Congress this week has passed a bill that will give commercial, private, and military drone aircraft greater access to U.S. airspace that’s currently reserved only for manned planes.
By September 30, 2015, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the kind used by the CIA to kill people in northwest Pakistan and the military uses for spying on targets in Africa, will go far beyond flying over solely military airspace and begin to flood domestic U.S. airspace. Currently, drones are mostly limited to war zones and the U.S.-Mexico border.
The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for commercial use of drones by 2015. The FAA has predicted that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020. The bill is the result of an enormous lobbying effort from Washington insiders and the defense industry.
Allowing wider use of drone technology, especially by law enforcement and police agencies across the country, could open the flood gates for pervasive abuse of privacy, individual rights, and the rule of law. Just as the military and intelligence agencies have used drones to circumvent the law and shroud operations in secrecy, so too could it happen as a result of this bill.
“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.
The recent Russian space probe 'Fobos-Grunt' failed due to faulty computer components and burned up on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. With all the Chinese-made electronics that make up the guts of these drones, maybe they will collide with each other or fall out of the sky by themselves.
Not likely. Good engineering practice will keep the fault probability at reasonable levels. Also, it is generally not the hardware that has problems, but the software.
Congress failed to pass the extending the unemployment claims for the people suffering long term unemployed. Congress has no problem wasting money on watching open spaced. I think it would be much better to take care of the USA public but hey it is congress a servant to big bucks. I am sure that the people who building drones have provided lots of money to the elected ones in the Congress and the senate.
Congress hates America
Holy Hell..?!!! Thirty thousand buzzing the skies. Now what do you think will happen once once of these strikes an airliner and kills all aboard? Will they say it was "terrorism"? First they create a legion of evil storm troopers ( the cops and security aparatchiks ) and then bring home the technology ( drones and scanners ) to keep the slaves under control. All while making the slaves believe its for their own safety and having them pay for it at the same time. Brilliant and incredibly evil.
There ya go. I hope they're fully loaded and ready to drop.
This sounds reminiscent of the movie Terminator. Skynet, the fictitious manufacturer of the machines started simply with drone-type weapons and then moved on up to the bigger and better droids. Go figure…life imitates art. 🙁
Welcome to the disease called the USSA
CLUSTERFOOK More likely… && big bucks for the kids that find them and sell them on e-bay …..or to the N. Koreans
Actually the first post is true. Components will be from Chinese, and recent news is telling us a Chinese team hacked the drone in the mideast. So, I see this as a very real threat to the national security of America. All components both soft and hard should be US made. However, if not this could result is a very dangerous scenario. If nothing more than Chinese hacking the surveillance info and using it against America.