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David Icke's Official Forums > Main Forums > Big Brother / Microchipping / Problem-Reaction-Solution
Why does the CIA have fully weaponised Pred drones
yamayama
Likes: 8 (4 Posts)
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news...and.6784543.jp
Do drone strikes in Pakistan make Americans feel safer?
Following the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, some analysts speculated that the CIA-run campaign of drone strikes against militant targets in Pakistan's north-west would begin to wind down.
Yet, despite Pakistan's demands, the strikes have continued, resulting in many claimed deaths of militant fighters - claims that are hard to verify. What is of significance is ordinary people in Pakistan are convinced these strikes largely kill innocent people.
Take the recent killing of the high profile al-Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri in a drone strike on 3 June. Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, issued an odd statement following the incident, saying he could confirm "98 per cent" the man had been killed.
The level of accuracy of these strikes has become something of a joke among security analysts. One quip runs that if reports of Kashmiri's death turn out to be premature, he will join the "war on terror's legion of zombie jihadis - those pronounced dead in drone strikes only to rise again."
The drones are operated by the CIA, In a few weeks CIA director Leon Panetta takes over as US defence secretary. He is understood to be an advocate of drone strikes, so are we to see an escalation in their use?
The operators of the pilotless aircraft - based thousands of miles away in the US - are clearly capable of mistakes. Take the case of a botched strike in March which killed over 40 people when it hit a jirga (tribal council) meeting. The victims were innocents - tradesmen, elderly people and policemen. Local tribesmen reacted with fury, saying they would unleash suicide bombers against the US in retaliation: "We are a people who wait 100 years to exact revenge. We never forgive our enemy."
Sadly, they are not kidding. Pakistan is today the world's number one victim of terrorism. An estimated 34,000 Pakistanis have been killed since 2001.
In an open letter to President Barack Obama over the US drone strike policy, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, asks some probing questions: "Could China lawfully declare an ethnic Uighur activist living in New York a "terrorist" and, if the US were unwilling to extradite that person, order a lethal strike on US soil?"
Pakistan is a country which has never been anti-American. Far away from the mountains of Waziristan, most residents in the big cities of Lahore and Karachi have more pressing worries about daily power cuts in soaring temperatures.
In the Urdu language the word for electricity and thunder is the same - bijli. A verse taken from a short poem recently featured in a popular daily paper makes a comparison between power-cuts and drone attacks: "In an age of load-shedding, thunder keeps striking the garden."
Meanwhile in Balochistan, about 45 per cent of Pakistan's land area, huge numbers have disappeared in an insurgency which has been largely ignored.
The 18th-century American revolutionary, Thomas Paine, once said the "most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason." The US needs to adopt a more reasoned approach in its relationship with Pakistan, otherwise it risks pushing more reluctant people into the arms of extremism.
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Drones are gonna be alot more common imo. They remove what little humanity that would be still left , when you talk about a guy actually flying over people and dropping a bomb or shooting them.
If they can however have a guy viewing stuff threw a screen , controlling the system with a control pad , it removes that little bit of humanity and makes him more likely to carry out worse thing's. Just how I could see it going.
I'm even willing to go as far as in a few years time , you prob won't be able to tell much of a difference between game's and real life , once you start to add a dull haze over the top of the image.
"If you support the war on drug's, you have blood on your hand's. "
"Anything i say is just my opinion , and i dont claim it to be fact unless said otherwise "
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...yTH_story.html
The CIA is expected to begin operating armed drone aircraft over Yemen, expanding the hunt for al-Qaeda operatives in a country where counter-terrorism efforts have been disrupted by political chaos, U.S. officials said.
The plan to move CIA-operated Predator and other unmanned aircraft into the region reflects a decision by President Obama that the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen has grown so serious that patrols by U.S. military drones are not enough.
U.S. officials said the CIA would operate alongside, and in close coordination with, the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which has been flying Predators and other remotely piloted planes over Yemen for much of the past year.
Because it operates under different legal authorities than the military, the CIA may have greater latitude to carry out strikes if the political climate shifts in Yemen and cooperation with American forces is diminished or cut off.
The expanded drone campaign will make use of "a mix of U.S. assets," said a U.S. official familiar with the plan. "It's not like you're going to have a change of command ceremony that goes from U.S. military to CIA."
A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment when asked Monday about the Yemen plans. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said the White House also would not comment. The CIA's plans were first reported by the Wall Street Journal Monday night.
The new tasking for the agency marks a major escalation of the clandestine American war in Yemen, as well as a substantial expansion of the CIA's drone war.
The agency pioneered the use of armed drones in Afghanistan a decade ago and has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan in recent years. As a result, officials said, the CIA has developed substantial expertise in using a combination of drone surveillance and the cultivation of human source networks on the ground to carry out strikes inside a country where the U.S. military has limited ability to operate.
The addition of CIA drones also addresses a growing concern inside the Joint Special Operations Command that the military-run drone campaign in Yemen was not getting adequate resources, given the seriousness of the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemen-based offshoot of the terrorist group is known.
Fewer than a dozen JSOC drones have been available to conduct patrols over Yemen for much of the past year, far fewer than have been used in Afghanistan or Iraq, said a second U.S. official.
