It used to be said of the race to space that it would create many inventions and techniques which would lead to technological benefits to the general population of our earth. That may nowadays be rephrased to the fact that military works are now looking to expand into civilian roles.
It goes beyond the civilian purchases of Humvees (as this editor's spouse would say, "Do you want Armageddon!?") about which my attitude is that, if you want to drive one, I'll be happy to point you in the direction of your nearest Army recruitment office. Non-jittered GPS is a very good example; and a very bad example at the same time, because we have become incredibly dependent on a system that could be taken out of service by a man-made force, or by nature in the form of solar flares.
The latest flurry of military vendors looking to expand into the civilian market is in the form of the UAV (unmanned -- uninhabited might be more apropos -- aerial vehicle).
I don't remember any reference to UAVs before about 1995, although they have, presumably, been in a rather long development cycle. In the last few years, however, they seem to have become the cornerstone of the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. No doubt, despite likely denials by government agencies, they have also been skimming around in the skies over Iran. They come in a variety of sizes and flavors with some quite benign, like the slow-moving and easily-targeted model-aircraft-sized Desert Hawk from the UK.
But the ones that continually make the news are the nasty Predator birds from General Atomic. There are versions of the Predator that currently carry a minimum of four Hellfire missiles, although the military is proud to point out that they will soon be able to release 3000 lb bombs.
The advantages of the UAV in the military theater are obviously huge; you do not risk life (on your own side, of course, unless you make mistakes -- which never, ever happens in war…) so the only loss is financial (anywhere from $1.5 M to $30 M each, depending on the model). Most of the vehicles can stay aloft for huge amounts of time, some over 24 hours. They can hang around a targeted area to monitor in real time. Most are small enough and fast enough to make ground-to-air targeting really difficult. And they can fly under most radar systems, when necessary.
The most nosy UAV is reported to be the Global Hawk from Northrop Grumman, which has a wide systems capability for surveillance, including synthetic aperture radar.
With the satellite repeaters that are available, the UAVs on the battlefield do not need their controllers anywhere near them, and the largest concentration of military operators appears to be in a corner of Nellis Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas. Strangely, a large number of the operators are RAF fighter pilots who work in US uniforms on the base.
There are, no doubt, other UAV models that are not being talked about in public. My experience of the military is that if they are willing to show off one sort of product, like the Predator, then there a number of others to which that they don't want attention to be drawn. How insidious could these products get? There have been a number of rumors, that go beyond the DARPA-sponsored insect-sniffing mine detectors, that suggest bug-sized UAVs are in the offing. Why seek permission for a wiretap (do they still do that?) when you can have a UAV landing on a light fixture in the room of interest.
Despite all reassurances to previous generations that organizations like the CIA do not and cannot perform assasinations, we have seen, starting in Afghanistan, that the agency has people on the ground who do control missions that kill, maim and torture; this is clearly at their own hands and in convenient countries that have lesser standards than the U.S. should have. That the agency has its own fleet of Predators -- with which it kills -- should be disturbing to any American and to citizens of any other civilized country. A supposed intelligence-seeking operation that also becomes judge, jury and executioner -- with no publicized rules-of-engagement -- is abhorrent.
The latest in the UAV saga is the suggestion that they should be used for civilian surveillance. This has arisen in the UK where privacy has become a moot subject because of the incredible proliferation of CCTV. There is probably no major city in the UK where you can escape the watchful eye of a camera or two. Fears of incidents occurring between uninhabited drones and all the other air traffic are not, to my mind, at all groundless. The vast majority of air space in the UK is uncontrolled and there is no way that, let's say, a police drone is going to know when a light aircraft is going to come out of nowhere.
The drone's controller isn't the one who will get hurt. And will they have a special category of flying licence in the UK for a drone operator, like they have for hovercraft pilots?
As with any technology, there is the potential for not only use but also misuse in the civilian world. Could you make a UAV system secure enough that it could not be hijacked by someone with enough engineering training? Of course not. It's like hearing candidates for the Republican Party's 2008 nomination spouting about "Tamper Proof ID Cards." Please! Do they redesign the currency so frequently because it is counterfeit-proof?
Show me a tamper proof anything and I'll send you my Fisher Space Pen, personalized for me by a vendor, "The pen that helped save the Apollo 11 space mission." And it is the only technology that I know of that came from the space program over to the civilian side just so I can write underwater.
