moving vehicles. In fact, the resolution is good enough for it to offer “dismount tracking” or following individual people on foot.

In addition to the windows, ARGUS will provide “a real-time moving target indicator for vehicles throughout the entire field of view in real-time.” Basically, nothing can move in the entire area without being spotted. Unlike radar, ARGUS can zoom in and provide a high-resolution image.

The camera is pretty impressive, but it’s the processing and the software behind it that will make this such a capable system. It would take a human a very long time to scan the whole area under surveillance if they were looking for something – but this is exactly the type of task which the swarming software we looked at last week excels at. Luckily enough, that just happens to be a Darpa program too. The technique of looking at small windows of interest also means that it may be possible to speed the frame rate up considerably – we previously looked at a windowing system so fast it could follow speeding bullets.

The ARGUS-IS mounted on the Hummingbird could be a significant battlefield asset for getting a real-time picture of what’s on the other side of the hill. And no doubt there will be civilian agencies who think it might be quite a useful capability for them to have too.

Mythological Footnote: Someone in Darpa may be a fan of the classics – Argus or Argos Panoptes was a giant, unsleeping watchman with a hundred eyes all over his body. Unfortunately he was killed by Hermes; according to the myth, his eyes were placed on the tail of the peacock.

[Dig]

USAF to unleash 'Gorgon Stare' sensor in 2010
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/01/28/321732/usaf-to-unleash-gorgon-stare-sensor-in-2010.html
By Stephen Trimble
DATE:28/01/09 SOURCE:Flight International
 


The US Air Force plans to a field a new sensor pod in 2010 that is expected to revolutionise tactical-level intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).

The Sierra Nevada sensor, which the USAF has officially nicknamed the "Gorgon Stare", will initially provide a wide-area, persistent surveillance system for its General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned air vehicles. But its plans for the sensor will see it become the new standard for the tactical ISR mission, and proliferate on to several other unmanned and manned platforms operated by every service.

The Gorgon Stare is intended to "become platform agnostic and feed into a common system where it could go on any aircraft", says Brig Gen Blair Hansen, the USAF's director of ISR capabilities. "It is part of a common theme of integration and compatibility and is where we're going in the future."

Hansen acknowledges that the mission of tactical ISR has become increasingly fragmented, with varying sensors deployed aboard a wide mix of manned and unmanned aircraft.
 
 © USAF


Airborne systems that feature wide-area coverage, real-time playback and direct links to troops on the ground have become popular in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US Army's deployment of the Shorts C-23 Constant Hawk and the US Marine Corps' manned Angel Fire platform are examples of the demand for wide-area, persistent surveillance coverage.

The USAF's original plan was to wait to deploy the Gorgon Stare on the MQ-9 in 2010, but that plan was undone after Secretary of Defense Bob Gates publicly admonished the service to be more responsive to immediate needs on the battlefield.

Last May, USAF leaders approved Project Liberty, a plan to rapidly acquire 37 Beechcraft MC-12Ws - modified King Air 350/350ERs. The first aircraft equipped with an L-3 Wescam MX-15 sensor is expected to be deployed in April, less than one year after the original plan was approved. The MC-12W also will carry an undisclosed signals intelligence payload.

Ultimately, the USAF wants the Gorgon Stare system to supersede the various manned and unmanned sensor pods now performing the wide-area, persistent surveillance mission.

Hansen notes that programmes such as Angel Fire, while helpful, are closed-loop systems that require dedicated logistics and training to support. Gorgon Stare is instead designed to operate from any platform and integrate into the Distributed Common Ground System, which is used by intelligence operators of all services to analyse imagery.

[Dig]

New Reaper sensors offer a bigger picture
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/02/airforce_WAAS_021609/
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Feb 19, 2009 7:39:15 EST

The Air Force plans to install a wide-area airborne surveillance sensor under its MQ-9 Reapers that lets troops look at more of the battlefield from more angles. Ten of the service’s Reapers will start getting the sensor in spring 2010.

The $15 million sensor will film an area with a four-kilometer radius underneath the Reaper during both day and night operations from 12 angles, said Robert Marlin, technical adviser for Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

The Army started using a similar wide-area surveillance sensor, the Constant Hawk, in 2006 and the Marine Corps followed suit with an upgrade called Angel Fire in 2007. Those sensors are mounted under manned aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan

The Air Force now has improved on Angel Fire with its Gorgon Stare, named after Medusa’s gaze that turned her enemies to stone. Gorgon Stare allows any user to choose from the 12 angles that it can broadcast simultaneously, Marlin said; Angel Fire allows multiple users to view its imagery but can broadcast back only one at a time. Angel Fire is also limited to day operations.

Gorgon Stare will allow a combat controller on the ground, a commander at headquarters and an intelligence officer back in the U.S. all to choose a different angle from the same Reaper, said Maj. William Bower, deputy program manager for the MQ-9 Reaper.

The sensor will supplement but not replace the multi-spectral targeting pod aboard the Reaper and the MQ-1 Predator that records full-motion video, Marlin said. He described the Gorgon Stare’s feed as “motion imagery, which will be like a slow, jumpy version of the full-motion video feed.”

Viewing that wider area, though, will allow airmen to “see the bigger picture” and have a better idea where to point full-motion video sensors, Marlin said.

Reapers and MQ-1 Predators are often called on to track vehicles and hover over buildings to watch for “squirters,” or insurgents running out of buildings during U.S. operations. Airmen controlling the sensors sometimes lose track of those vehicles or squirters if they drive or run out of view too fast.

Gorgon Stare will be invaluable in such instances, Bower said. Even if a vehicle drives out of the view of the full-motion video sensor, it will still be within Gorgon Stare’s range. Even if 12 squirters run in 12 directions, Gorgon Stare could dedicate one angle to each one, Marlin said.

Even after a mission is complete, Gorgon Stare will keep providing fresh intelligence by recording each angle. Airmen can then return to a previous mission and view all 12 angles to ensure nothing was missed, Bower said.

Reapers will initially be the only aircraft to fly with the Gorgon Stare, but the RQ-4 Global Hawk and manned aircraft could fly with it later, said Col. Christopher Coombs, 703rd Aeronautical Systems Group commanders, whose unit is in charge of UAV acquisition. The MQ-1 Predator and the Army MQ-1C Sky Warrior could be fitted with Gorgon Stare if Air Force engineers can figure out how to lighten the 1,100-pound sensor, Marlin said

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working with a wide-area airborne surveillance sensor that could provide up to 60 views.

“We’re enhancing this capability and will soon be able to study 30 to 60 targets with one MQ-9 pod,” said Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

What the Gorgon Stare won’t be able to do is replace Reaper and Predator missions, Marlin said.

“I think there is a misperception out there that because it can look at 12 different angles that it will be able to replace 12 Reapers,” he said.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for example, threw their support behind Gorgon Stare in part for “its potential to reduce the requirement for UAS with FMV and to make the latter more effective,” according to a committee report on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

“That’s just not true, but it will be a very powerful tool the Air Force will be able to use,” Marlin said.

[Dig]

What does Gorgon stare mean?

In Greek mythology the Gorgons were three sisters. One of them, Medusa, was punished by having her hair turned to snakes and a gaze which turned people to stone. So I guess she is the one featured in your expression, which obviously refers to a look that would frighten the recipient, if not actually turn him or her to stone.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_Gorgon_stare_mean

[Dig]

UAV's represent the greatest threat to US National Security ever!

http://www.debatecoaches.org/files/download/1069
Rise of the Machines
Drone use in Afghanistan has exploded
Press TV noted in 10
 US deploys 1000s drones in Afghanistan
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=125382&sectionid=351020403  d.a. 7-27-10

The US is deploying thousands of drones in Afghanistan, raising suspicions as to whether the move is aimed at monitoring militants or targeting another country.   Regional defense analysts believe that the unmanned aerial vehicles could be brought into play against regional countries in the wake of mounting tensions with Iran over its nuclear activities, the Pakistan Observer newspaper reported on Tuesday.   Deputy Director for Resources and Acquisition for the Pentagon's Joint Staff, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Glenn Walters, recently said that the American military has sent a host of its 6,500 drones to the Middle East region.
The drones based in Afghanistan are used to target and kill militants throughout the region
Nick Turse is a fellow at New York University’s Center for the United States and the Cold War and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction http://nwoobserver.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/drone-surge-today-tomorrow-and-2047/   d.a. 7-27-10  

What were once unacknowledged, relatively infrequent targeted killings of suspected militants or terrorists in the George W Bush years have become commonplace under the Barack Obama administration. And since a devastating December 30 suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent on a Central Intelligence Agency forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned aerial drones have been hunting humans in the AfPak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan, an “unprecedented number” of strikes – which have killed armed guerrillas and civilians alike – have led to more fear, anger and outrage in the tribal areas, as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with help from the United States Air Force, wages the most public “secret” war of modern times. In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been used to assassinate suspected militants as part of an aerial surge that has significantly outpaced the highly publicized “surge” of ground forces now underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in size and scope, the present ramping up of the drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned 40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Today’s surge Drones are the hot weapons of the moment and the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review – a soon-to-be-released four-year outline of Department of Defense strategies, capabilities and priorities to fight current wars and counter future threats – is already known to reflect this focus. As the Washington Post recently reported, “The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with the goals of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expanding Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.”   The MQ-9 Reaper The MQ-1 Predator – first used in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s – and its newer, larger and more deadly cousin, the MQ-9 Reaper, are now firing missiles and dropping bombs at an unprecedented pace. In 2008, there were reportedly between 27 and 36 US drone attacks as part of the CIA’s covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there were 45 to 53 such strikes. In the first 18 days of January 2010, there had already been 11 of them. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the US Air Force has instituted a much-publicized decrease in piloted air strikes to cut down on civilian casualties as part of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy. At the same time, however, air UAS attacks have increased to record levels. The air force has created an interconnected global command-and-control system to carry out its robot war in Afghanistan (and as Noah Shachtman of Wired’s Danger Room blog has reported, to assist the CIA in its drone strikes in Pakistan as well). Evidence of this can be found at high-tech US bases around the world where drone pilots and other personnel control the planes themselves and the data streaming back from them. These sites include a converted medical warehouse at al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar where the air force secretly oversees its ongoing drone wars; Kandahar and Jalalabad air fields in Afghanistan, where the drones are physically based; the global operations center at Nevada’s Creech air base, where the air force’s “pilots” fly drones by remote control from thousands of kilometers away; and – perhaps most importantly – at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a 12-square-mile (32 square kilometers) facility in Dayton, Ohio, named after the two local brothers who invented powered flight in 1903.  
Drones create a unique military presence in the air that cannot be provided by any other aircraft
Nadav Deutscher   Defense Professional News  5-12-10
http://www.defpro.com/news/details/15172/  d.a. 7-22-10
Looking ahead to the future, Maj. Gen. Nechushtan spoke of the function of the Air Force's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), saying that they do not replace other air operations, but rather represent a complementary force: "UAVs belong to a whole aerial niche which did not exist before, because they enable new capabilities on the battlefield. Planes in general do not remain on the battlefield; they go and come back, and to that end they need very precise planning, as opposed to ground forces that go to the field and only then finalize operational plans. UAVs work in a different way – they go to the battlefield and spend a lot of time there. They can help and accomplish a lot in both air and ground missions". "UAVs allow us presence in the air, and this is a revolution that the Air Force is entering by using them. This is expressed when considering the total flight hours of the IAF during Operation Cast Lead, where UAVs made up for about half of the total flight hours. Their contribution to the battlefield is considerable and they constitute a complementary and crucial tool to the IAF", he added.
They give the U.S. military an extensive aerial presence in parts of Afghanistan where we have no other presence
Anna, reporter for U.S. News & World Report  Drones Fill the Troops Gap in Afghanistan
U.S. News & World Report 145 no6 30 S 15-22 2008  

The demand for unmanned planes is higher than ever
    It's been a rough year in Afghanistan. U.S. troops' deaths have hit record levels, and growing violence is forcing the Pentagon to dispatch 12,000 additional troops to take on a dangerous mix of insurgents and militants. The manpower shortages have also created an insatiable demand for unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, and the pilots who fly them remotely, sometimes from halfway across the globe.
    Commanders on the ground have come to rely on a fleet of drones and their high-tech "targeting pods," which stream video intelligence and deliver it to troops fighting militant groups throughout the country. UAVs help to search the seemingly endless mountain terrain for insurgents and provide what is known as "armed overwatch" for soldiers in battle. "We could certainly use more," says Gen. David McKiernan, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. "The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan runs 2,500 kilometers [1,500 miles]. That's a huge area to maintain surveillance on."
    The UAVs have also helped expand America's combat reach into the most remote parts of Afghanistan. The main workhorses are the Predator and its new cousin, the Reaper. While the Predator carries two laser-guided Hellfire missiles and can travel 135 mph, the Reaper can fly twice as high, at 50,000 feet, and three times as fast. It can also carry eight times more weaponry and has a range of over 1,800 miles, versus 450 for the Predator.
Drones contextually increase our military presence because they give us a permanent above ground presence
Space Express 06
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Boeing_Demonstrates_UAV_Automated_Aerial_Refueling_Capability_999.html
St. Louis MO (SPX) Nov 28, 2006


The Boeing Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR) program successfully completed flight tests in August that demonstrated for the first time an unmanned air vehicle's ability to autonomously maintain a steady refueling station behind a tanker aircraft. "With autonomous air refueling capabilities, unmanned aircraft will have greater combat radius and loiter time," said David Riley, Boeing Phantom Works AAR program manager.

"This can enable a quicker response for time-critical targets and will reduce the need for forward-staging refueling areas. Another benefit is increased in-theater military presence with fewer military assets."
Afghanistan is the key test ground for drone technologies
Pae 01
PETER PAE Times Staff Writer  Los Angeles Times October 3, 2001
Newest U.S. Weapons Built to Swiftly Find and Destroy
Military: The technology acknowledges warfare's new reality of terrorists, and not superpowers, as the primary threat.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2001/011003-attack01.htm  d.a. 7-25-10

Military sources said the unmanned aerial vehicle is in operation over Afghanistan, and analysts said that the Predator may have been the vehicle that the Taliban claimed to have shot down last week.  In what could be a prelude to deployment of combat-flying drones, a Predator recently launched several Hellfire antitank missiles at a test range, hitting all three targets.  Although Pentagon officials have steadfastly refused to comment on any programs and weapons out of fear of compromising operations, the U.S. has already asked defense contractors to speed up development of a host of technologies that just a few months ago were years away from deployment.  The Army and the Air Force have established programs to provide seed money to speed up development of certain technologies that the Pentagon believes will provide "quick solutions to current needs"--a low-profile effort known as Warfighter Rapid Acquisition Process.  A Pentagon spokeswoman said the process is in place but declined to provide further details.  One of the high-profile programs that the Pentagon wants to accelerate is Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Global Hawk, a long-endurance, high-altitude unmanned spy plane that is eventually scheduled to replace the U-2 spy jet.  The plane, larger and more costly than the Predator, is equipped with a variety of sensors, including a hyper-spectral imaging device that can distinguish between camouflage and vegetation, as well as a synthetic aperture radar that can see through clouds and darkness. Because it has no pilot, the plane can hover over an area for 24 hours or more, a distinct advantage over satellites that fly over an area at specific, predictable intervals. A test plane recently set an aviation endurance record for flight without refueling.  The Air Force has four Global Hawks that it has been testing, and is scheduled to take delivery of two more shortly. Military analysts said that the test vehicles could easily be refitted for deployment.  "Unless [Bin Laden] wants to be totally out of contact and hide in a cave indefinitely, we'll find him," Thompson said. "If he does decide to go underground for a long time to keep from getting discovered, then that would serve our purpose."  Gravity Bombs Turned Into Precision Weapons  To military planners, Afghanistan is expected to provide a rich test bed for the type of warfare that the U.S. is likely to face in the 21st century. Boeing Co., for instance, has been supplying the Air Force with global positioning system kits that could be mounted on gravity bombs and turning them into precision weapons capable of being directed to within 30 feet of a target.  The weapons would allow the military to launch more precise, surgical strikes within minutes of knowing the whereabouts of a target, compared to the days or weeks it took to launch massive campaigns like the Persian Gulf War.
The United States federal government should renounce and eliminate the presence of militarized drones in Afghanistan.
Advantage I.  The Terminator
The distancing built into drone operations creates space for surveillance and destruction that devalue life

STEPHEN GRAHAM,  Centre for the Study of Cities and Regions, Department of Geography, University of Durham, Cities and the 'War on Terror'nWiley interscience International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Volume 30, Issue 2, Pages 255-276

In the 'target' cities and spaces of the Middle East, on the other hand, Huber and Mills stress that superficially similar, automated systems of sensing and surveillance must also be seamlessly integrated into the high-tech US military machine. Rather than pinpointing and reducing threats, however, the purpose of these systems is to continuously and automatically project death and destruction to pinpointed locations in the cities and spaces that have discursively been constructed as targets for US military power in the 'war on terror'. 'We really do want an Orwellian future', they write, 'not in Manhattan, but in Kabul' (ibid.: 29). Their prognosis is stark and dualistic. It renders the ideology of 'New Normalcy' and the Pentagon's 'long war' into a binaried splitting of geography overlain by, and facilitated through, globe-spanning US military sensor and targeting systems. 'Terrorist wars will continue, in one form or another, for as long as we live', they write: We are destined to fight a never-ending succession of micro-scale battles, which will require us to spread military resources across vast expanses of empty land and penetrate deep into the shadows of lives lived at the margins of human existence. Their conscripts dwell in those expanses and shadows. Our soldiers don't, and can't for any extended period of time. What we have instead is micro-scale technology that is both smarter and more expendable than their fanatics, that is more easily concealed and more mobile, that requires no food and sleep, and that can endure even harsher conditions (ibid.: 29). Saturating adversary cities and territories with millions of 'loitering' surveillance and targeting devices, intimately linked into global and 'network-centric' surveillance and targeting systems, thus becomes the invisible and unreported shadow of the high-profile, technologically similar 'homeland' security systems erected within and between the cities of the US mainland. To Huber and Mills, the United State's 'longer-term objective must be to infiltrate their homelands electronically, to the point where we can listen to and track anything that moves', where the 'their' refers to the 'terrorists' inhabiting the targeted cities (ibid.: 30). Then, when purported 'targets' are detected, US forces: can then project destructive power precisely, judiciously, and from a safe distance week after week, year after year, for as long as may be necessary. . . . Properly deployed at home, as they can be, these technologies of freedom will guarantee the physical security on which all our civil liberties ultimately depend. Properly deployed abroad, they will destroy privacy everywhere we need to destroy it . . . At home and abroad, it will end up as their sons against our silicon. Our silicon will win (ibid.: 31–34).       Technophiliac unveilings of 'homeland' and 'target' cities Strikingly, in Huber and Mills's scenario, political judgements about the (lack of) value of human life in the demonized cities and spaces that have been so powerfully (re)constructed in 'war on terror' discourses, is actually maintained and policed through automated surveillance and killing systems. For here the apparent disposability of life in such 'target' cities is maintained continuously by the ongoing presence of Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (or UCAVs) armed with 'Hellfire' missiles. These weapons can be launched at short notice, sometimes from operators sited at transoceanic distances, once the surveillance webs that saturate the 'target cities' detect some notional 'target'. Far from being some fanciful military futurology from Huber and Mills' technophiliac fantasies, then, these principles are actually directly shaping the design of new US military systems which are already under development or even deployment as part of the new Pentagon strategy of 'long war' in which the number of unmanned and armed drones is to be more than doubled by 2010 (US Department of Defense, 2006). Thus, on the one hand, as already mentioned, the cities and urban corridors within US national borders are being wired up with a large range of automated sensors which are designed to detect and locate a whole spectrum of potentially 'terrorist' threats. On the other, the Pentagon's research and development outfit, DARPA (the Defense Applications Research and Projects Agency), is now developing the sorts of large-scale, 'loitering' surveillance grids to try and 'unveil' the supposedly impenetrable and labyrinthine landscapes of closely built Middle Eastern cities. In a new programme tellingly titled Combat Zones That See (or CTS), DARPA (2003) is developing systems of micro-cameras and sensors that can be scattered discretely across built urban landscapes and that automatically scan millions of vehicles and human faces for 'known targets' and record any event deemed to be 'unusual'. 'The ability to track vehicles across extended distances is the key to providing actionable intelligence for military operations in urban terrain', the brief for the programme argues. 'Combat Zones that See will advance the state of the art for multiple-camera video tracking to the point where expected tracking length reaches city-sized distances' (DARPA, 2003). Befitting the definition of Middle Eastern 'target' cities within US military doctrine as zones where human life warrants little protection or ornamentation, 'actionable' here is most likely to be translated in practice — Israeli style — as automated or near-automated aerial attempts at killing the 'targeted' person(s). Because urban density in target cities is seen to render 'stand-off sensing from airborne and space-borne platforms ineffective' (ibid.), CTS' main role will be to hold even targets within densely urbanized spaces continuously 'at risk' from near-instant targeting and destruction from weapons guided by the Global Positioning System. In US military jargon this is termed 'compressing the kill chain'— a process which 'closes the time delay between sensor and shooter' to an extent that brings 'persistent area dominance' (or PAD) even over and within dense megacities like Baghdad (Hebert, 2003: 36).
Drones deployed to sustain a presence over the “other” construct Afghanistan as a permanent target that entrenches racist colonization and violence
STEPHEN GRAHAM,  Centre for the Study of Cities and Regions, Department of Geography, University of Durham, Cities and the 'War on Terror'nWiley interscience International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Volume 30, Issue 2, Pages 255-276

