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Canadian Firm Gave Libyan Rebels Surveillance Drone
Joining the posted submitter club, suasfan22 writes with a bit in Wired about the use of a drone by Libyan Rebels. From the article: "The Libyan revolutionaries are more of a band of enthusiastic amateurs than experienced soldiers. But it turns out the rebels have the kind of weaponry usually possessed by advanced militaries: their very own drone. Aeryon Labs, a Canadian defense firm, revealed on Tuesday that it had quietly provided the rebel forces with a teeny, tiny surveillance drone, called the Aeryon Scout. Small enough to fit into a backpack, the three-pound, four-rotor robot gave Libyan forces eyes in the sky independent of the Predators, Fire Scout surveillance copters and manned spy planes that NATO flew overhead. Don't worry, it's not armed."
Like many things the movement of technology getting cheaper and easier to use will impact how things like wars unfold in the future. Pretty soon the US's dominance in drones and automated warfare will be countered by adversaries with similar means. I think it's only because the current two wars were against essentially backwards nations that the US has escaped relatively unscathed, but what happens when they start flying their own armed drones?
That's how military technology works: Somebody invented a spear, so somebody else invented a shield. Then another person made a bow. Fast forward a few thousand years and we have robot planes that blow people to kingdom come before they even see them coming.
It's inevitable that the rest of the world will get their own version of the drones eventually, so Uncle Sam's just going to have to keep building better weapons like he always does. The entire history of mankind is little more than a massive arms race.
How are ground attack missions part of a "No Fly Zone"?
They aren't. All the attacks are under the "protecting civilians" banner.
And where are the anti-war protestors?
Tired.
Just wondering if it is okay to make all the strikes you want without the approval of congress as long as it is just with drones?
AFAIK Congress hasn't undone the "blank check for war" they gave to the president after 9/11.
And was the Libyan government any more evil, corrupt, and dangerous than Iraq?
Meh.. it's hard to tell anything with the media filters... but they did seem more insane and more actively killing civilians.... (whereas with Iraq, they had already killed a lot of civilians and we did nothing)
It is a piece of equipment that has been designed to help in a military operation. Why does it matter whether it is in itself armed or whether it "just" helps armed troops in attacking the other side more efficiently? When we get tangled up to such semantic differences, we see ridiculous claims about the newest military technology saving lives or stuff like that.
ah it's not like we'd be dumb enough to put al-queda into power because we see them as the lesser evil... wait we did? oh right I keep forgetting apparently we are all idiots.
Hand it over to a bunch of dudes that strap APC turrets to the back of pickup trucks.
I would think that if such guys can use the drone then the design is pretty good.
And where are the anti-war protestors?
Waiting for a republican administration apparently.
We are polite. Americans however confuse 'polite' with 'weak'. I don't understand why. As Churchill said, "If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it.".
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The entire history of mankind is little more than a massive arms race.
Well, there's something the human race can be proud of.
Citation necessary. Using the armed forces to attack is one thing, having a plain clothes operative sneak explosives onto a plane is a completely different matter altogether.
As I said I really have no problem taking him out with military action. He was a dangerous nut case. The problem I have is with not following the law. And I question the integrity of the "anti-war" movement as anything but partisan at this point.
Well I can only speak for myself, and I don't consider myself part of the "anti-war movement", but I was (and still am) a vocal critic of the Iraq War.
If the second Iraq War had been initiated in response to a popular uprising against Saddam and had consisted of advisers and air support instead of 150,000 U.S. troops occupying the country, then I would have been cautiously supportive. Then I would have believed that Iraq was a threat, not to the U.S. which was always ridiculous, but to its own people (and not just in the generic way that living under a dictator is dangerous).
Of course that ship had already sailed (and then sunk), which is why the Iraqi people weren't as happy to see us as one might have hoped.
So that, for me, is why the difference in reaction. It's not about partisanship... I also became cautiously pro-Afghan war when it became clear they were taking it seriously. Then Iraq came along and fucked that up besides being a clusterfuck of its own.
I'm not anti-war, I'm anti-stupid. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
It's not the left. It's just the axis of dumbasses. There's plenty of leftwingers (myself included) that opposed Iraq, want a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and still support this intervention.