Former U.S. Intelligence Chief Calls For End Of Drone War
Noah Schachtman of Wired reports on some subversive thoughts expressed by former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (thanks to Liam P for submitting this story):
ASPEN, Colorado — Ground the U.S. drone war in Pakistan. Rethink the idea of spending billions of dollars to pursue al-Qaida. Forget chasing terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, unless the local governments are willing to join in the hunt.
Those aren’t the words of some human rights activist, or some far-left Congressman. They’re from retired admiral and former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair — the man who was, until recently, nominally in charge of the entire American effort to find, track, and take out terrorists…
U.S. Expands Its Drone War Into Somalia
Mark Mazzetti writes in the New York Times:
The clandestine American military campaign to combat Al Qaeda’s franchise in Yemen is expanding to fight the Islamist militancy in Somalia, as new evidence indicates that insurgents in the two countries are forging closer ties and possibly plotting attacks against the United States, American officials say.
An American military drone aircraft attacked several Somalis in the militant group the Shabab late last month, the officials said, killing at least one of its midlevel operatives and wounding others.
The strike was carried out by the same Special Operations Command unit now battling militants in Yemen, and it represented an intensification of an American military campaign in a mostly lawless region where weak governments have allowed groups with links to Al Qaeda to flourish.
The Obama administration’s increased focus on Somalia comes as the White House has unveiled a new strategy to battle Al Qaeda in the post-Osama…
Miniature Drones Spray Enemies With ‘Tracking Dust’
Nano Air Vehicle developed by AeroVironment
Adam Rawnsley writes for Wired:
Here’s how the U.S. Air Force wants to hunt the next generation of its enemies: A tiny drone sneaks up to a suspect, paints him with an unnoticed powder or goo that allows American forces to follow him everywhere he goes — until they train a missile on him.
On Tuesday, the Air Force issued a call for help making a miniature drone that could covertly drop a mysterious and unspecified tracking “dust” onto people, allowing them to be tracked from a distance. The proposal says its useful for all kinds of random things, from identifying friendly forces and civilians to tracking wildlife. But the motive behind a covert drone tagger likely has less to do with sneaking up on spotted owls and more to do with painting a target on the backs of tomorrow’s terrorists.
Effectively tracking foes has become a high priority…
U.S. Predator Drones To Carry Out Missions In Libya
Via BBC News:
Armed US Predator drones are set to carry out missions in Libya, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said.
Mr Gates said their use had been authorised by President Barack Obama and would give “precision capability” to the military operation.
US drones are already used to target militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Libyan rebels have been battling Col Gaddafi’s troops since February but have recently made little headway. “President Obama has said that where we have some unique capabilities, he is willing to use those,” Mr Gates told a news conference.
He said two armed, unmanned Predators were being made available to Nato as needed.
Mr Gates denied that the drone deployment was evidence of “mission creep” in Libya and said there was no plan to put US “boots on the ground” in Libya.
U.S. Flying Drones Over Mexico
The New York Times reports:
Stepping up its involvement in Mexico’s drug war, the Obama administration has begun sending drones deep into Mexican territory to gather intelligence that helps locate major traffickers and follow their networks, according to American and Mexican officials.
The Pentagon began flying high-altitude, unarmed drones over Mexican skies last month, American military officials said, in hopes of collecting information to turn over to Mexican law enforcement agencies. Other administration officials said a Homeland Security drone helped Mexican authorities find several suspects linked to the Feb. 15 killing of Jaime Zapata, a United States Immigration and Customs EnforcementImmigration agent.
President Obama and his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderón, formally agreed to continue the surveillance flights during a White House meeting on March 3. The American assistance has been kept secret because of legal restrictions in Mexico and the heated political sensitivities there about sovereignty, the officials said.
Before the outbreak of drug violence…
U.S. Air Force’s ‘Gorgon Stare’ Drone Can ‘See Everything’
First they road test it in Afghanistan, next thing you know it’s flying over Houston. From the Washington Post:
In ancient times, Gorgon was a mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them. In modern times, Gorgon may be one of the military’s most valuable new tools.
This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.
The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a “soda straw” area the size of a building…
CIA Chief in Pakistan Pulled After Legal Action Reveals Covert Drone Attacks
Declan Walsh writes in the Guardian:
The CIA has pulled its station chief from Islamabad, one of America’s most important spy posts, after his cover was blown in a legal action brought by victims of US drone strikes in the tribal belt.
The officer, named in Pakistan as Jonathan Banks, left the country yesterday, after a tribesman publicly accused him of being responsible for the death of his brother and son in a CIA drone strike in December 2009. Karim Khan, a journalist from North Waziristan, called for Banks to be charged with murder and executed.
In a rare move, the CIA called Banks home yesterday, citing “security concerns” and saying he had received death threats, Washington officials told Associated Press. Khan’s lawyer said he was fleeing the possibility of prosecution.
“This is just diplomatic language they are using. Banks is a liability to the CIA because he’s likely to be called to court.…
Attack of the Drones! Number of Amateur Drone Pilots Set To ‘Explode’
Usually I favor allowing hobbyists and amateurs more freedom for technological development but having more of these in the skies does creep me out. Like most things in life, these drones can be used for positive or more nefarous means. Sarah Ryley writes in the NY Post:
In New York City, someone’s always looking down on you. Low-tech, miniature versions of battlefield drones have come to the boroughs. Only here, they are controlled mostly by hobbyists and photographers, not soldiers shooting insurgents from the sky.
There are only 282 official permits to fly drones nationwide, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. They range from $4.5 million jets that can fly for two days without landing, to hand-launched helicopters that fit in a book bag. The FAA would not say if any of these permits have been issued in New York City.
But the number of drones patrolling the nation’s skies is expected to…
Are The Drones Spying On ‘Them’ … Or ‘Us’?
Nat Hentoff suggests that those friendly drones may not be quite so confidence-inspiring as our government would have us believe, at WorldNetDaily:
In May of last year, David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus from 2006 to 2008, co-authored a strategic analysis (”Death from Above, Outrage Down Below,” New York Times, May 17, 2009). He emphasized that the “public outrage” among Pakistan’s civilians caused by our drone attacks “is hardly limited to the region in which they take place.”
Extensively reported by the news media, “the persistence of these attacks on Pakistani territory offends people’s deepest sensibilities, alienates them from their government, and contributes to Pakistan’s instability.”
A year later, in Foreign Policy in Focus (fpif.org, May 19), Conn Hallinan, reporting on the increase in drone strikes in Pakistan, notes that the continuing controversy over the actual number of corollary civilian deaths “is a sharply debated issue.” Neither President Obama, who…
U.S. Navy Uses Laser To Shoot Down Drones (Video)
OK, this is pretty cool – at least if you were the kind of kid who loved Flash Gordon, Star Trek or any other sci fi movies or TV series with laser weapons … report from CBS News:
The U.S. Navy has used a a laser weapon to shoot down four unmanned aerial vehicles in a test that rings up memories of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense shield in the 1980s.
The successful test of the Laser Weapon System off the coast of California was announced…
FAA Under Pressure to Open U.S. Skies to Unmanned Spyplanes
Photo: Ross D. Franklin
Joan Lowy writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure’s on to allow them in the skies over the United States.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act.
Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.
On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.
The obvious risks have not deterred the…
Spy Drone That Can Land On Walls
You just know that spy agencies around the world are drooling over this video. Get your fly swatters ready! As reported by BotJunkie:
Stanford’s Biomimetics Laboratory is full of all kinds of neat stuff, and when we were checking out Stickybot during National Robotics Week, we got a tip about this awesome perching UAV, developed by Alexis Lussier Desbiens.