Importantly, then, this complex of discourses and representations — themselves the product of increasingly militarized popular and political cultures — work, on the one hand, to problematize urban cosmopolitanism in 'homeland cities' and, on the other, to essentialize and reify the social ecologies of 'target' cities in profoundly racist ways. From such symbolic violence real violence only too easily follows. Second, this article has demonstrated that the production of this highly charged dialectic — the forging of exclusionary, nationalist, imagined communities and the Othering of both those deemed 'terroristic' within US cities and whole swathes of our urbanizing planet — has been a fundamental prerequisite for the legitimization of the entire 'war on terror'. The truly striking thing here is how such fundamentalist and racist constructions of urban place have their almost exact shadow in the charged representations of cities routinely disseminated by fundamentalist Islamist networks like al-Qaeda (Zulaika, 2003). Here, however, the 'targets' are the 'infidel', 'Christian' or 'Zionist' cities of the West or Israel. The theological mandate is invoked from a different source. And the sentimentalized cities and spaces of the Islamic 'homeland' are to be violently 'purified' of 'Western' presence in order to forcibly create a transnational Islamic space or umma which systematically excludes all diversity and Otherness through continuous, murderous force. The real tragedy of the 'war on terror', then, is that it has closely paralleled al-Qaeda in invoking homogeneous and profoundly exclusionary notions of 'community' as a way of legitimizing massive violence against innocent civilians. Strikingly, the strategies and discourses of both the Bush administration and al-Qaeda have both been based on charged, and mutually reinforcing, dialectics and imaginative geographies of place construction. Both have relied heavily on promulgating hyper-masculine notions of (asymmetric) war, invocations of some absolute theological mandate, and absolutist notions of violence to finally exterminate the enemy without limits in space or time. Both have also relied heavily on the use of transnational media systems to repeatedly project good versus evil rhetorics and spectacles of victimhood, demonization, dehumanization and revenge (Gilroy, 2003; Zulaika, 2003; Boal et al., 2005). Third, the reliance of the 'war on terror's' imaginative geographies on projections of absolute difference, distance and disconnection are overlaid by, and potentially usurped through, the manifold flows and connections that link urban life in Arab cities intimately to urban life in the cosmopolitan urban centers of the USA. The binaried urban and global imaginative geographies underpinning the 'war on terror' are inevitably undermined by such contradictions as rapidly as they are projected. Thus, a revivified Orientalism is used to remake imaginative geographies of 'inside' and 'outside', just as a wide range of processes demonstrate how incendiary such binaries now are. On the one hand, the construction of 'homeland cities' as endlessly vulnerable spaces open without warning to an almost infinite range of technologized threats, actually works to underline the necessary integration of US and Western cities into the manifold flows and processes that sustain the rescaling political economies and state processes of neoliberal globalization. Similarly, the attempt to discursively demarcate the everyday urban life of US citizens from Arab ones denies the transnational and increasingly globalized geographies of media flow, migration, mobility, neocolonial governance, resource geopolitics, social repression and incarceration, and the predatory capital flows surrounding neoliberal 'reconstruction' that, paradoxically, are serving to connect US cities ever more closely with Arab cities. Thus — especially in the more cosmopolitan cities of the US — the representations and discourses stressing disconnection and difference analysed in this article are continuously contradicted by the proliferation of moments and processes involving connection, linkage and similarity. Many of these, of course, are shaped by the geographies of 'accumulation by dispossession' (Harvey, 2003), 'primitive accumulation' (Boal et al., 2005), and resource wars, that so dominate the neoconservative geopolitical strategy of the Bush Administration (Harvey, 2003; Boal et al., 2005). A key task, then, is to understand how the urban imaginative geographies and military technologies considered here help to constitute broader territorial configurations of a hyper-militarized US Empire (Kipfer and Goonewardena, 2005). A critical question emerges here for further research: how might the various acts of urban denial, erasure, securitization, targeting and 'reconstruction' that are so foundational to the 'war on terror' help to constitute and sustain the US empire's changing territorial colonial configurations, core-periphery geographies and economic dynamics? Our final conclusion derives from this article's third focus: the treatment of US and Arab cities within emerging US military technology for 'persistent surveillance'. Here, we see colonial military technologies and militarized urban planning practices emerging which stress the connection and integration of cities within both the US and in targeted nations within a single, urbanizing 'battlespace'. Such examples remind us that — whilst usually ignored — military geographies and technologies are actually themselves key drivers of neoliberal globalization (Shamar and Kumar, 2003). They also underline that, throughout the history of empires, military, social control and planning innovations, tried and tested in 'colonized' cities, have been used as exemplars on which to try and re-model practices of attempted social control in cities of the 'homeland' (Misselwitz and Weizman, 2003). It should be no surprise, however, that an ultimate 'colonial splitting of reality' lurks within this apparent, technologized (albeit highly militarized) integration. Here the colonialist imaginative geographies are being hard-wired into code, servers, surveillance complexes and increasingly automated weapons systems. For the ways in which judgements about the value of the human subjects are being embedded into the high-tech war-fighting, surveillance, and software systems now being developed to expose all urban citizens to scrutiny, in both US and Arab cities, could not be more different. In 'homeland' cities, to be sure, there is a radical ratcheting-up of surveillance and (attempted) social control, the endless 'terror talk', highly problematic clampdowns, the 'hardening' of urban 'targets', and potentially indefinite incarcerations, sometimes within extra-legal or extra-territorial camps, for those people deemed to display the signifiers of real or 'dormant' terrorists. In the 'targeted' urban spaces of worlds within Barnett's 'non-integrating gap', meanwhile, weapons systems are currently being designed which are emerging as systems of automated, continuous (attempted) assassination. Here, chillingly, software code is being invested with the sovereign power to kill. Such systems are being brought into being within legal and geographical states of exception that are now increasingly being normalized and universalized as global strategy. This trend is backed by neoconservative ideologies and geopolitical scripts. These justify continuous, pre-emptive US military aggression against sources of 'terrorism' as a central platform of Dick Cheney's 'New Normalcy', or the Pentagon's 'long war'. Such a strategy is also being fuelled by the great temptation, in the light of the horrors of street fighting during the Iraq insurgency, and the 2000+ US military dead, for the US state and military to deploy autonomous and robotized US weapons against purported enemies who are always likely to remain all-too human (Graham, 2006b). 'The enemy, are they going to give up blood and guts to kill machines?' wondered Gordon Johnson, head of a US army robot weapons team, in 2003. 'I'm guessing not' (cited in Lawlor, 2004: 3). The main worry here is that these systems will be deployed stealthily by the US state to 'loiter' more or less permanently above and within cities and regions deemed to be the 'war on terror's' main targets. They might then produce realms of automated, stealthy and continuous violence. Let loose from both the spatial and temporal limits, and the legal norms, of war, as traditionally understood (i.e. in its declared and demarcated state-vs-state guises), this violence is likely to largely escape the selective and capricious gaze of mainstream Western media (see Blackmore, 2005). This shift to robotized war, and militaristic paradigms which see cities as mere battlespace, and their inhabitants as mere targets, is far from uncontested. Even within the US military — especially the infantry in the US Army — many are deeply sceptical of any military 'silver bullets' emerging from the think tanks, research complexes and weapons manufacturers of the US military-industrial-entertainment complex. Nonetheless, the latest 2006 Pentagon Defense Review suggests that the widespread deployment of autonomous, armed drones across large swathes of our urbanizing world is already being planned and undertaken. The links explored here between urban imaginative geographies, high-tech weaponry, and the urbanizing geopolitics of insurgency against the transnational colonial and military power of the US empire, thus look set to deepen further.
Warfighting through drones creates a process of dehumanization that makes war and extinction inevitable
Patrick Lafferty Combat Without Cognizance - or Murder by Joystick?  April 7, 2009  http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=12803.  D.a. 7-25-10

What needs to be said here is war and conflict regardless of means is tragic, heartbreaking and often criminal. There is a distinction to made between the technique of Operation Cast Lead and the use of Drones. If we must as a species continue to kill each other for any reason under the Military, LOAC and RoE, I think we should continue to operate with face to face annihilation of our supposed enemies. The use of UCAV’s may seem to some as a means to prevent the death of ones forces or manpower, but it leaves the personal intercourse, witnesses, testimonies, human reaction that may avoid a deadly encounter and most important accountability.

Who bears the responsibility for an autonomous attack when things go wrong? Can a computer determine proportional response? Can the computer mimick humanity? Can this technology weigh casualties against advantage anticipated? Can an autonomous system differentiate between unnecessary suffering or injury? Sanitizing and dehumanizing these factors will open the doors to what I believe will be unspeakable disregard for humanity and the necessary processes of distinction.

I apologize to the families who have lost love ones but I stand fast on this point. If you enlist to fight for your country, you enlist to kill for your country and you risk dying for your country as well. How you deal with these in your time of service are what will progress our hopeful enlightenment to an end to war and armed conflict and an avoidance of assured mutual destruction.

It is foolish for the public to be aghast at the tragedies such as Israel’s possible crimes or the matter of Lt. Calley in the Mei Lei massacre in Vietnam. It is the harsh realities and bitter pills that we must swallow until we address the real issues of leadership, our military agendas, the industrial military corporations and the men who wear the star clad shoulder bars and ribbons, for they are the ones who back and support the technology of killing without faces, without feeling and without accountability. This is another slippery slope that if we do not consider the inevitable desensitizing effect of this kind of combat and the long war mentality, then powers behind the creations of these conflicts will be happy to run drone and joystick wars in the backrooms of their stores for years to come while ringing their cash registers.
The dehumanization created by reliance on drones will lead to nuclear extinction
Mitchell A. Chester, an attorney and civic activist Failsafe Revisited…Psychology and Robotic Delivery of the Bomb 12/26/2009  d.a. 7-25-10
http://sharedemergency.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/failsafe-revisited-psychology-and-robotic-delivery-of-the-bomb/

As nations assess future military capabilities, it is not surprising that strategic use of drones (including such devices with tactical nuclear weapons) is on mankind’s doorstep. But crossing the tactical/strategic nuclear boundary when considering robotic air warfare is a threshold that we dare not cross. Before it gets too late, this technology should be arrested, contained and outlawed on a planetary scale. Recent open discussion in the military press has centered on whether strategic bombers should be replaced by nuclear-armed drones. In the June, 2009 issue of Armed Forces Journal, Air Force Research Institute Professor Adam Lowther pondered “whether it’s time to pursue a long-range, unmanned and nuclear armed bomber.” ArmedForcesJournal.com published a November, 2009 article by Col. James Jinnette, warning the “defense establishment has become seduced by the idea of unmanned airpower,” some of which may be controlled by artificial intelligence. He points out that judgment and “creative capacity” may be pushed aside by such technology. With these voices, future militarization takes on a most serious debate, as the world is embarking into uncharted intellectual killing territory. According to PW Singer in his TED talk of February, 2009, robotic war “changes the experience of the warrior, and even the identity of the warrior.” (See video). The easier and faster it is to initiate a tactical nuclear attack, without endangering crew lives, the more we hide behind robotics to accomplish our human instinct to kill. According to Singer, “Another way of putting this is that mankind’s 5000 year old monopoly on the fighting of war is breaking down in our lifetime.” The more we rely on machines, computer programs and remote control technology, the closer we approach the point of no return by (ironically) further dehumanizing war. Tactical military robotics with conventional weapons can save lives, but nuclear equipped robotics can help end all life. Much of 20th Century nuclear policy was based on the psychology of “mutual assured destruction.” Human emotions controlled the threats. It is that mindset that has helped us reach 2010. Another reason we have survived is that humans have instincts, and, at the personal level, the desire to survive. It is those qualities that helped avoid an accidental nuclear exchange in 1995 when Russian Rocket Forces mistook a scientific missile launch for an ICBM attack. It is the exercise of reason and intuition that spared America during the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The more we encumber the exercise of human judgment (despite it’s frailties) by relying on highly complex but remote technology via nuclear delivery systems, the more inhumane, mechanical and likely nuclear war actually becomes. Machines lack consciousness, and if programmed improperly, they can be subverted to misunderstand logic.
We are at a Zeitgeist moment--Unless the U.S. restrains the use of drones there will be a global proliferation of drone technology leading to the globalization of death
Tom Engelhardt Tom Engelhardt is a graduate of Yale University and one of the country's most eminent book editorsEditor of TomDispatch.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/america-detached-from-war_b_624155.html  d.a. 7-25-10
America Detached from War: Bush's Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales From the Crypt  

