Flying Robot Suicide Attacks

[Martin]

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/0....jjazoykq.html

Flying robot attack "unstoppable": experts
May 09 1:54 AM US/Eastern


It may sound like science fiction, but the prospect that suicide bombers and hijackers could be made redundant by flying robots is a real one, according to experts.
The technology for remote-controlled light aircraft is now highly advanced, widely available -- and, experts say, virtually unstoppable.


Models with a wingspan of five metres (16 feet), capable of carrying up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds), remain undetectable by radar.
And thanks to satellite positioning systems, they can now be programmed to hit targets some distance away with just a few metres (yards) short of pinpoint accuracy.

Security services the world over have been considering the problem for several years, but no one has yet come up with a solution.
"We are observing an increasing threat from such things as remote-controlled aircraft used as small flying bombs against soft targets," the head of the Canadian secret services, Michel Gauthier, said at a conference in Calgary recently.

According to Gauthier, "ultra-light aircraft, powered hang gliders or powered paragliders have also been purchased by terrorist groups to circumvent ground-based countermeasures."
On May 1 the US website Defensetech published an article by military technology specialist David Hambling, entitled "Terrorists' unmanned air force".

"While billions have been spent on ballistic missile defense, little attention has been given to the more imminent threat posed by unmanned air vehicles in the hands of terrorists or rogue states" writes Hambling.
Armed militant groups have already tried to use unmanned aircraft, according to a number of studies by institutions including the Center for Nonproliferation studies in Monterey, California, and the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow.

In August 2002, for example, the Colombian military reported finding nine small remote-controlled planes at a base it had taken from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
On April 11, 2005 the Lebanese Shiite militia group, Hezbollah, flew a pilotless drone over Israeli territory, on what it called a "surveillance" mission. The Israeli military confirmed this and responded by flying warplanes over southern Lebanon.

Remote-control planes are not hard to get hold of, according to Jean-Christian Delessert, who runs a specialist model airplane shop near Geneva.

"Putting together a large-scale model is not difficult -- all you need is a few materials and a decent electronics technician," says Delessert.
In his view, "if terrorists get hold of that, it will be impossible to do anything about it. We did some tests with a friend who works at a military radar base: they never detected us... if the radar picks anything up, it thinks it is a flock of birds and automatically wipes it."
Japanese company Yamaha, meanwhile, has produced 95-kilogram (209-pound) robot helicopter that is 3.6 metres (11.8 feet) long and has a 256 cc engine.

It flies close to the ground at about 20 kilometres per hour (12 miles per hour), nothing but an incredible stroke of luck could stop it if it suddenly appeared in the sky above the White House -- and it is already on the market.

Bruce Simpson, an engineer from New Zealand, managed to produce an even more dangerous contraption in his own garage: a mini-cruise missile. He made it out of readily available materials at a cost of less than 5,000 dollars (4,000 euros).

According to Simpson's website (www.interestingprojects.com , the New Zealand authorities forced him to shut down the project -- though only once he had already finished making the missile -- under pressure from the United States.
Eugene Miasnikov of the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies in Moscow said these kinds of threats must be taken more seriously.
"To many people UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) may seem too exotic, demanding substantial efforts and cost compared with the methods terrorists frequently use," he said. "But science and technology is developing so fast that we often fail to recognise how much the world has changed."

[Mr-Pan]

Its a bird!, its a plane! no.....its a robot!

There is also already "robot" planes. The US has one and it does all sorts of recon missions they could easily make it a bomber.

[waltky]

yea, but they need to make sure it hits the right target...

Pentagon Control Over Drones Lacking, Report Says
July 24, 2007 - An Army unit fighting abroad needs real-time video surveillance of an objective in front of them. The target is high priority and could mean life or death for American soldiers.

The unit requests a Predator Unmanned Aerial System, a sophisticated aircraft capable of feeding video images of the battlefield back to soldiers safely behind the line, eliminating the need for a dangerous mission. But there is a problem. When the Predator shows up, the unit realizes another, similar drone, a Hunter UAS, has already been dispatched to fulfill the same task. Two extremely expensive, highly useful pieces of military hardware in high demand by forces across the battle theater are tied up in the same place, duplicating each other.

"There should be some mechanisms to kind of cross-pollinate to share information," said Sharon Pickup of the Government Accountability Office. The incident involving more drones than needed in one place comes from a GAO report to the House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, released this month. In it, investigators take a hard look at the way the Department of Defense handles these new and extremely useful assets being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The results aren't always pretty.

"The bottom line is the DOD might not be able to evaluate how well they're meeting the needs of the war fighter [with drones] or what new systems they need," Pickup said. Specifically, the report notes a lack of an overall structure for assigning the more than 3,900 drones bought by the Pentagon over the past five years. Spending on the unmanned aircraft has jumped from $363 million in 2001 to a requested $2.54 billion next year. "If you're a brigade combat team you know where your assets are, what you sent them to do," explained Pickup. But at any given time there are other tactical units "out there" too - each with their own assets - which most commanders have no way of knowing about, she added.

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[waltky]

Uncle Ferd playin' Blue Oyster Cult in the background...

Fear the remote-controlled Reaper
July 9, 2008 -- Pilots direct remote-control aircraft from Nevada base in combat 7,500 miles away; New drone, "the Reaper," carries the same bomb load as an F-16 fighter plane; Reapers have been flying round-the-clock patrols over Afghanistan since 2007; Air Force sees unmanned aircraft as the future of aerial combat

From a desert outpost northwest of Las Vegas, elite fighter pilots journey to a war zone in Afghanistan, some 7,500 miles away. It might be the world's longest commute, except that these armchair pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada never leave the air-conditioned comfort of their command center. Air Force pilots are employing remotely controlled fighter-bomber aircraft -- known in military parlance as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs -- to fly combat missions over Afghanistan, hunting for insurgents bent on undermining Afghan President Hamid Karzai's fragile government. This is the future of aerial combat.

Sitting in a virtual cockpit is not as exciting as flying a fighter jet, but unmanned attack-plane pilots can enjoy a normal workday schedule -- more or less. "Seeing bad guys on the screen and watching them possibly get dispatched, and then going down to the Taco Bell for lunch, it's kind of surreal," says Captain Matt Dean. The original drone was the "Predator," armed with a pair of Hellfire missiles. It was followed by its bigger and far more lethal cousin, "the Reaper," which carries four times as much firepower. The Reaper can carry the same bomb load as an F-16 fighter plane, but its pilots are not put in harm's way.

The Air Force once employed jerry-rigged missiles strapped to unmanned spy planes. Now military commanders see remotely piloted aircraft as the model for the way future wars will be fought. For over a year, Reapers have been flying two separate round-the-clock patrols over eastern Afghanistan, controlled from the Creech AFB command center, which has been strictly off-limits to the media until now. Reaper pilots so far this year have launched 64 missiles and dropped seven 500-pound bombs in Afghanistan.

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