Damn. Beat me to it.
2 Likes
Minneapolis is a multiracial riot.
Politicians and journalists will always be drawing lines between “good protesters” and “bad protesters” no matter how good everybody is. Just today the ABC7 reporter who covered the protest in L.A. was positively livid about protesters walking in the street, blocking traffic. That was beyond the pale for him.
16 Likes
AKA Individuals asking for equal rights.
20 Likes
Well, since this is already in my clipboard…
"I said the crowd is unarmed.
There are lots of women and children down there.
All they want is food for God’s sakes!"
4 Likes
and humanitarian relief efforts.
Oh well. Since the predators are also deployed for humanitarian relief efforts then damn, shucks, I guess it’s all good then.
3 Likes
Unarmed? Are you sure? It takes less than an hour to load up those Hellfire missiles. That is unless they’ve developed secret melanin-seeking missiles. In a way that wouldn’t surprise me since the US has been selling women-and-children seeking munitions to the Saudis.
Thank god they don’t have tech that tells them exactly who is down there and who to target:
4 Likes
I have to agree, in this specific case.
Yes, we live in a police/surveillance state. But this usage of an unarmed drone is also completely in line with common-sense handling of any large problem or disaster.
“Slippery slope”? Yes, absolutely. But fighting sensible, legitimate usage of such tech will only serve to invalidate arguments vs. illegitimate use.
Let me put it this way: The genie is already out of the bottle and the tech is in use; we can only hope to limit the damage. This is, of course, true for every technology, ever. No one has been very successful in cramming tech genies back into bottles, throughout history ^^’.
Well put, all of it. Just want to add this teeny little edit:
4 Likes
What, exactly is sensible use here? I do not see any use of drones that comes even close to “sensible”. This isn’t a search and rescue operation and other than eventually holding police accountable for infringing rights of speech, redress and assembly, which will never happen, I don’t see how this is at all beneficial.
5 Likes
The given use case is in my opinion sensible. Yes, an aerial observer CAN pinpoint problems faster, especially fires, and drones are a) cheap and b) can stay on station for days.
Whether or not the given reason is the actual one is far less certain, of course, but I’ll note that the drone was not actually employed, which makes sense because the precincts involved are sitting on their fucking thumbs (although that may very well be better than their normal reaction, in this case; hard to say).
Armed drone? No bueno. But you should also realize that there really are legitimate arguments for drone use, at times, if you ever want to have a chance of curbing their effects on our lives; it’s not like they’re going away any time soon. Otherwise, you’ll end up dismissed as a prevaricator, or at least uninformed. Hyperbole is, in the end, self-defeating.
1 Like
It’s surveillance all the way down.
4 Likes
Funny, that traffic was moving at exactly the same pace as any other Friday afternoon, pre-COVID-19…
8 Likes
I wouldn’t bet real money on that premise. Those Stingray fake cellphone tower systems we know about are sophisticated and there could be more powerful ones we don’t know about and the cameras on the drones are quite good if the altitude isn’t too high. The drone images you’ve seen from “warzones” look pretty fuzzy but that is because they are flying at high altitudes to avoid ground fire and I’m sure that these are flying much lower. Add a bit of CCTV and other ground-based footage and identifying people might be easier than you think. Yeah, I’m getting more and more paranoid by the day but they are out to get me…
4 Likes
Spotting fires, in a dense urban environment and a situation where they are not being reported consistently isn’t legitimate, eh? It’s only OK over national forests?
Whatever.
Umm, that doesn’t require a Predator drone. An off the shelf DJI could easily do that.
To be perfectly clear, I am talking specifically about a military drone being deployed on a civilian population. This has fuckall to do with spotting fires. And to that point, I see no “sensible” application of Predator drones in Minnesota (or anywhere else, for that matter). These machines are designed to identify and exterminate targets and have been extensively used to dehumanize and exterminate civilians all over the planet.
I am fully opposed to the idea of remote battle. Sure, it may save American lives, but no-stakes warfare isn’t a slippery slope, it’s already at the bottom of the cesspool.
7 Likes
Track of yesterday’s drone flight:
It stayed at a constant 20,000 feet through its whole flight.
I would suspect that the drone images are fuzzed on purpose, or else the pilot video feed isn’t as sophisticated as the actual surveillance gear. Another possibility: limited bandwidth for the live feed, while the captured images and SIGINT can be brought back to the base and processed at leisure.
3 Likes
Also, where are you getting this fire spotting info? I have seen nothing indicating that this is the case. The Predator is theoretically equipped for this type of task, but a far cry from the most likely application or most appropriate piece of technology for the task. Unless there is something that you and @stupidr0bot know that none of the rest of us do, this is a pretty spurious argument.
ETA: Also, who’s not reporting fires in a densely-crowded urban environment? There are cameras from every local and national news outlet all over the place plus police and news helicopters swarming. The more I pick it apart, this argument just doesn’t stand up. This is a military action designed for the very purpose the Predator was created for; surveillance of state enemies for tracking and elimination.
5 Likes
Neither in initial cost or cost of operation. Not even close:
“Unit cost US $4.03 million”
“Among the cheapest aircraft that the Air Force operates are Predator drones and the A-10. These aircraft an estimated $1,500 and $11,500 per hour to operate, respectively.”
Edited for clarity.
2 Likes