Smoking Drones, not a single smoking drone is in sight. Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized.  It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier.  It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade. Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.”  It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions.  He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.”  Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.” Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war.  “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.” Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.” But pay no mind to all this.  The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter.  The die is cast, the money committed.  The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.  It’s a done deal.  Drone war is, and will be, us. A Pilotless Military If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well.  The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.   It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times).  It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor. The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution.  Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone.  Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one.  Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid. As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us.  In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove.  With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games.  That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment. The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t.  If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war. After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this.  If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making. As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families).  It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity.  As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.”  And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens. If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace.  In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones.  We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind.  The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)? Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials. The Globalization of Death Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred.  He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come.  There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes.  Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones.  Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians. Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight.  In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances.  In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike. We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo.  And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit.  When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less.  And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved. In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news.  Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones.  It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.
U.S. drone attacks will incite international, uncontrolled drone use and risks the spread of new weapons tech—
Savage ’10 [Charlie, columnist for the New York Times, New York Times, “U.N. Report Highly Critical of American Drone Attacks, Warning of Use by Others”, June 6th, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/ 03drones.html, Academic Search Premier]

A senior United Nations official said on Wednesday that the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill terrorism suspects was undermining global constraints on the use of military force. He warned that the American example would lead to a chaotic world as the new weapons technology inevitably spread.

[Dig]

UAV's represent the greatest threat to US National Security ever!
(Continued)
http://www.debatecoaches.org/files/download/1069

In a world of proliferating drones every international crisis is likely to lead to war
P. W. Singer is director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Singer.
Winter 2009   Robots at War: The New Battlefield
http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?aid=1313.  D.a. 7-25-10

James Der Derian is an expert at Brown University on new modes of war. He believes that the combination of these factors means that robotics will “lower the threshold for violence.” The result is a dangerous mixture: leaders unchecked by a public veto now gone missing, combined with technologies that seem to offer spectacular results with few lives lost. It’s a brew that could prove very seductive to decision makers. “If one can argue that such new technologies will offer less harm to us and them, then it is more likely that we’ll reach for them early, rather than spending weeks and months slogging at diplomacy.”

When faced with a dispute or crisis, policymakers have typically regarded the use of force as the “option of last resort.” Unmanned systems might now help that option move up the list, with each upward step making war more likely. That returns us to Korb’s scenario of “more Kosovos, less Iraqs.”

While avoiding the mistakes of Iraq certainly sounds like a positive result, the other side of the tradeoff would not be without problems. The 1990s were not the halcyon days some recall. Lowering the bar to allow for more unmanned strikes from afar would lead to an approach resembling the “cruise missile diplomacy” of that period. Such a strategy may leave fewer troops stuck on the ground, but, as shown by the strikes against Al Qaeda camps in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, the Kosovo war in 1999, and perhaps now the drone strikes in Pakistan, it produces military action without any true sense of a commitment,lash-outs that yield incomplete victories at best. As one U.S. Army report notes, such operations “feel good for a time, but accomplish little.” They involve the country in a problem, but do not resolveit.

Even worse, Korb may be wrong, and the dynamic may yield not fewer Iraqs but more of them. It was the lure of an easy preemptive action that helped get the United States into such trouble in Iraq in the first place. As one robotics scientist says of the new technology he is building, “The military thinks that it will allow them to nip things in the bud, deal with the bad guys earlier and easier, rather than having to get into a big-ass war. But the most likely thing that will happen is that we’ll be throwing a bunch of high tech against the usual urban guerillas. . . . It will stem the tide [of U.S. casualties], but it won’t give us some asymmetric advantage.”

Thus, robots may entail a dark irony. By appearing to lower the human costs of war, they may seduce us into more wars.

The result will be termination of the planet
Engelhardt, ‘9 [Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, Drone Wars: Your Future has Arrived, 4/7/09, http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/3990-drone-wars-your-future-has-arrived.html.]

If you want to read the single most chilling line yet uttered about drone warfare American-style, it comes at the end of Christopher Drew's piece. He quotes Brookings Institution analyst Peter Singer saying of our Predators and Reapers: "[T]hese systems today are very much Model T Fords. These things will only get more advanced."  In other words, our drone wars are being fought with the airborne equivalent of cars with cranks, but the "race" to the horizon is already underway. By next year, some Reapers will have a far more sophisticated sensor system with 12 cameras capable of filming a two-and-a-half mile round area from 12 different angles. That program has been dubbed "Gorgon Stare", but it doesn't compare to the future 92-camera Argus program whose initial development is being funded by the Pentagon's blue-skies outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  Soon enough, a single pilot may be capable of handling not one but perhaps three drones, and drone armaments will undoubtedly grow progressively more powerful and "precise." In the meantime, BAE Systems already has a drone four years into development, the Taranis, that should someday be "completely autonomous"; that is, it theoretically will do without human pilots. Initial trials of a prototype are scheduled for 2010.  By 2020, so claim UAV enthusiasts, drones could be engaging in aerial battle and choosing their victims themselves. As Robert S. Boyd of McClatchy reported recently, "The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons."  It's a particular sadness of our world that, in Washington, only the military can dream about the future in this way, and then fund the "arms race" of 2018 or 2035. Rest assured that no one with a governmental red cent is researching the health care system of 2018 or 2035, or the public education system of those years.  In the meantime, the skies of our world are filling with round-the-clock assassins. They will only evolve and proliferate. Of course, when we check ourselves out in the movies, we like to identify with John Connor, the human resister, the good guy of this planet, against the evil machines. Elsewhere, however, as we fight our drone wars ever more openly, as we field mechanical techno-terminators with all-seeing eyes and loose our missiles from thousands of miles away ("Hasta la Vista, Baby!"), we undoubtedly look like something other than a nation of John Connors to those living under the Predators. It may not matter if the joysticks and consoles on those advanced machines are somewhat antiquated; to others, we are now the terminators of the planet, implacable machine assassins.  True, we can't send our drones into the past to wipe out the young Ayman al-Zawahiri in Cairo or the teenage Osama bin Laden speeding down some Saudi road in his gray Mercedes sedan. True, the UAV enthusiasts, who are already imagining all-drone wars run by "ethical" machines, may never see anything like their fantasies come to pass. Still, the fact that without the help of a single advanced cyborg we are already in the process of creating a Terminator planet should give us pause for thought... or not.
The plan is essential to checking the spread of the drone wars
LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHAUN R. MCGRATH United States Air Force  
STRATEGIC MISSTEP: “IMMORTAL” ROBOTIC WARFARE, INVITING COMBAT TO SUBURBAN AMERICA March 18, 2010 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA521822&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf  d.a. 7-27-10

The concept of “at risk” must be weighed now and with future warfare advances. While not advocating the U.S. secede its overwhelming advantage in the field of battle, knowingly expanding the battlefield to U.S. soil transfers an additional enduring risk to the civilian populace similar to nuclear warfare retaliation and is unacceptable. The U.S. Air Force also advocates evaluating strategic risks before moving forward, “Ethical discussions and policy decisions must take place in the near term in order to guide the development of future UAS capabilities, rather than allowing the development to take its own path apart from this critical guidance.”113 Unfortunately those words were not put into a doctrinal document until less than a year ago…over seven years after the first time death was delivered from nearly 7,500 miles away. To retain true world superpower legitimacy, the U.S. must lead the effort to limit the use of “distant warfare” and lead meaningful legal, moral, and ethical debates. The world is watching to follow the lead of the U.S. as robotic warfare rapidly advances forward. Hopefully the guiding voice of General Robert E. Lee who witnessed great death on the battlefield is heard, “It is good that we find war so horrible, or else we would become found of it.”114
Advantage II.  Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Militarized drone attacks in and from Afghanistan risk blowback against the United States
Michael, author and foreign policy analyst  Deadly Drones: Immoral Weapons of Civilian Destruction http://www.opednews.com/articles/Deadly-drones-immoral-wea-by-michael-payne-091021-444.html

Air force operators control the drones from locations such as Creech Air Force Base, in the vicinity of Las Vegas, Nevada. The other program is operated by the C.I.A. and is designed to hunt down terrorists in various regions of the world. The C.I.A. drones use air bases in Afghanistan under the guidance of controllers located in Langley, Virginia. Since he assumed the office of the U.S. presidency, President Obama has authorized many drone strikes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. These strikes have targeted and killed any number of important Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders to be sure. But in doing so they have also killed several hundred innocent civilians; men, women and children. Jane Mayer reports in the New Yorker, "Seems like President Barack Obama " Nobel Peace Laureate - has taken his predecessor's predator drone program and jacked it up with steroids. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer reports this week that the number of Obama-authorized strikes in Pakistan equals the sum launched by the Bush Administration -- in the last three years of his tenure. Wow. And the Republicans were worried that he wouldn't be "man" enough". Who says he hasn't done anything? President Obama and the military leaders see this new generation of weaponry as a very effective tool in the so-called War on Terror. But it is very difficult to understand why they cannot comprehend the massive blowback will come from enraged villagers who will become insurgents to get revenge. There is much evidence that for every drone strike that results in killing innocent civilians the insurgent forces are able to recruit scores of new recruits to aid their cause. There are reports that the drone war is bringing in hundreds of recruits from other nations in the region who are reacting to the carnage. This appears to be one of those situations in which the use of napalm, white phosphorus weapons and Agent Orange in the Vietnam War enraged the population and resulted in a tremendous blowback. At that time, our military was under the impression that such shock and awe administered on the nation of Vietnam would bring them to their knees. In fact, the result was exactly the opposite when, after 58,000 U.S. troops lost their lives, our military was forced to quickly exit that war when Saigon fell to the Viet Cong in 1975.  
Since the drones are “piloted” from the U.S. they create a risk of retaliatory counter strikes against the U.S. itself
LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHAUN R. MCGRATH United States Air Force  
STRATEGIC MISSTEP: “IMMORTAL” ROBOTIC WARFARE, INVITING COMBAT TO SUBURBAN AMERICA March 18, 2010 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA521822&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf  d.a. 7-27-10

Aided by rapid technological advances, operators of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) can now carry out lethal combat actions from perceived safe sanctuaries in the United States (U.S.), 7,500 miles from the enemy. However, this thesis challenges the U.S. assumption that such tactical successes using armed RPAs to engage the enemy with “risk-less distant warfare” will result in strategic victory. This is particularly true when used to engage the enemy outside of direct force-on-force engagements. The very nature of this use negates America’s own goal of decreasing the threat to its civilian populace from enduring enemy counter action. The enduring threat will grow from a deficient U.S. assessment of the environment in which the enemy’s ability to attract support for its historically based strategy is aided by instantaneous and ubiquitous global interconnectivity. The lack of clarity in legal, moral, and ethical policies guiding the employment of such robotic warfare highlights the current strategic misstep by prolonging the Long War from increased anti-U.S. sentiment and an enduring legitimate counter attack threat to RPA operators. The persistent threat will not only hold the operators at risk, but also those around them in suburban America.
Drone attacks operated from the U.S. will justify strikes against the U.S. and the risks are linear
LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHAUN R. MCGRATH United States Air Force  
STRATEGIC MISSTEP: “IMMORTAL” ROBOTIC WARFARE, INVITING COMBAT TO SUBURBAN AMERICA March 18, 2010 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA521822&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf  d.a. 7-27-10

