To date, the only country that has been allowed to purchase ‘armed’ drone aircraft from the US has been the United Kingdom. That’s the information given to the public at least. It’s big news for the world! It’s been published from Australia to the UK, and everywhere in between these past days. One school of thought following this grand news, is that there will be even more of these dastardly weapons of disconnected violence snooping around our skies. Decimation from afar will be even more commonplace and the threshold for the use of such destructive power will fall even lower. It’ll be just like popping a zombie in a video game. No humanity, nor remorse necessary. Mechanical justice, technical war, systematic control of the population will lead to these machines evolving into ‘judge, jury and executioner’ type entities, with zero-tolerance programming. It’s yet another open door toward a police state.
It seems to be a pretty drastic point of view…. or is it? The most disconcerting part from here is the simple fact that most people have no clue that ‘unarmed’ drones have been freely sold to all sorts of governments outside the US for over a decade already. The current boast is that the majority of these machines have gone to NATO allies and other ‘friendly’ countries and they have been exported as ‘unarmed’. Before we continue, lets clarify some terminology; if a machine or vehicle of any kind (drones included) is ‘unloaded’, it means that it has the systems in place to operate but does not have ammunition (i.e. – a tank with no shells, a fighter jet with no missiles, bullets or bombs of any kind on board). If a device or vehicle is labeled ‘unarmed’, it means that the machine or vehicle does not have any of the systems required to even use ammunition; no guns, no knives, no gizmos, brackets or other doo-dads that would be necessary. Until now, since the machines have been sold as ‘unarmed,’ we as a people have had nothing to worry about since it’s very unlikely that any of these other governments are intelligent enough to figure out how to mount weapon systems on them, right? Don’t worry though, there are new rules that the countries who purchase ‘armed’ models will need to follow, along with being open to US oversight into how they are being used. That way the US can enforce the way these machines are being used so they cannot be operated for illegal surveillance, unnecessary violence or violating human rights. Did we mention that these new rules are deemed, ‘classified’?
MQ-1 Predator
First flown in 1994, it later became the first weaponized drone. Designed to conduct surveillance with powerful cameras and sensors, it can be armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles. It often stays aloft on missions for more than 20 hours at a time and can reach an altitude of 25,000 feet.
My first thought… why now? Why are the weaponized models being stamped to be sold outside the United States now? It’s pretty simple really. Money makes the world go round. To date, the US, Israel and China are the only countries known to have an active and functional drone program and the Chinese have recently started marketing theirs worldwide. Do they have rules like we do? There isn’t even an iota of speculation as to whether or not they’re being particular with whom they sell to. Taking into consideration the fact that the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle industry is predicted to be a $90 billion business this year, I guess we’d better ramp up the sales team. This technology is here to stay.
Any guesses as to what the next jump will be?
SOURCES:
BBC. (2015, February 18). US to allow armed drone exports. BBC US & Canada. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com
Bradner, E. (2015, February 17). U.S. allows armed drone sales to allies – CNN.com. CNN. 2015-02-17T20:49:05Z. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com
Missy Ryan. (2015, February 18). US to allow wider export of armed drones. Retrieved 19 February 2015, from http://www.smh.com.au
