USAF Taps ESPN To Compile Drone "Highlight" Video

mbstone writes "The Air Force has a problem: Its drones generate thousands of hours of video (I almost said 'footage.') And most of it is miles of endless desert. USAF needs to distill the highlights, if you will, and nobody does it better than ESPN, the TV sports network. Air Force officials have asked ESPN for help in analyzing the 327,384 hours collected just this year. What we really need in times like these is sportscaster Warner Wolf. 'Let's go to the videotape, pick it up right here, Taliban in the home black.'"

Comments

Sensationalized headline, once again

[YrWrstNtmr]

FTHeadline:
USAF Taps ESPN To Compile Drone "Highlight" Video

FTA:
Air Force officials have met with the sports cable network ESPN to discuss how it handles large amounts of video that stream in. The visit resulted in no technological breakthroughs, but helped in developing training and expertise, the Air Force said.

C'mon guys. Just a little bit of a clue?

Re:Sensationalized headline, once again

[Odin's Raven]

C'mon guys. Just a little bit of a clue?

Slashdot Taps WWN To Compile Article "Highlight" Stories

Slashdot has a problem: Its submitters send in hundreds of random links (I almost said "articles.") And most of it is dozens and dozens of sentences long, many with words of more than one syllable. Slashdot needs to distill something vaguely related to a few of those words that will generate page hits, and nobody does that better than Weekly World News, the "alien dingo Elvis impersonators ate my JFK love-child baby" organization. Slashdot officials have asked WWN for help in analyzing the 3,141,592 words collected just this year. What we really need in times like this is George Gilles de la Tourette. "Let's go to the story, pick up maybe three words out of it - USAF ESPN drone - and fill in the rest with whatever other random words come to mind."

Re:Droning On About Drones

[YrWrstNtmr]

pickle button?
is that some kind of vlassic humor or something?

No, that's the (long term) military slang for the button on the stick that releases the bomb. Generally, it is a red button.

Re:Droning On About Drones

[NettiWelho]

And I hold the position that he missed my original point; just because the means of delivery are new does not make the killing of civilians any more OK than with the previous means of delivery, the drones are included in the opening argument because as of now they are the main mains of delivery currently employed, thus; the drones themselves are completely irrelevant in the actual argument, its the murder unarmed civilians going on without any type of reprisal against the aggressors I have my problems with.

Re:Droning On About Drones

[NettiWelho]

I think the real outrage (in the US anyway) comes not from the strikes themselves, but rather that the average idiot (read: the general populace) believes that these drones truly operate autonomously.

I can see you have trouble placing yourselves in the position of the victims here; theyre going along with their business in their country that as far as they no have no active wars with anyone and suddenly out of the clear blue sky a hellfire missile strikes and kills 4/5ths of the clan during whatever social gathering they were there for; the survivors wont give a fuck what fired the missile and on top of that all the aggressors label all people killed in the strike as enemy combatants regardless of age or actual stance against the US and call it a day.

Re:Droning On About Drones

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

pickle button?

Developed in the mid-1930s, the Norden bomb-sight was advertised as being so accurate that the operator could put a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet.

It was an accurate sight, but complex to use and required skill. But "Pickling those bombs" stuck long after the sight had been retired.