sonicboom
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According this artcile, India may seek drones from USA. Any update on this news?
Predatory tactics: Don't ask, Drone tell
Chidanand Rajghatta - The Times of India
So when PM Manmohan Singh arrives in Washington DC in November on a state visit, there should be something else on the table besides the 126 multi-role combat jets the US wants to sell to India - because some terrorists and their camps cannot be tackled with F-16 s and F-18 s. Drone ask what it is.
Heard this really cool joke?
What's the national bird of Pakistan?
Predator. Good one?
This next one is even better.
Who flies the Predators?
American Drone-acharyas.
Some might think these are cruel jokes. But find me a person who feels sorry for those being eviscerated by the Predators' Hellfire missiles and I'll show you a Talibunny. Pakistan used to rage and rant, moan and whimper, that the missiles were killing innocent civilians. But remember seeing any pictures or videos to back this? In most cases, bodies are whisked away before the first cop or camera arrives on the scene. Wonder why.
By most accounts, Hellfires are raining on Taliban/al-Qaida types and dispatching them to their rightful place, so no one feels particularly bad for them. Of late, there hasn't even been a peep, let alone the usual kicking and screaming, from Pakistan. Maybe it is a hoarse throat or maybe it's the $7.5 billion booty, but Islamabad has suddenly become very quiet about Droneacharyas picking off Talibunnies, and even the inevitable collateral damage.
The first publicly acknowledged drone attack on Pakistan occurred on June 18, 2004 in Wana, South Waziristan, and took out Nek Mohammed , a good friend of the Pakistani Army, which had inked a 'peace deal' with him. Since then, there have been dozens of attacks, the frequency increasing to almost one a week in 2008 and 2009, including three in two days this week.
While assorted al-Qaida types have been reported killed in many attacks, some recent targets have been one-time allies of the Pakistani Army (such as Baitullah Mehsud) or even former military personnel - such as Ilyas Kashmiri, an ex-special forces commando-turned-jihadi , who was eliminated last week. At this rate, Hafeez Mohammed Saeed and Masood Azhar should be begging ISIlamabad to keep them in protective safe custody instead of cutting them loose.
Actually, such is Washington's dependence on the Predator (more formally and generically known as the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV) in the so-called war on terror that this gizmo should be christened the national bird of the United States in place of the bald eagle. From a mere 35,000 hours of flying in 2003, US drones are now logging more than 800,000 hours per year. The war in the ****** theatre is now increasingly being referred to as the Drone War. Word of out US military circles is UAVs will increasingly supplant fighter jets, sparing pilot lives, and more importantly, boots - and casualties -on the ground.
The one worry is the development will lead to needless and casual adventurism. After all, when 'pilots' are sitting in an air-conditioned trailer in the Nevada desert and picking targets on a video monitor, machismo becomes matter-of-factly . In one recent TV program, the commander of a Predator group was shown going home to his wife and kids outside Las Vegas after wiping out terrorists with Hellfire missiles - on a computer.
Some of the US 'victories' on the ground in Iraq and ****** are being achieved by dramatic - and mostly classified - improvements in technology. Drones range from itsy-bitsy ones the size of a toy plane to ones the size of real fighterjets . The upper-end ones, some of which can cost as much as a regular fighter jet, are getting sharper and smarter.
The newly-inducted Global Hawk, for instance, can fly more than 24 hours non-stop at nearly 50,000 feet, and act as an eye and ear-in-the-sky , intercepting radio and mobile-phone communications, gathering intelligence using video, radar, thermal-imaging and other sensors, and communicating instantly to an operations room anywhere - or to the hand-held devices of soldiers.
Predatory tactics: Don't ask, Drone tell
Chidanand Rajghatta - The Times of India
So when PM Manmohan Singh arrives in Washington DC in November on a state visit, there should be something else on the table besides the 126 multi-role combat jets the US wants to sell to India - because some terrorists and their camps cannot be tackled with F-16 s and F-18 s. Drone ask what it is.
Heard this really cool joke?
What's the national bird of Pakistan?
Predator. Good one?
This next one is even better.
Who flies the Predators?
American Drone-acharyas.
Some might think these are cruel jokes. But find me a person who feels sorry for those being eviscerated by the Predators' Hellfire missiles and I'll show you a Talibunny. Pakistan used to rage and rant, moan and whimper, that the missiles were killing innocent civilians. But remember seeing any pictures or videos to back this? In most cases, bodies are whisked away before the first cop or camera arrives on the scene. Wonder why.
By most accounts, Hellfires are raining on Taliban/al-Qaida types and dispatching them to their rightful place, so no one feels particularly bad for them. Of late, there hasn't even been a peep, let alone the usual kicking and screaming, from Pakistan. Maybe it is a hoarse throat or maybe it's the $7.5 billion booty, but Islamabad has suddenly become very quiet about Droneacharyas picking off Talibunnies, and even the inevitable collateral damage.
The first publicly acknowledged drone attack on Pakistan occurred on June 18, 2004 in Wana, South Waziristan, and took out Nek Mohammed , a good friend of the Pakistani Army, which had inked a 'peace deal' with him. Since then, there have been dozens of attacks, the frequency increasing to almost one a week in 2008 and 2009, including three in two days this week.
While assorted al-Qaida types have been reported killed in many attacks, some recent targets have been one-time allies of the Pakistani Army (such as Baitullah Mehsud) or even former military personnel - such as Ilyas Kashmiri, an ex-special forces commando-turned-jihadi , who was eliminated last week. At this rate, Hafeez Mohammed Saeed and Masood Azhar should be begging ISIlamabad to keep them in protective safe custody instead of cutting them loose.
Actually, such is Washington's dependence on the Predator (more formally and generically known as the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle or UAV) in the so-called war on terror that this gizmo should be christened the national bird of the United States in place of the bald eagle. From a mere 35,000 hours of flying in 2003, US drones are now logging more than 800,000 hours per year. The war in the ****** theatre is now increasingly being referred to as the Drone War. Word of out US military circles is UAVs will increasingly supplant fighter jets, sparing pilot lives, and more importantly, boots - and casualties -on the ground.
The one worry is the development will lead to needless and casual adventurism. After all, when 'pilots' are sitting in an air-conditioned trailer in the Nevada desert and picking targets on a video monitor, machismo becomes matter-of-factly . In one recent TV program, the commander of a Predator group was shown going home to his wife and kids outside Las Vegas after wiping out terrorists with Hellfire missiles - on a computer.
Some of the US 'victories' on the ground in Iraq and ****** are being achieved by dramatic - and mostly classified - improvements in technology. Drones range from itsy-bitsy ones the size of a toy plane to ones the size of real fighterjets . The upper-end ones, some of which can cost as much as a regular fighter jet, are getting sharper and smarter.
The newly-inducted Global Hawk, for instance, can fly more than 24 hours non-stop at nearly 50,000 feet, and act as an eye and ear-in-the-sky , intercepting radio and mobile-phone communications, gathering intelligence using video, radar, thermal-imaging and other sensors, and communicating instantly to an operations room anywhere - or to the hand-held devices of soldiers.
