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The U.S. Air Force Wants Permission to Shoot Down Civilian Drones
The head of the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command wants permission to deal with civilian drones-including shooting them down-that threaten to interfere with flight operations. (www.airguideonline.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
I, as a commercial pilot, hope that the US Air Force's Permission will be granted. Drones should under no circumstances be allowed to share the same air space as airplanes with people in it.
YES YES
Drones don't have ID beacons like aircraft. Can't tell foe from friend. Assume foe until proved otherwise. Capture or shoot down.
Check FARS before you capture one. You might want to get rid of any evidence as Sheriff Justice Buford T Justice might say. Don't get caught with your hand in the jar.
I think this article used crude, imprecise language to paint the situation in the most dramatic light possible, perhaps thereby skewing the true nature of what the AF was requesting (god, I hope so--but such is our media today).
"Shoot down" with "weapons" gives me a mental image (as if directed by Michael Bay) that seems quite unlike what the AF would actually be doing.
In my opinion, clearly the AF should not be granted permission to use military weapons (e.g. kinetic/explosive systems) to "shoot down" civilian drones inside civilian airspace, or even military airspace above a base. Directed fire is not sufficiently accurate or reliable to ensure containment to the immediate area of the target. Someone totally innocent on the ground or in the air would eventually get hurt and uninvolved property damaged or destroyed.
In this case, it appears what the AF wants to do is use ECM against the problem drones. Civilian drones use well defined and known radio systems to permit control by their operators. Breaking or co-opting that link with a special transmitter to cause the drone to stop flying or come away from the control of its offending operator is the goal (I gather). In so doing, you remove the threat from the drone safely and without bringing the general public under threat from misdirected military firepower.
It's not clear from this article whether the AF did the typical bureaucrat move of asking for way more authority than it truly was prepared to use, just to have it, and actually wanted authority to use traditional kinetic firepower against what are, plainly, sophisticated toys piloted by the curious, the thrill-seeking, or the silly-persons.
All this talk about ISIS dropping mortars and IEDs. Come on! Maybe that is happening (no one ever provides actual traceable evidence of such stuff, but loves to grandstand and tell a great story), but if so, those remotely-piloted vehicles are certainly not of the typical sort you'd find in the hobbyist community. Payload weight is a strict limitation. Mortars and hand grenades (anyway) are too heavy.
For the sake of proper civilian defense, you never want the military to begin to feel that the home soil beyond the perimeter fence of their bases is tantamount to enemy territory. They may have legitimate right to exclude your presence from within or to a limited extent above their base, but this cannot extend to waging combat on the home soil.
Such is the way many law enforcement agencies (formerly known as "police") have evolved in the USA that a fun game which bystanders may play is: "Cop or Soldier?" The rules of engagement are very different for each. Sometimes the cops don't realize they are operating like soldiers, and the consequences for the general public are chronic as well as acute. The mentality of one with a badge to begin to see everyone else without a badge as a likely enemy is corrosive.
The military is tasked with the job of defending the nation's territorial integrity, not themselves exclusively. On home soil, absent a time of war inside that area, we permit them to do war-like things only as needed for training, and only in carefully defined places and in ways aimed to preserve and protect the "bodily integrity" of the general public who paid them to provide that defense. Anything else is an absurdity.
"Shoot down" with "weapons" gives me a mental image (as if directed by Michael Bay) that seems quite unlike what the AF would actually be doing.
In my opinion, clearly the AF should not be granted permission to use military weapons (e.g. kinetic/explosive systems) to "shoot down" civilian drones inside civilian airspace, or even military airspace above a base. Directed fire is not sufficiently accurate or reliable to ensure containment to the immediate area of the target. Someone totally innocent on the ground or in the air would eventually get hurt and uninvolved property damaged or destroyed.
In this case, it appears what the AF wants to do is use ECM against the problem drones. Civilian drones use well defined and known radio systems to permit control by their operators. Breaking or co-opting that link with a special transmitter to cause the drone to stop flying or come away from the control of its offending operator is the goal (I gather). In so doing, you remove the threat from the drone safely and without bringing the general public under threat from misdirected military firepower.
It's not clear from this article whether the AF did the typical bureaucrat move of asking for way more authority than it truly was prepared to use, just to have it, and actually wanted authority to use traditional kinetic firepower against what are, plainly, sophisticated toys piloted by the curious, the thrill-seeking, or the silly-persons.
All this talk about ISIS dropping mortars and IEDs. Come on! Maybe that is happening (no one ever provides actual traceable evidence of such stuff, but loves to grandstand and tell a great story), but if so, those remotely-piloted vehicles are certainly not of the typical sort you'd find in the hobbyist community. Payload weight is a strict limitation. Mortars and hand grenades (anyway) are too heavy.
For the sake of proper civilian defense, you never want the military to begin to feel that the home soil beyond the perimeter fence of their bases is tantamount to enemy territory. They may have legitimate right to exclude your presence from within or to a limited extent above their base, but this cannot extend to waging combat on the home soil.
Such is the way many law enforcement agencies (formerly known as "police") have evolved in the USA that a fun game which bystanders may play is: "Cop or Soldier?" The rules of engagement are very different for each. Sometimes the cops don't realize they are operating like soldiers, and the consequences for the general public are chronic as well as acute. The mentality of one with a badge to begin to see everyone else without a badge as a likely enemy is corrosive.
The military is tasked with the job of defending the nation's territorial integrity, not themselves exclusively. On home soil, absent a time of war inside that area, we permit them to do war-like things only as needed for training, and only in carefully defined places and in ways aimed to preserve and protect the "bodily integrity" of the general public who paid them to provide that defense. Anything else is an absurdity.
I agree with what you are saying in regards to the military language being misinterpreted, but disagree with what you say about the drones. This all harkens back to WWI and what the pilots began doing.
I offer the following in regards to the use of armed drones.
http://www.newsweek.com/isis-air-force-army-drones-drop-bombs-585331
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/use-of-weaponized-drones-by-isis-spurs-terrorism-fears/2017/02/21/9d83d51e-f382-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html?utm_term=.25ee21936b0e
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/24/isis-drone-dropping-precision-bombs-alarms-us-mili/
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/drones-isis/134542/
I offer the following in regards to the use of armed drones.
http://www.newsweek.com/isis-air-force-army-drones-drop-bombs-585331
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/use-of-weaponized-drones-by-isis-spurs-terrorism-fears/2017/02/21/9d83d51e-f382-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html?utm_term=.25ee21936b0e
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/24/isis-drone-dropping-precision-bombs-alarms-us-mili/
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/drones-isis/134542/
Also to add this one:
From Popular Mechanics:
http://www.popularmechanics.co...renade-ukraine-ammo/
Based off a report originally from:
http://globalguerrillas.typepa...;utm_campaign=buffer
From Popular Mechanics:
http://www.popularmechanics.co...renade-ukraine-ammo/
Based off a report originally from:
http://globalguerrillas.typepa...;utm_campaign=buffer
Sorry to report the two links above (in reference to the Pop. Mech. story) got mangled and are broken but if they're fixed, I'm still interested.
Here are the full links. I hope that they repopulate on here.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a27511/russia-drone-thermite-grenade-ukraine-ammo/
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2017/07/robotic-systems-disruption-in-practice.html?utm_content=buffer8b6e9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a27511/russia-drone-thermite-grenade-ukraine-ammo/
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2017/07/robotic-systems-disruption-in-practice.html?utm_content=buffer8b6e9&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer