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Microdrone Spy Planes
glinden writes "BBC News is reporting that Israel is now deploying microdrone spy planes. These planes have a wingspan of 13 inches (33 cm), can be carried in a backpack, can be launched by a single soldier, and can even fly through windows. The next step in the drone wars?"
I'm glad I'm not an Israeli soldier... I'd be worried about over-winding the propeller and breaking the rubber band, or cutting my finger on the thing.
All joking aside, those things would be hot sellers here in the USA.
Ever wonder what's going on behind the ten-foot-high stone walls of that rich dude's house on the corner? Why, just sent your drone flying overhead.
Police departments would dig those things, too, and so would rescue units.
And don't get me started on what the tabloid paparazzi could do with those things.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
They can make this but they still can't make me a decent jetpack? I'm begining to think we will never get our flying shark we were promised
I have to agree that it sounds rather fishy. What happens if the window is in a hallway? They should make a helocopter one instead of a fixed-wing one. That way it could hover and enter windows, buildings, etc. Of course maybe it's hard to RC the collective as I think it's called?
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Model planes to me. Had one when I was a kid.
Fit in backpack. Was a little over a foot wide. Flew it into a window once...oh wait......
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
Preferably they'd eliminate the need for such things by reigning in their own hardline elements demands and work toward peace.
No justice, no peace.
Know justice, know peace.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One (1) pair binoculars
One (1) pair night-vision goggles
One (1) Field emergency medical kit
One (1) M-4 rifle
Eighty (80) rounds 5.56 x 45mm NATO ammuniton
Ten (10) Meals Ready-to-eat
One (1) Mosquito micro-UAV
Ten (10) 30mm propulsion-grade rubber bands
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
*clears glasses* *looks again at the screen* i think thats enough of slashdot for me today...
These look more like personal assassination drones than surveillance equipment. Visions of DUNE come to mind...
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
So what? Lots of spyware can be flown through Windows nowadays.
*rimshot*
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
NOVA ran a show a few months ago about the development and deployment of unmanned military aircraft. They have some interesting items here.
This is a spy plane, however. So maybe it will be used for intelligence to prevent violence. Or perhaps it will be used for intelligence to make waging war more effective.
The two tend to be linked at the hip. There is considerable interest in the military to develop means of preventing civilian casualties or collateral damage. And it's not just as simple as them not wanting to 'waste' ammunition on noncombatants, they really do want to avoid civilian casualties. First, military people aren't the psychotic, evil madman you see in the movies. Believe it or not, they have children too so they want to try to prevent the deaths of innocents in far away lands. Second, even if they didn't personally care about civilian deaths, the American people would and our allies most certainly would. The type of WWII war where massive civilian casualties are accepted so long as you kill lots of enemy combatants are long gone. Third, increased intelligence will help you refine a priori assumptions you made about the enemy's tactics. If you are planning on destroying a building you believe to be an enemy command center but then receive intelligence that it's actually a homeless shelter, that's more valuable than just noting that it's a non-target. It tells you that you really don't know where the hell the command center really is! And it also makes you pause and question the quality of the pre-battle intelligence that labeled it as enemy headquarters.
Spy planes are here to stay and they will play a more important role in the conflicts to come. And I don't think you can separate their capabilities into "prevent violence" and "enable violence" bins. Those two qualities tend to be one and the same.
GMD
watch this
I guess someone at the Israeli army was playing the mission where you fly the rc chopper into the construction site...
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
You get the camera view from the nose of a cruise missile as it flies through one of Saddam's bunkers, showing lots of Iraqi soldiers scrambling out of the way as the missile negotiates hallways, doors, stairwells, bathrooms and then flies out a window and explodes in a school down the street.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
For those of you who, like me, are fascinated by these things, check out The UAV forum lotsa neat discussion, information, and links.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
That's good, but too high-brow for this crowd. They'll never get the Borg/Hebrew Communal farming reference. Suggest not posting again.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Ah, yes. From the people who invented the Uzi, an indiscriminate killing machine- the closest you can get to the gun equivalent of a nuclear weapon- you don't pick your targets with an Uzi, you pick your areas.
Man, you're an idiot. Israel didn't invent automatic weapons. By any measure, the Heckler & Koch MP5 is a better submachine gun than the Uzi, and that was invented by the peace-loving Swiss.
Gun-equivalent to a nuke? I'm sure the vulcan cannons are much more powerful than an uzi.
It's be nice if people stopped and remembered a few basic facts. #1, Palestinians were there first.
No, they weren't. Jews have been there for many thousands of years. Arabs didn't migrate out of Arabia until recently (1600 years or so).
#2, Palestinians have rocks; Israelis have gunship helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, RPGs, and nuclear weapons; compare the body counts from the palestinian bombings with the multiple retaliation strikes and note that the ratio is just a tad imbalanced.
The Israelis have a well trained military. The Palestinians do not. And even when other Arab nations with real militaries attacked Israel in the many Arab-Israeli wars, the Arabs got their asses kicked, with far more Arab casulties than Israelis.
#3, you see terrorists- I see people fenced into ghetto prisons, whose basic resources(such as water) have been redirected out of the land they've been squeezed into, so desperate to protect their homes they're willing to strap bombs to themselves because they have no other means left to defend themselves.
Terrorists are those who delibrately attack civilians. If the shoe fits, wear it.
Whereas most Palestinians would probably be happy to have their land back and move on to living- Israel won't be satisfied until they've pushed Palestinians completely out of the way, or exterminated them.
Riiight. Hamas refuses to live in peace with Israel under any circumstances. Don't believe me, go ask Hamas.
They're doing a damn fine job at both. They've stripped land, resources, and property to satisfy the needs of their own population, who are somehow better than the people that were there already.
Riiight. If the best military in the middle east wanted to exterminate the Palestinians, there would be millions of dead Palestinians next month, and the conflict would be over. But they don't, because that isn't the Israeli goal. You forget that when the UN created the modern state of Israel, it also created a Palestinian state. THIS WAS UNACCEPTABLE TO THE ARABS, AND THEY CHOSE THE PATH OF WAR. And lost.