Leaders in the RPA community voice concerns of a risk to attacks. The U.S. Air Force Director of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Innovations commented that, “We are taking very seriously in the United States the notion of insurgency teams coming surreptitiously in the states and trying to attack our bases.”104Such warnings have not prompted policy changes to RPA employment. The analysis is also deficient, as military bases pose a greater challenge to attack than a suburban home. The enemy and unfortunately many around the world would likely view an attack in suburban America against RPA operators as justified by a comparison to the U.S. targeting of individuals outside of direct force-on-force combat action.  The reported expansion of the use of armed RPAs over the past year in current conflicts illuminates additional strategic concerns. While officially acknowledged use of RPA strikes dates back to 2002, the most alarming expansion may not be the actual reported use, but more so in the prolific world-wide reporting and discussion of their use in Congressional testimony and mainstream media. A 60-Minutes special aired in May, 2009 clearly outlines the operational concept of RPA employment. 105 Again a feature story in the March, 2010 Popular Mechanics magazine details the operations and insights to the future.106The incredible growing quantity of unofficial or alleged reports of attacks in areas outside of coalition force-on-force engagements should also be of great concern in the expansion of robotic warfare. By now it is crystal clear around the world, who, where, and how the U.S. operationally employs this distant lethal weapon.  Reported RPA strikes in the future, fully corroborated or not, will continue to lead enemies to assume operators 7,500 miles or more from the point of death conducted the “risk-less” attacks. That assumption greatly increases the reality of risk to enemy counter attacks being held by combatants and those around them on U.S. soil. Recent “interpretive guidance” offered by the International Committee of the Red Cross and arguments by U.S. lawyers attempt to classify non-state militants and terrorists into the Westphalian definitions of “combatant” and further to justify actions against them.107 These attempts lend justification for the U.S. and others to authorize RPA operator attacks on individuals outside of direct force-on-force combat, but in doing so may unwittingly unravel a strategy that seeks to minimize long term attack on home soil. In a not so complimentary irony, these clarifications potentially open the door to the international eye viewing these enemy counter attacks on U.S. soil as legitimate combatant versus combatant actions and would be tantamount to a great reversal of strategy. However, in a great “Catch-22,” the failure to classify and justify the actors and actions of 21 stCentury conflict risks the targeted killings by RPA operators being viewed as illegal acts of war.  Regardless of these debates’ outcome, RPA warfare will continue to gain the front line press and scrutiny it deserves. Reminiscent of enduring thoughts of the nuclear age, any hopes of completely “putting the genie back in the bottle” are false. The risk to RPA operators will increase with every Hellfire missile fired or bomb dropped that is not in direct support of force-on-force combat. The risk unfortunately will not be theirs alone to hold when they most vulnerable during breaks between “combat.”  Unless the U.S. engages in decisive action soon, the allure of technological prowess that spurred a rush to embrace tactical success as a key to strategic victory, will instead begin to weaken its own desired strategic outcome.  
Unlike normal military operations, drones create a unique risk of retaliation against the U.S. homeland—The risk outweigh any benefits to operating the drones
LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHAUN R. MCGRATH United States Air Force  
STRATEGIC MISSTEP: “IMMORTAL” ROBOTIC WARFARE, INVITING COMBAT TO SUBURBAN AMERICA March 18, 2010 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA521822&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf  d.a. 7-27-10

Expanding “risk-less or risk-free” capabilities to the battlefield became a stated goal of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2001. 48 This direction from Congress and the events of 9/11 expedited the era of the 7,500 mile “risk-less” and perceived immortal combatant to the battlefield. The first claimed U.S. use of an RPA assisting in an HVI strike in Afghanistan occurred in November, 2001.49 The strike assisted Navy F/A-18 fighters in successfully killing the highest ranking violent extremist group member in Afghanistan to date.50 Less than two months later, on February 12, History demonstrated that second order effects from “risk-less” attacks are clear. The third order effect did occur in a time and place away from the initial battlefield. The first enemy counter action was not on U.S. soil against non-combatants, but against military combatants in their naval vessel. The attacks on 9/11 were clearly against non-combatants in the eyes of the international community and law. Unlike the swift retaliation for 9/11, no retributive attacks for the USS Cole were conducted. 17  2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld commented in a press conference on those new battlefield armed RPA weapon operations in Afghanistan.  The overwhelming bulk of all activity in Afghanistan since the first U.S. forces went in have been basically under the control of the Central Command. And that's particularly true after the first month. The one exception has been the armed Predators -- I shouldn't say "the one exception." An exception has been the armed Predators, which are CIA-operated. It's just a historical fact that they were operating these things over recent years, and they were in Afghanistan prior to the involvement of CENTCOM.51 Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, both former members of the National Security Council, contend that George Tenet, the director of the CIA raised his objection in a Principals meeting on September 4, 2001 to the agency taking the lead in transforming the Predator reconnaissance platform to one capable of armed strikes.52 However, events seven days later likely resolved the impasse. With retribution on the mind of the U.S. and the 107th Congress signing Public Law 107-40 (Authorization for Use of Military Force) on September 18th, this tactical move made initial strategic sense. 53Fast removal of key extremist organization leaders responsible for the devastation was paramount. But few strategies are timeless and fewer survive in times of rapid change.  Eight years later, RPAs are a true force multiplier ensuring tactical success when blended into the fog of direct force-on-force combat action. When applied to broad spectrum conflict, using RPAs for targeting outside of direct force-on-force action, especially against individuals, builds anything but a clear path to strategic success. Tactical success continues to cloud critical or more rounded assessments of the strategic implications in protracted global conflicts. The allure of tactics that appear to mitigate immediate risk might very well create greater risks to combatants and civilians on U.S. soil, as well as risk breaking legitimate U.S. strategy. Notwithstanding  continued violent extremist organization rhetoric, history and Pashtun tribal code provide additional powerful reminders to realistic strategists of the duration of threat the U.S. faces. In the Long War, the strategic peril increases with every expanded use of RPAs as a perceived panacea for engaging a broad spectrum of HVT/HVIs. Particular concern of their use is warranted if leaders consider engaging a greater list of “kill or capture” individuals involved in support, but not direct combat action.54 Utilizing RPAs in “challenged access” areas of the world should magnify concerns, not alleviate them. In these areas, the “risk-less” tactical ease of an RPA strike may compel their use, but opens the U.S. to long term strategic challenges outweighing the short term gain. The U.S. must carefully consider the certain increases to second and third order effects before expanding or authorizing such strikes. Today, those debates are waged in press reports and blogs, but rarely are readily apparent dialogues engaged in by high level officials to mitigate these effects by resolving legal, moral or ethical issues. 55 Recognized counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen and U.S. politicians already highlight an increase to second order effects and risks from RPA activity.56
Drone attacks in Afghanistan create a unique danger of retaliation against the U.S. homeland
LIEUTENANT COLONEL SHAUN R. MCGRATH United States Air Force  
STRATEGIC MISSTEP: “IMMORTAL” ROBOTIC WARFARE, INVITING COMBAT TO SUBURBAN AMERICA March 18, 2010 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA521822&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf  d.a. 7-27-10

Century through perceived crusades today appears to resonate well in the extremist’s recruits. Those recruits susceptible to radicalization are inculcated to see retribution not only as necessary, but mandated.

The need for “revenge” is not historically unique to any one specific culture, but more pronounced and even prescribed by some. History is replete with examples of revenge fueled by fear as a means to compel a call to action and recruitment. In a second fatwa 18 issued in 1998 by a now well known extremist terrorist leader, fear is the theme.19 Historically inspired fear combined with the Pashtun tribal heritage and culture that spans the Afghanistan and Pakistan borders creates a virulent mix of revenge based enemy counter actions. A 2008 Naval Postgraduate School thesis on “The Evolution of Taliban” notes an intrinsic link between the Taliban and a predominantly Pashtun heritage. “While it would be incorrect to refer to the Taliban insurrection or resurrection as merely a Pashtun affair, it would not be far from the mark.”20

Pashtuns also hold a long tribal heritage predating Islam. Pashtuns are expected to live in accordance to Pashtunwali code. Violators of the code are subject to a Jirga (a tribal assembly of elders). Two key aspects of the code are nang (honor) and badal (revenge). 21 Nang refers to family honor and badal to the “revenge killing,” required to restore honor. The revenge “can be immediate or occur generations later if the family whose honor was violated is in a weak position at the time of infraction.”22

Both Sun Tzu’s advice to know one’s enemy and Churchill’s sage advice to explore history provide insight. The insight illuminates a threat of enduring revenge from enemy counter actions to current “risk-less” U.S. attacks. Accordingly, the U.S. must recognize the strategic dangers percolating from the expansion of remotely piloted aircraft kinetic power being applied to individual killings outside of direct force-on-force combat action. This is also more clearly pronounced when such strikes are against targets not perceived as clearly linked to imminent vital national interests.

If the U.S. does not provide the link, then not only will the enemy seek retribution, but fewer in the world may be compelled to partner with the U.S. to prevent those counter attacks. General McCrystal’s revised strategy for less kinetic operations in Afghanistan ground combat is clearly prudent based on history and the appreciation of immediate second order effects. The “distant risk-less warfare” provides an invitation for the enemy to bring the third order effects to U.S. soil. History and culture must inform over-all U.S. strategy, but an appreciation of the convergence of local and global environments further shapes and molds such strategy in the 21stcentury.
Ubiquitous Revolutions in Information
This is the greatest risk of a nuclear or biological attack on the U.S.

6/15 [Dave Bohon, Government Panel Predicts WMD Attack by 2013, New American, 6/ 15/10, http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/3788-government-panel-predicts-wmd-attack-by-2013]  

The official report from a blue-ribbon panel warns that terrorists with weapons of massive destruction (WMD) are likely to attack somewhere in the world in the next three years, and the United States could be a prime target.  According to the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, the likelihood is high that by 2013 terrorists will use WMDs in an attack somewhere in the world, and while several nations with terrorist ties are now in a race to produce nuclear weapons, the commission’s report says that an attack using biological weapons is the more likely scenario, with potentially devastating consequences.  Among its recommendations, the commission said it believes that “the U.S. government needs to move more aggressively to limit the proliferation of biological weapons and reduce the prospect of a bio-terror attack.”  The commission, co-chaired by former U.S. Senators Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.), originally reported its findings in December 2008. During a June 10 press conference to announce legislation aimed at addressing dangers from terrorism, members of the commission joined with members of the House Homeland Security Committee to address the commission’s findings.  “The consequences of a biological attack are almost beyond comprehension,” said former Senator Graham. “It would be 9/11 times ten or a hundred in terms of the number of people who would be killed.” Noting the millions of Americans who died as a result of the epidemic flu virus of 1918, Graham predicted that a lab-generated biological agent in the hands of terrorists could prove far worse. “Today it is still in the laboratory,” he said, “but if it should get out and into the hands of scientists who knew how to use it for a violent purpose, we could have multiple times the 40 million people who were killed 100 years ago.”  In December 2008, at the same time the commission presented its findings, former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell offered a similar assessment of the likelihood of a biological attack, telling a Harvard University audience, “With weapons of mass destruction that could result in the death of many people — chemical, biological, nuclear — we assess biological as the more likely,” adding that “it’s better than an even chance in the next five years that an attack by one of those weapons systems will be conducted in some place on the globe.”  While emphasizing the likely scenario of a biological attack, the commission also warned of the danger that exists of nuclear attacks, and cited efforts by both Iran and North Korea to produce a nuclear weapon. It also cited the specific danger that Pakistan poses to the United States, warning that while the country is officially an ally of the United States, “the next terrorist attack against the United States is likely to originate from within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas” of Pakistan, which has been identified as a haven for terrorists. “Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan,” the report stated. Said Graham, “We think time is not our ally,” warning that the United States “needs to move with a sense of urgency.”
The US will retaliate to a terror attack, causing extinction

Speice 06 [Patrick F., Jr. "Negligence and nuclear nonproliferation: eliminating the current liability barrier to bilateral U.S.-Russian nonproliferation assistance programs." William and Mary Law Review 47.4 (Feb 2006): 1427(59). Expanded Academic ASAP]

The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses. (49) Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. (50) In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. (51) This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States or its allies by hostile states, (52) as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. (53)
Stopping drone attacks is key to solvency

Tayyab Siddiqui- former Pakistani Ambassador  Pakistan’s drone dilemma http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/04-drone-dilemma-qs-03  7-18-10  d.a. 7-25-10

The US must recognise that no matter what the volume of economic assistance given to Pakistan, it will never inspire any feelings of friendliness and partnership until the recurring drone attacks are stopped in accordance with the national milieu.  Drone attacks are reprehensible not only in their violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty but also for the civilian deaths they cause and which are becoming increasingly frequent. So far, 144 drone strikes have been carried out in the tribal areas with 1,366 civilian casualties, according to the US National Counterterrorism Center.  These attacks are causing deep hatred of the US and their military value is also questionable. In May 2009, in a testimony to US Congress, US Advisor to Gen. David Kilmulllen, asked the Obama Administration to call off the drone attacks stating, “We have been able to kill only 14 senior Al Qaeda leaders since 2006 and in the same period, killed over 700 Pakistani civilians.” The unkindest cut of all was delivered by President Obama who dismissed Pakistan’s protests against drone attacks: “We cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.”  These attacks have proved counterproductive, both in military and emotional terms. A US think tank has assessed the impact stating, “Predator strikes have inflamed anti-American rage among Afghans and Pakistanis, including first and second generation immigrants in the West as well as elite members of the security services.”  Drone attacks are now broadening the area of concerns. Philip Alston, the UN Human Rights Council’s investigator, in a report to the UNGA has warned that “drone strikes employed to attack target executions may violate international law.  The onus is really on the government of the US to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions and extrajudicial executions are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons.”  The legal and juridical aspects of the drone strikes are not only becoming a subject of scrutiny and denunciation internationally, but domestically too the debate is extending to legal forums.  Tehrik-i-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan has moved the Supreme Court to declare the predator drone attacks a war crime and violation of sovereignty of Pakistan. The Lahore High Court, in another case, has asked the government to adopt measures to stop them.  Public resentment against these attacks, it is argued, is being exploited by rightist elements to maintain that the US does not wish to see any strong Muslim state and that the US and its strategic partner India are bent on destabilising Pakistan.  Whatever the impact of such feelings, there is no doubt that drone attacks have become a rallying cry for militants feeding the flow of volunteers as is evident from the terror strikes and suicide attacks in Pakistani cities.  
An end to drone attacks solves
PRIYA SATIA Assistant Professor of Modern British History at Stanford University  
From Colonial Air Attacks to Drones in Pakistan
New Perspectives Quarterly 26 no3 34-7 Summ 2009

As Pakistan spirals out of its grasp, the Obama administration is at last hearing criticism of drone attacks in the country. Influential military officials such as Col. David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, have testified that, despite damaging the Taliban leadership and protecting United States pilots, the strategy is backfiring. The Taliban's recent gains come on the heels of President Barack Obama's intensification of remotely piloted air strikes-16 strikes in the first four months of 2009 compared with 36 in all of 2008.
    The belated skepticism about drones is well placed but a halt is not enough. Only a permanent end to the strategy will win Pakistani hearts and minds back to their government and its US ally. They, like Afghans and Iraqis, are struck less by the strategy's futuristic qualities than by its uncanny echo of the past: Aerial counterinsurgency was invented in precisely these two regions -- Iraq and the Pakistani-Afghan borderland -- in the 1920s by the British.
Soft Power add on
Drone strikes destroy U.S. global credibility and soft power

Ezzatyar & Kabraji 10

Ali Ezzatyar is an American lawyer and consultant on geopolitical issues, mostly relating to the Middle East. Shahpur Kabraji, the first Pakistani president of the Cambridge Union, is a lawyer based in London, and a part-time journalist  http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/2010/04/critique-of-us-drone-program.html. d.a. 7-25-10

The Obama administration’s decision to continue – and increase – the use of Predator drones generally isn’t considered. But it should be.  There are two major, unresolved legal problems with these strikes. In some cases they violate the sovereignty of independent countries. And in all cases, they result in assassinations that have no apparent legal basis, clearly violating the human rights of their victims. Illegal, immoral and strategically flawed, the strikes do significant damage to America’s image across the globe and its ability to address terrorism at its root, societal level.  Due to a long-standing US executive order banning assassinations, the US government has done its best to dance around that description, all the while refusing to make available for examination the intelligence that prompts lethal attacks on suspected terrorists. But without the presentation of evidence or the opportunity of trial for the targeted, we should call these attacks what they are: extrajudicial assassinations.  The US government has not distinguished the use of Predator drones from the general context of fighting “combatants” in an armed conflict. The reality is that the targeted individuals do not fit, legally or logically, in the category of combatants in a sustained conflict. Drones do not seek assassination of individuals engaged in active combat; those it kills are generally far removed from the war zone and disconnected from any chain of command – so the context of armed conflict does not apply.  The only potential basis for killing militants outside of the war zone is the customary law of self-defense. In other words where there is an imminent threat of future attack. Killing a terrorist mastermind who planned a prior attack would not qualify as self-defense. So far, eyewitness and investigative accounts suggest there is no evidence to support that those assassinated were involved in planning imminent attacks, even if the term “imminent” were to be interpreted liberally. To be clear, the US government has never tried to justify its use of Predator drones on a legal basis. The fact that the CIA, a civilian agency, and not the military is the party pulling the trigger in many of these cases also complicates matters.  These assassinations are shortcuts with a cavalier disregard for legality. If the intelligence does not ultimately establish that these individuals are legal targets, as it appears it does not, responsible officials would be committing war crimes. What does that mean for the America?  The killings themselves, when taking place on foreign soil that is not occupied by the US, are also part of another layer of legal complexity involving sovereignty. These strikes by the CIA against individuals in sovereign countries represent the use of force by one nation state against the civilians of another – a use of force proscribed by the United Nations Charter. One rebuttal advanced by the United States is that the national government concerned has consented to such action. However, for example in the case of Pakistan, the national government regularly denies giving such consent. Drone attacks in countries not occupied by the US and with which the US is not at war are violations of the sovereignty of these nations and are illegal according to the international treaties the US has ratified.  The use of drones to carry out missile strikes against individuals in another country, if carried out by Iran, North Korea or Yemen would cause international outrage. The fact that these attacks are carried out by the CIA does not change the rule of law to which the United States and all other signatories to the UN Charter are subject.    The strikes also allow extreme but nevertheless popular elements of civil society in the target country to argue that their supine government has once again abrogated all responsibility in the face of American pressure. This lends further credence to sentiments in certain portions of that country’s local media, as we see in Pakistan, that American actions are a war on Muslims, on the tribal way of life, and on Pakistan’s culture and traditions under the guise of a war on terrorism. This becomes all the more convincing when the remoteness and clinical nature of the attacks harms civilians.  We know that elements of the civilian population in Pakistan and Afghanistan are harboring militants. It is equally undeniable that this civilian population is unlikely to feel any sympathy whatsoever for the political aims of Washington when the only face of those aims they see is the business end of a Hellfire missile. These populations must be convinced that by harboring terrorists within their community they undermine their own chances for peace and prosperity. The numbers of innocents killed by terrorists should demonstrate this without question, but when hundreds are also killed as “collateral damage,” it is not surprising that the message is lost. Kill one innocent farmer, create a village of anti-Americans.  However, the most important problem relating to these assassinations is not a legal one at all. It is one that is morally significant for America as a nation and that will continue to pose practical problems for its ongoing struggle against terrorism in the Muslim world. Individuals are being sentenced to death from on high by non-judicial bodies with no inherent authority to carry out such acts. This perpetuates the image that America is an insincere hegemon that devalues the lives of people in the region.  The war against Islamic extremists is framed, by both sides to the conflict, as a war of the free against the oppressive, and the fair against the unfair. The US claims a moral high ground over terrorists who employ the murder of innocents as a means to an end. It is no surprise that in societies in which suspected terrorists reside, there is no sympathy for the argument that the US can kill as it deems fit while its opponents cannot. Either the US believes in universal human rights, even for terrorists, or it does not. Drone strikes are sending a signal to the world that the US believes itself to be subject to a different standard in its ability to determine right from wrong. In addition to being antithetical to the notion of fairness, it is precisely the opposite message that the US has an interest in sending. At the moment, very few outside of the United States, including in Europe, are buying it. In the broader Middle East, if people are asked to choose between Americans and fellow Muslims as to who has more of a right to carry out arbitrary attacks, the US will doubtless lose what remaining support it still enjoys.

[Dig]

AUVSI: ITT delivers Gorgon Stare payload
http://www.shephard.co.uk/news/uvonline/auvsi-itt-delivers-gorgon-stare-payload/7063/
August 26, 2010

ITT has delivered its Wide-Area Airborne Surveillance (WAAS) sensor system to the US Air Force ahead of its proposed deployment as part of the 'Gorgon Stare' programme later this year.

Speaking to Unmanned Vehicles at AUVSI on 26 August, ITT officials said a 'few' systems had been handed over to the air force for integration onto MQ-9 Reaper UAS. According to industry sources, this will provide operators with an eight kilometre surveillance window, although ITT image scientist, Bernard Brower was unable to confirm this.

However, Brower said the five-camera WAAS or Gorgon Stare payload would allow multiple ground operators to gain access to imagery from up to 12 different angles at the same time at rates of 16 MegaPixels per second for each camera. This compares to regular day/night cameras which are capable of  processing around two MegaPixels per second, Brower explained.

