Sky full of drones?

According to this article by the AP, the military wants to use unmanned drones over U.S. airspace to perform various operations, but the FAA is concerned about the increased risk of collisions. It begs the question, Why is the military so anxious to utilize drones within the U.S.?

Leaps in unmanned aircraft technology have military authorities clamoring to use drones for everything from coastal patrols and border surveillance to tracking natural disasters. But fears of midair collisions are slowing any broad expansion of their domestic use.

Federal Aviation Administration officials made it clear in a recent closed government conference that until the pilotless aircraft gain the high-tech ability to sense and avoid commercial aircraft and other airborne objects, the government is unlikely to allow them to operate much more freely in congested airspace.

For the military, it’s a frustrating limitation. For the FAA, it’s a matter of safety.

NORTHCOM, the first unified military command assigned to defense of the continental U.S., which has begun to blur the lines between military and civilian law enforcement functions and undermine the Posse Comitatus restrictions on the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, held a two-day summit recently on use of UAVs in U.S. airspace:

Military officials raised the firefighting incident as an example of expanded drone uses during a two-day summit at U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., late last month. At the meeting, up to 100 senior leaders from at least 10 government agencies tried to resolve some of the problems that restrict the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in American airspace.

“I realize that (the Defense Department) has been very comfortable with using UAVs at will in Iraq and Afghanistan airspace,” said John Allen, director of Flight Standards Service for the FAA, during an interview with The Associated Press. “And there is a reality check when they bring them stateside and try to utilize them and realize there are restrictions.”

So, drones may be dangerous in US airspace but not in Iraq and Afghanistan?  I guess when drones can fire missiles at will and kill whole families of Iraqis, Afghanis or Pakistanis, who cares about a few collisions with civilian aircraft in these countries.  In the Empire, those lives don’t matter anyway.

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