Pentagon OK with selling US drones to 66 countries

As many as 66 countries would be eligible to buy U.S. drones under new Defense Department guidelines but Congress and the State Department, which have a final say, have not yet opened the spigots for exports, a senior Pentagon official said on Wednesday.

The 66 countries were listed in a Defense Department policy worked out last year to clear the way for wider overseas sales of unmanned aerial systems, as the Pentagon calls such drones, said Richard Genaille, deputy director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. He did not name them.

"We don't really have a comprehensive U.S. government policy" on such exports, he told an industry conference called ComDef 2012. "It hasn't moved quite as fast as we would like, but we're not giving up."

Northrop Grumman Corp chief executive Wes Bush on Wednesday praised the Obama administration for what he described as significant moves to boost arms exports, but voiced frustration at delays in

Yemen: 10 civilians killed as air strike hits wrong target

Have you ever noticed that Al Qaida always shows up where there is no central bank?
Think about it

Ten civilians were killed in a Yemeni government air strike that had apparently missed its intended target – a car carrying Islamist militants – residents and tribal officials said yesterday

.

Officials initially said a US drone had killed five people in the attack on Sunday evening.

But residents said yesterday that a Yemeni warplane had hit a car, killing 10 people, including a 40-year-old woman and her 10-year-old daughter. "The car that carried the al-Qa'ida militants happened to pass in the same place where the civilian car was," a tribal official said

British soldier killed when US gunship mistook base for Taliban stronghold

Well I guess this makes it very understandable, why those lawyer sit side by side with the drone operators here in the United States.
I can only wonder how long it will be, before I present to you this very same scenario live from your own backyard. Very soon our own skies will be flooded with drones, because they are being tauted as the latest "must have"
for every local police force across the country, and quite a few of the major cities already have plans for the implementation of their use.
How soon will it be when we can finally understand the implication of the saying
"We're all Iraqis now"?
My own personal guess? Before the end of the year, if not just a little bit sooner.

Lance Corporal Christopher Roney, 23, of 3rd Battalion The Rifles, died from head injuries he suffered while serving at Patrol Base Almas, in Sangin, Helmand, in December 2009.

The base had come under attack from insurgents and the platoon based there were busy fighting them off when air support was called in, Coroner Derek Winter said.

A drone fitted with a camera and two US Apaches flew to the patrol base, which was a compound with mud walls, bought from a local owner some weeks before and was not on official maps.

British troops on the ground, who by this stage had won a firefight against their attackers, were incorrectly identified as the enemy and were hit by 30mm chain gun rounds.

Mr Winter, the Sunderland Coroner, said 200 rounds were fired before the mistake was spotted, leaving 11 injured on the ground

Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/22/AR2011012204111.html?nav=hcmodule

You are now under constant surveillance citizen!
The real crapper about this deal is, not only is your right to privacy being compromised but so is your safety.
Drones don't mix well with air traffic at all, they cause plane wrecks.
So you have to wonder whose stupidity started this trend, and how long will it be before people die from it.
The key question here is, why are "we" Americans allowing ourselves to be treated as though we're an "occupied nation" that has been taken over by the leftovers of the military industrial complex.
The real kick in the ass is that you the taxpayer, are paying for the government grants that supply all of these leftovers to your local governments so that they can keep up the high surveillance of you.
Another key question is: When did "We" become the enemy and why?
Heads up my friends
A horror is a happening!
You just don't realize it yet.
But you will




AUSTIN - The suspect's house, just west of this city, sat on a hilltop at the end of a steep, exposed driveway. Agents with the Texas Department of Public Safety believed the man inside had a large stash of drugs and a cache of weapons, including high-caliber rifles.

Domestic use of aerial drones by law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate
Drones on the home front
With Air Force's Gorgon Drone 'we can see everything'


As dawn broke, a SWAT team waiting to execute a search warrant wanted a last-minute aerial sweep of the property, in part to check for unseen dangers. But there was a problem: The department's aircraft section feared that if it put up a helicopter, the suspect might try to shoot it down.

So the Texas agents did what no state or local law enforcement agency had done before in a high-risk operation: They launched a drone. A bird-size device called a Wasp floated hundreds of feet into the sky and instantly beamed live video to agents on the ground. The SWAT team stormed the house and arrested the suspect.

Police turn to drones for domestic surveillance

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2011-01-13-drones_N.htm

Lol the Vets are pushing for the use of drones by the police departments.
And the DoJ is trying to speed up the process to make it happen.

Police agencies around the USA soon could have a new tool in their crime-fighting arsenal: unmanned aerial vehicles inspired by the success of such drones on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Local governments have been pressing the Federal Aviation Administration for wider use of unmanned aircraft — a demand driven largely by returning veterans who observed the crafts' effectiveness in war, according to experts at New Mexico State University and Auburn University.Police could use the smaller planes to find lost children, hunt illegal marijuana crops and ease traffic jams in evacuations of cities before hurricanes or other natural disasters.

One of the chief obstacles to widespread use of UAVs is their inability to "see and avoid" other aircraft as required by federal regulations, a key to flight safety. Davis says he believes operators on the ground can comply with federal rules if they can see the aircraft and the surrounding environment. Wesley Randall, principal investigator on an FAA grant awarded last year to researchers at Auburn University to study the risks associated with unmanned aircraft, predicts drones will be used by police departments in five to 10 years. Randall predicts that much larger unmanned aircraft will be used to transport cargo within 15-20 years.

Drone may be coming to Miami-Dade

http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21003198189967/


Oh the sickness of it all and how easily it seems to spread.
The toys of war shall now be sanctioned for use on it's own citizens, brought to you as well as bought by you, and paid for by yet another grant from the United States, who is so god damned broke that little Timmy had to ask for another higher credit limit again today.

Hey lets ask Pakistan or Afghanistan or Iraq how great it is to have drones flying over your head. They not only take picture they kill people to. They can tell us all first hand the mistake ratio, I hear it pretty high.

A new piece of technology may soon be coming to South Florida, but is already raising concerns from residents.

The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.

Many residents are concerned that the new technology will violate their privacy.

US Air Force prepares drones to end era of fighter pilots

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/22/us-air-force-drones-pilots-afghanistan

War means big business financial stability, the proof is in the trade shows and they will do whatever it takes to keep the industry alive

As part of an expanding programme of battlefield automation, the US Air Force has said it is now training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots and signalled the end of the era of the fighter pilot is in sight.

In a controversial shift in military thinking – one encouraged by the now-confirmed death of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a drone-strike on 5 August – the US air force is looking to hugely expand its fleet of unmanned aircraft by 2047.

Just three years ago, the service was able to fly just 12 drones at a time; now it can fly more than 50. At a trade conference outside Washington last week, military contractors presented a future vision in which pilotless drones serve as fighters, bombers and transports, even automatic mini-drones programmed to attack in swarms.

Contractors made presentations for "nano-size" drones the size of moths that can flit into buildings to gather intelligence; drone helicopters; large aircraft that could be used as strategic bombers and new mid-sized drones could act as jet fighters.

This Terminator-like vision in which future generations of fighter aces become cubicle-bound drone operators thousands of miles from conflict is already here: the deployment that began during the Bush administration has accelerated during the first seven months of Obama's term.

Some 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones are now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2015, the Pentagon's $230bn arms procurement programme Future Combat Systems expects to robotise around 15% of America's armed forces. In a recently published study