[Dig]

Air Force to Unleash ‘Gorgon Stare’ on Squirting Insurgents
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/gorgon-stare/
By Noah Shachtman  February 19, 2009  |  10:48 am  |  Categories: Drones

The award for best — and creepiest — military name of the week? No contest, that’s "Gorgon Stare," the Air Force’s $150 million project to outfit its latest spy drones with super high-powered cameras. By next year, 10 Reaper unmanned aircraft should have a Gorgon Stare sensor, which will film an area, two-and-a-half miles around, from 12 different angles.   "Gorgon Stare will allow a combat controller on the ground, a commander at headquarters and an intelligence officer back in the U.S. all to choose a different angle from the same Reaper," according to Air Force Times‘ Michael Hoffman. The Reaper – and its little drone brother, the Predator – already have video cameras, of course. Gorgon Stare won’t replace those sensors. Instead, it’s meant to supplement the full-motion video with a jumpier, but wider, view.  That’ll allow airmen to ’see the bigger picture’ and have a better idea where to point full-motion video sensors," Hoffman notes. Reapers and MQ-1 Predators are often called on to track vehicles and hover over buildings to watch for "squirters," or insurgents running out of buildings during U.S. operations. Airmen controlling the sensors sometimes lose track of those vehicles or squirters if they drive or run out of view too fast. Gorgon Stare will be invaluable in such instances, Bower said. Even if a vehicle drives out of the view of the full-motion video sensor, it will still be within Gorgon Stare’s range. Even if 12 squirters run in 12 directions, Gorgon Stare could dedicate one angle to each one. But as crazy as that is, Darpa is working on a project that could put Gorgon Stare to shame. The "Argus" program, recently highlighted by David Hambling, uses 92 cameras at once, compared to Gorgon Stare’s measly dozen. But as cool as Argus might turn out to be, it’ll need a revamped name, before it can really compete with Gorgon Stare.

[Dig]

BAE Systems (United Kingdom/Bilderberg) wins the next generation of dehumanizing surveillance. They also had a major part in BCCI and 9/11 Terrorist Attacks which killed 3,000 innocent people on America soil. So now they are going to have the power to spy on every finger, every toe, every organ of every American citizen. Makes sense I guess...if you are a Bilderberg psychopathic mass murderer.


BAE SYSTEMS WINS $49.9 MILLION CONTRACT TO DEVELOP ON-BOARD PROCESSOR AND INTEGRATE DARPA'S ARGUS-IR NIGHTTIME PERSISTENT SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/autoGen_11082133413.html
02 Sep 2010 | Ref. 191/2010

NASHUA, New Hampshire - After successful development of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) daytime persistent surveillance system, BAE Systems has been awarded an additional $49.9 million contract to develop the advanced processor for the agency's nighttime, infrared system - the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Infrared (ARGUS-IR).

ARGUS-IR provides real-time, high-resolution, nighttime video surveillance capability for U.S. combat forces for detecting, locating, tracking and monitoring events on battlefields and in urban areas. The system is being developed for compatibility with a variety of unmanned aerial systems.

BAE Systems' Electronic Solutions Sector, headquartered in Nashua, will be responsible for the design, development, manufacture and test of the ARGUS-IR Airborne Processing Subsystem (APS). Additionally, BAE Systems will integrate a high-resolution infrared sensor subsystem over the course of the 32-month, eight-phase project.

"ARGUS-IR further expands military capability by providing 24-hour, day-night reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities over a much wider area than previously possible," said Dr. John Antoniades, ARGUS program manager and director of ISR technology for BAE Systems. "Following the successful development of the daytime version of ARGUS, the new APS establishes appreciably expanded capability, and will be designed for use with a number of possible platforms."

BAE Systems' APS will process and store the imagery provided by the infrared sensor and downlink a minimum of 256 independent 640x480 video streams over a data link with a maximum effective bit rate of 200 Mbits per second. Each video window may be a "tracking video window" or a "fixed video window," according to DARPA's specifications. Additionally, the APS will have the ability to downlink automatically detected moving target metadata and image chips. BAE Systems is scheduled to conduct the system's first flight test by the second quarter of 2012.

BAE System's first flight tests of ARGUS-IR's predecessor, ARGUS-IS, concluded last October aboard a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The tests successfully demonstrated the system's multiple video windows for persistent area surveillance and tracking capabilities for vehicles and dismounted soldiers.

About BAE Systems

BAE Systems is a global defense, security and aerospace company with approximately 107,000 employees worldwide. The Company delivers a full range of products and services for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced electronics, security, information technology solutions and customer support services.  In 2009 BAE Systems reported sales of £22.4 billion (US $36.2 billion).


Here is the proposal from DARPA: http://www.darpa.mil/i2o/solicit/baa/BAA-10-02_PIP.pdf

It is one of the greatest threats to US National Security ever and the CIA/FBI/NRO/NSA/SS/DHS refuse to do anything about it.

[Freeski]

Even I could provide examples of what's alleged here. Scary stuff.

This new crime against humanity fits in nicely with the other warcrimes including but not limited to torture, illegal rendition, genocide, mass murder, spontaneously cumbusting infants, depleted uranium, poisoning or air/water/land, white phosphorous, vote rigging, control over natural resources, rape, pilaging, theft of art, mind control, electronic dog colars, radiation, forced poison vaccines, limitations on speech, limitations on privacy, food as a weapon, false flag bombings, child sex slavery, separation of parents from children, etc.

Torture? Abu Ghraib
Rendition? There's tons of evidence
Genocide? How about atmospheric nuclear testing?
Mass Murder? What about Operation Desert Storm? Does that count?
Infant Spontaneous Combustion???WTF!!!
DU? Efficiency always trumps individuality.
Poisoning Air/Water/Land? When everybody owns something, nobody gives a shit.
White Phosphorous?



etc.

[Dig]

BAE Systems (United Kingdom/Bilderberg) wins the next generation of dehumanizing surveillance. They also had a major part in BCCI and 9/11 Terrorist Attacks which killed 3,000 innocent people on America soil. So now they are going to have the power to spy on every finger, every toe, every organ of every American citizen. Makes sense I guess...if you are a Bilderberg psychopathic mass murderer.


BAE SYSTEMS WINS $49.9 MILLION CONTRACT TO DEVELOP ON-BOARD PROCESSOR AND INTEGRATE DARPA'S ARGUS-IR NIGHTTIME PERSISTENT SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/autoGen_11082133413.html
02 Sep 2010 | Ref. 191/2010

NASHUA, New Hampshire - After successful development of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) daytime persistent surveillance system, BAE Systems has been awarded an additional $49.9 million contract to develop the advanced processor for the agency's nighttime, infrared system - the Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Infrared (ARGUS-IR).

ARGUS-IR provides real-time, high-resolution, nighttime video surveillance capability for U.S. combat forces for detecting, locating, tracking and monitoring events on battlefields and in urban areas. The system is being developed for compatibility with a variety of unmanned aerial systems.

BAE Systems' Electronic Solutions Sector, headquartered in Nashua, will be responsible for the design, development, manufacture and test of the ARGUS-IR Airborne Processing Subsystem (APS). Additionally, BAE Systems will integrate a high-resolution infrared sensor subsystem over the course of the 32-month, eight-phase project.

"ARGUS-IR further expands military capability by providing 24-hour, day-night reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities over a much wider area than previously possible," said Dr. John Antoniades, ARGUS program manager and director of ISR technology for BAE Systems. "Following the successful development of the daytime version of ARGUS, the new APS establishes appreciably expanded capability, and will be designed for use with a number of possible platforms."

BAE Systems' APS will process and store the imagery provided by the infrared sensor and downlink a minimum of 256 independent 640x480 video streams over a data link with a maximum effective bit rate of 200 Mbits per second. Each video window may be a "tracking video window" or a "fixed video window," according to DARPA's specifications. Additionally, the APS will have the ability to downlink automatically detected moving target metadata and image chips. BAE Systems is scheduled to conduct the system's first flight test by the second quarter of 2012.

BAE System's first flight tests of ARGUS-IR's predecessor, ARGUS-IS, concluded last October aboard a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The tests successfully demonstrated the system's multiple video windows for persistent area surveillance and tracking capabilities for vehicles and dismounted soldiers.

About BAE Systems

BAE Systems is a global defense, security and aerospace company with approximately 107,000 employees worldwide. The Company delivers a full range of products and services for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced electronics, security, information technology solutions and customer support services.  In 2009 BAE Systems reported sales of £22.4 billion (US $36.2 billion).


Here is the proposal from DARPA: http://www.darpa.mil/i2o/solicit/baa/BAA-10-02_PIP.pdf

It is one of the greatest threats to US National Security ever and the CIA/FBI/NRO/NSA/SS/DHS refuse to do anything about it.

Hey look what else BAE Systems has a contract for:


BAE SYSTEMS DEVELOPING WEAPON TO STRATEGICALLY BLOW UP YOUR COMPUTER FROM SPACE

Air Force Doles Out Cash to Microwave Computers
http://blacklistednews.com/Air-Force-Doles-Out-Cash-to-Microwave-Computers/12035/0/22/22/Y/M.html
Published on 12-24-2010   

Source: Danger Room

Nice work if you can get it. BAE Systems just won $150,000 to bombard computers with high-powered electromagnetic radiations to see whether they’ll fritz out. The objective: learn how to fry the other guy’s electronics while protecting your own.

Yesterday, the Air Force announced that Europe’s biggest arms company will develop the first tests for its High Power Microwave Technological Electromagnetic Susceptibility with Laboratory Applications project. Basically, much as microwave jammers stop homemade bombs by interfering with the signals sent from their remote detonators, the Air Force wants to find out how much damage it can inflict on other systems, and how much damage its own systems can handle. Or, in its words, figure out “cost effective, innovative solutions for determining the susceptibility/vulnerability of U.S. and foreign systems to high power electromagnetic (EM) environments.”

Hosted by the Air Force Research Labs’ Directed Energy Directorate at Nevada’s Kirtland Air Force Base, BAE will spend nine months subjecting a “digital system, such as a Personal Computer” with high-powered electromagnetic waves to watch it short out. The idea is to build a predictive model of “when such an upset might occur.” Apparently, no “comprehensive predictive system-level models exist” for understanding digital upset.

The offensive and defensive applications are obvious. Figure out the breaking point for such electronics and you’ll learn what specifications you’ll need for directed-energy weapons like lasers to fry your opponents’ comparable systems; as well as the levels at which your own become vulnerable. Don’t want your Littoral Combat Ship’s communications or navigation systems to be shorted out by a microwave burst? Start out by learning just what size burst will short them out.

Continue Reading “Air Force Doles Out Cash to Microwave Computers” »

[Freeski]

Just wait 'til they draw your blood at will. Yeah, you'll be embedded with a device. Sucks.

[Freeski]

Just wait 'til they draw your blood at will. Yeah, you'll be embedded with a device. Sucks.

Update!

We're now beyond the need to "chip you".

Carry on.

[Optimus]

DARPA Kicks Off Mind’s Eye Program; ‘Persistent Stare, Camera-Equipped Unmanned Ground Vehicles’
http://cryptogon.com/?p=19694
January 6th, 2011

Via: U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (.pdf):

Ground surveillance is a mission normally performed by human assets, including Army scouts and Marine Corps Force Recon. Military leaders would like to shift this mission to unmanned systems, removing troops from harm’s way, but unmanned systems lack a capability that currently exists only in humans: visual intelligence. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is addressing this problem with Mind’s Eye, a program aimed at developing a visual intelligence capability for unmanned systems.