As you can see from the vid, the UAV uses little spines like Spinybot as opposed to a sticky material like Stickybot…
NASA Debuts Spy Plane
NASA's Global Hawk Credit: NASA/Dryden/Carla Thomas
The Los Angeles Times is excited about NASA finding another use for those ubiquitous drones:
NASA transformed a robotic plane that’s typically used by the U.S. military to uncover nests of insurgents into a scientific tool capable of collecting atmospheric information over the Pacific and Arctic oceans.
On April 7, NASA used the unmanned spy plane, called the Global Hawk, on the first of five flights it has scheduled this month to study air quality.
Instead of the high-resolution cameras and heat-seeking sensors the plane is typically carries when used in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Global Hawk was outfitted with a series of instruments capable of measuring and sampling greenhouse gases, ozone-depleting substances, and aerosols.
NASA’s mission, a joint project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been dubbed Global Hawk Pacific, or GloPac.
The Global Hawk took off and landed at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert…
CCTV Drones: Policing By Remote Control
The secret development of CCTV UAVs or drones represents yet another example of Administrative Lawlessness now evident the world over as civil liberties are squandered.
All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
this our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue
A recent Guardian newspaper article (’CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones’, 23rd January 2010[1]) reveals plans to use surveillance drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to spy on UK citizens. The project, called the South Coast Partnership, sees arms manufacturer BAE Systems teaming up with a “consortium of government agencies led by Kent police”.
The Guardian report states that:
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The Home Office’s ‘Science and Innovation Strategy 2009–12′ [2], published last year, confirms that the UK government has been exploring the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a policing “tool”…
UK Police Will Use Spy Drones To Monitor Population
A BAE UAV
Britain moves to solidify its position as the most developed surveillance state in the “free” world, as reported in the Guardian:
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the “routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan with BAE, have been obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.
They reveal the partnership intends to begin using the drones in time for the 2012 Olympics. They also indicate that police claims that the technology will be used…
Domestic Espionage Alert: Spy Drone Discovered
From News Junkie Post:
KPRC news in Houston recently filmed a secret experiment by law enforcement agencies including the Dept. of Homeland Security of a drone intended to spy on Americans.
The drone uncovered during this investigation are not like the large, expensive models used by the military for targeted strikes on militants half a world away. These are manufactured by Insitu out of Bingen, Washington (corporate offices located in Australia), only weigh about 40 pounds (18.1 kg) before monitoring equipment is installed. This model has the capacity to stay airborne for up to a day.
The Houston Police Department responded with the following statement, “Potential public safety applications include mobility, evacuations, homeland security, search and rescue, as well as tactical.”…
Predator Drones Use Less Encryption Than Your TV and DVDs
Nate Anderson writes on ars technica:
What three-letter Internet acronym best fits the bizarre news out of Iraq and Afghanistan that militants there have been intercepting US Predator drone video feeds using laptops and a $30 piece of Russian software: LOL, WTF, or OMG?
Actually, all three are appropriate for something this farcical, horrible, and brain-numbing. The reason that the transmissions could be picked up easily by a cheap satellite recording program? They were broadcast in the clear between the drone and ground control. That’s right — no encryption was used.
Perhaps, you might be thinking to yourself in a mental bid to make the military seem competent here, no one could have suspected this would happen. But they did suspect it, because it had been happening for a decade already. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, included this tidbit in its report: “The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted…
Military Knew Drones Could Be Hacked In 2004
The Wall Street Journal continues its coverage of the hacked drones scandal:
Senior U.S. military officers working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed the danger of Russia and China intercepting and doctoring video from drone aircraft in 2004, but the Pentagon didn’t begin securing the signals until this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
The disclosure came after The Wall Street Journal reported insurgents in Iraq had intercepted video feeds from drones, downloading unencrypted communications from the unmanned planes. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds…
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
You knew this was coming – how long before the hackers work out how to turn them back around and aim them at us? As reported in the Wall Street Journal:
Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts…