Humans perform a wide range of visual tasks with ease, something no current artificial intelligence can do in a robust way. They have inherently strong spatial judgment and are able to learn new spatiotemporal concepts directly from the visual experience. Humans visualize scenes and objects, as well as the actions involving those objects and possess a powerful ability to manipulate those imagined scenes mentally to solve problems. A machine-based implementation of such abilities is broadly applicable to a wide range of applications, including ground surveillance.

The joint military community anticipates a significant increase in the role of unmanned systems in support of future operations including jobs like persistent stare. By performing persistent stare, camera-equipped unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) would take scouts out of harm’s way. Such a capability, however, would not constitute a force multiplier because human analysts would have to interpret streaming video from these platforms to detect operationally significant activities. A truly transformative capability requires visual intelligence, enabling these platforms to detect operationally significant activity and report on that activity so warfighters can focus on important events in a timely manner.

DARPA has contracted with 12 research teams to develop fundamental machine-based visual intelligence: Carnegie Mellon University, Co57 Systems, Inc., Colorado State University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CALTECH, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, SRI International, State University of New York at Buffalo, TNO (Netherlands), University of Arizona, University of California Berkeley and University of Southern California. These teams will develop a software subsystem suitable for employment on a camera for man-portable UGVs, integrating existing state of the art computer vision and AI while making novel contributions in visual event learning, new spatiotemporal representations, machine-generated envisionment, visual inspection and grounding of visual concepts.

DARPA has also contracted with three teams to develop system integration concepts: General Dynamics Robotic Systems, iRobot and Toyon Research Corporation. These teams are taking a collaborative approach to developing architectures incorporating newly-developed visual intelligence software onto a camera suitable as a payload on a man-portable UGV.

Related: Gorgon Stare; GORGON/MEDUSA STARE Thread

[Anti_Illuminati]

Securing the fascist "homeland", death technologies to prevent all revolt

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/gorgon-stare/

Air Force to Unleash ‘Gorgon Stare’ on Squirting Insurgents

    * By Noah Shachtman Email Author
    * February 19, 2009  |
    * 10:48 am


The award for best — and creepiest — military name of the week? No contest, that’s "Gorgon Stare," the Air Force’s $150 million project to outfit its latest spy drones with super high-powered cameras.

By next year, 10 Reaper unmanned aircraft should have a Gorgon Stare sensor, which will film an area, two-and-a-half miles around, from 12 different angles.

"Gorgon Stare will allow a combat controller on the ground, a commander at headquarters and an intelligence officer back in the U.S.
all to choose a different angle from the same Reaper," according to Air Force Times‘ Michael Hoffman.

The Reaper – and its little drone brother, the Predator – already have video cameras, of course. Gorgon Stare won’t replace those sensors. Instead, it’s meant to supplement the full-motion video with a jumpier, but wider, view.  That’ll allow airmen to ’see the bigger picture’ and have a better idea where to point full-motion video sensors," Hoffman notes.

    Reapers and MQ-1 Predators are often called on to track vehicles and hover over buildings to watch for "squirters," or insurgents running out of buildings during U.S. operations. Airmen controlling the sensors sometimes lose track of those vehicles or squirters if they drive or run out of view too fast.
    
    Gorgon Stare will be invaluable in such instances, Bower said. Even if a vehicle drives out of the view of the full-motion video sensor, it will still be within Gorgon Stare’s range. Even if 12 squirters run in
    12 directions, Gorgon Stare could dedicate one angle to each one.

But as crazy as that is, Darpa is working on a project that could put
Gorgon Stare to shame. The "Argus" program, recently highlighted by
David Hambling, uses 92 cameras at once, compared to Gorgon Stare’s measly dozen. But as cool as Argus might turn out to be, it’ll need a revamped name, before it can really compete with Gorgon Stare.
_____________________________________________________
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/gigapixel-flyin/

Special Forces’ Gigapixel Flying Spy Sees All

    * By David Hambling Email Author
    * February 12, 2009  |
    * 5:47 am


You may think your new ten-megapixel camera is pretty hot –- but not when you compare it to the 1.8 Gigapixel beast built for the Pentagon. The camera is designed as a payload for the A-160T Hummingbird robot helicopter now being quietly delivered to Special Forces. It will give them an unprecedented ability to track everything on the ground in real time. The camera is scheduled for flight testing at the start of next year.

Developed under the auspices of Darpa, the camera is the sensor part of Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance - Imaging System or ARGUS-IS. The camera is composed of four arrays, each containing 92 five-megapixel imagers. The other parts of ARGUS are the airborne processing system, which has to deal with a phenomenal torrent of data, and the ground-based element. The airborne part fits into a 500-pound pod.

The Hummingbird is unique in its ability to hover at high altitude (over 15,000 feet) and its endurance of over 20 hours. This means it can park high in the sky and scan a wide area. Robo-chopper camera-maker BAE Systems says that its imager will be able to cover an area of over a hundred square miles. The refresh rate is fifteen frames per second and a "ground sample distance" of 15 centimeters –- this means that each pixel represents six inches on the ground. (The Darpa diagram, above, suggests a smaller area of coverage, 40 square kilometers or 15 square miles, at that resolution.)

The volume of data is too great to be completely transmitted, but users will be able to define at least sixty-five independent video windows within the image and zoom in or out at will. The windows can be set to automatically track items of interest such as moving vehicles.
In fact, the resolution is good enough for it to offer "dismount tracking" or following individual people on foot.

In addition to the windows, ARGUS will provide "a real-time moving target indicator for vehicles throughout the entire field of view in real-time." Basically, nothing can move in the entire area without being spotted. Unlike radar, ARGUS can zoom in and provide a high-resolution image.

The camera is pretty impressive, but it’s the processing and the software behind it that will make this such a capable system. It would take a human a very long time to scan the whole area under surveillance if they were looking for something – but this is exactly the type of task which the swarming software we looked at last week excels at. Luckily enough, that just happens to be a Darpa program too. The technique of looking at small windows of interest also means that it may be possible to speed the frame rate up considerably – we previously looked at a windowing system so fast it could follow speeding bullets.

The ARGUS-IS mounted on the Hummingbird could be a significant battlefield asset for getting a real-time picture of what’s on the other side of the hill. And no doubt there will be civilian agencies who think it might be quite a useful capability for them to have too.

Mythological Footnote: Someone in Darpa may be a fan of the classics – Argus or Argos Panoptes was a giant, unsleeping watchman with a hundred eyes all over his body.
Unfortunately he was killed by Hermes; according to the myth, his eyes were placed on the tail of the peacock.

[Image: DARPA]
____________________________________________
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/swarming-smiths/

Software Swarm to Spot Rockets Before They’re Fired

    * By David Hambling Email Author
    * February 4, 2009  |
    * 12:24 pm


There are plenty of systems out there to identify the direction of a shooter after he has opened fire. But it might be too late by then. That’s why Darpa is developing a system to spot a rocket propelled grenade before it’s fired. It’s a major challenge, but the solution may lie with a swarm of software agents.

The Rocket Propelled Grenade Pre-launch Detection and Cueing Program aims to deliver "an omni directional, visual, and vehicle-mounted surveillance system for threat detection using cognitive swarm-recognition technology to rapidly detect and identify the locations of attackers with RPGs before they are launched." Fitting a set of video cameras giving 360-degree coverage is easy enough, but the hard part is the software.

Machines are notoriously bad at identifying things. Recognizing a chair or an apple is one of those everyday skills that humans take for granted, but it is incredibly difficult to replicate. (Darpa’s Grand Challenge driverless car contests were, in many ways, just fancy ways of getting machines to see the world more clearly.) Objects do not come in standard shapes and sizes, and they may be partly concealed or at an unusual angle. So Darpa is simplifying the approach by just looking for one fairly standard object, an RPG launcher. This is a cheap, widely available weapon used by insurgents everywhere in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places. There are of course many versions, but the Russian RPG-7 and its many clones are the most common, and the ones to look for.

Even looking for one specific object takes a vast amount of processing power, however. The normal technique is to have an analysis window scanning across the image, looking for a match. This is not fast enough –- it’s no use having a system telling you that it spotted an RPG 30 seconds ago. Even if you have a large number of search windows scanning at the same time, they’re too slow.

The search can be sped up using a technique called Particle Swarm Optimization.
First developed in 1995, it’s based on the flocking behavior of birds and insects. Instead of having the search windows scanning in fixed paths or at random, they react to each other and work together like swarming insects.

Imagine the search is being carried out by a large number of software agents -– like the hordes of Agent Smiths in the Matrix series — who all start out looking in different directions and reporting what they see:

Smith #1 : Just empty road here
Smith #2 : There’s some trees … might be something, I need to look more
Smith #3 : Nothing here at all
Smith#4:  Just a bare field here…

As they know that there is a more promising area to search, Smiths #1, #3 and #4 now start scanning the same general area as Smith #2. By exchanging information rather than continuing to search in less promising areas, the Smiths can focus their efforts where they are most likely to be fruitful and complete the search more quickly. If there’s nothing to find, they will continue scanning the entire area including the less likely areas. But if there is something there, they’re likely to find it much more quickly.

HRL Laboratories, a company that works with Darpa in the field of distributed computing, has shown that in a sample application of spotting a pedestrian in a picture, the swarm recognition technique finds the pedestrian 70 times faster.

The other advantage of the swarm approach is in reducing false alarms. Because most of the system’s attention is rapidly focused on objects of potential interest, there is much less chance of a false positive getting through.

"This combination of accuracy and speed is superior to any published results known to us," HRL notes in an article about the technique.

Darpa’s RPG-spotter is intended to have an accuracy of 95 percent and be able to cope with up to five simultaneous threats, with a minimum of false alarms. The project has a budget of $3 million for this fiscal year, which will be spent on developing and maturing the detection and classification algorithms.

If it works, it could be a real life saver, keeping a 24/7 lookout for threats in all directions. And spotting RPGs may only be the start.

If the software pans out, later versions can look for other types of threat as well -– both hardware and human. As the algorithms improve and processors get faster, picking out a known terrorist face from a crowd in an instant might become a real possibility.

[Photo: Warner Bros.]

A.I.,

you might consider DELETing this but I think it's relevant to the whole NWO-tech issue...

Israel is sort of a pioneer in ROBOTIC WARFARE. unquote
http://mikephilbin.blogspot.com/2010/01/israel-is-sort-of-pioneer-in-robotic.html

WALL STREET JOURNAL news report on the ROBOTIC WARRIORS being built by Israel; boats, air vehicles and land vehicles.

The Pentagon set aside its long-held skepticism about the advantages of unmanned aircraft and, in the early 1980s, bought a prototype designed by former Israeli Air Force engineer Abraham Karem. That prototype morphed into the modern-day Predator, which is made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. [read the full article on WSJ]

Most of interest is THE GUARDIAN, an unmanned ground vehicle that races along the ISraeli border under its own A.I. choosing its own targets to shoot.

Seriously, you egghead morons, have none of you seen the TERMINATOR films?

Hooked up to the TIA global control grid. joined and controlled by the US military and the Pentagon. Sooner or later, that device will hunt dissidents down and either eliminate or capture the prisoner.

It makes perfect sense.