The official, and others, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding operations in Yemen. The decision to deploy CIA drones to Yemen comes as cooperation between U.S. special operations forces and Yemeni counter-terrorism units have collapsed amid political turmoil.
Yemen's dictator for the past three decades, Ali Abdullah Saleh, flew to Saudi Arabia recently after being injured in an attack. Some Yemeni counter-terrorism teams, which are led by Saleh relatives, have been diverted from the pursuit of AQAP.
The turmoil has put pressure on the White House to use other means to locate AQAP operatives, who are seen as taking advantage of the chaos to improve their position in the country and potentially launch new attacks.
In recent months, some JSOC officers have complained to officials visiting from Washington that their paucity of resources was puzzling, given the concern expressed by the nation's top intelligence officials about AQAP.
White House officials disputed that characterization. U.S. officials have testified repeatedly in recent months that AQAP represents the most immediate terrorism threat to American targets. At a hearing before a Senate committee Thursday, CIA Director Leon Panetta confirmed that the agency had expanded its counter-terrorism programs in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.
"Our approach has been to develop operations in each of these areas that will contain al-Qaeda and go after them so they have no place to escape," he said.
The group is responsible for plots that have included the unsuccessful attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in 2009 and an effort to send packages packed with explosives to addresses in the United States last year.
One of the key figures in the group is an American-born cleric, Anwar al-Aulaqi, who escaped a drone strike targeting him in Yemen last month. That strike was the first by the United States in Yemen since 2002, punctuating a long drought that U.S. officials have attributed to a lack of solid intelligence on the whereabouts of AQAP operatives who went into hiding after a flurry of conventional airstrikes in late 2009 and early 2010.
Another constraint on the Yemen campaign has been the availability of runway capacity at a U.S.-operated airfield in Djibouti, where the JSOC drones are based. It is not clear whether the CIA aircraft will operate from the same facility.
Whats interesting is whether or not the CIA drones flying over Yemen contravene international law in their use and action. No UN resolution has been given to America to allow Drone operations to take place over Yemen.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news...-to.6785714.jp
The United States is building a secret CIA air base in the Persian Gulf region to target al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen, in case anti-American factions win the country's current power struggle.
The White House has already increased the numbers of CIA officers in Yemen, in anticipation of that possibility. And it has stepped up the schedule to construct the base, from two years to a rushed eight months.
The current campaign in Yemen is run by a US military counter-terrorism unit, the Joint
Special Operations Command, with the CIA providing intelligence support. JSOC forces have been allowed by the Yemeni government of Ali Abdullah Saleh to conduct limited strikes there since 2009. Saleh loyalists have recently allowed expanded strikes by US armed drones and even war planes against al-Qaeda targets who are taking advantage of civil unrest to grab power and territory in the country.
CIA director Leon Panetta said last week that agency officers were working in Yemen together with JSOC, as well as other areas where al-Qaeda is active. But the CIA would not confirm the White House decision to build the CIA base, any location for it or any order to expand the agency's operations in Yemen.
The new base suggests a long-term American commitment to fighting al-Qaeda in the region, along the lines of the model used in Pakistan, where CIA drones hunt militants with tacit, though not public, Pakistani government approval.
The Obama administration has been working for months in concert with the mediation efforts of Yemen's Gulf neighbours and the European Union to persuade Saleh to transfer power. Saleh was evacuated for emergency medical treatment in Saudi Arabia after being injured more than a week ago. Experts believe he was hit by explosive devices planted in the presidential mosque, while the Yemenis say he was struck in a rocket attack.
Since 2009, Yemen has allowed JSOC to employ a mixture of armed and unarmed drones, ship-fired missiles, small special operations teams working with Yemenis and bombing runs, Yemeni and US officials say. But permission was on a case-by-case basis, depending on the mood of the mercurial Yemeni president.
American special operations forces based just outside Yemen are taking aim almost daily at a greater array of targets flushed into view by the current unrest. American forces are also taking advantage of the fact that more al-Qaeda operatives are exposing themselves as they move from their hideouts across the country to command troops challenging the government.
That has led to the arrest of al-Qaeda operatives by Yemeni forces, guided by US intelligence intercepts, and those operatives are talking under joint interrogation, providing key information on al-Qaeda operations and locations, US officials said.
That in turn led to the best opportunity in more than a year to hit American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in early May. Three attempts failed, prompting talk among intelligence agencies that CIA-led strikes might net better results, as opposed to US-military commanded efforts. But the CIA has neither the drones nor the personnel to take the lead in the operation at present, officials said.
This video shows that the USA is not asking for permission to carry out Drone strikes and is just doing so Carte Blanche.
Imagine America deciding to carry out Drone attacks in Scotland on a pretend enemy and not even asking the government that its doing so. Surely an act of war?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...agIF3moA#at=16
http://www.defenceviewpoints.co.uk/a...reaten-the-raf
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are not the latest or greatest scientific development to explode onto the technological battlefield in modern times. On the contrary, UAVs have been around for some 50 years and flew missions during both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars. They have also routinely been used to provide electronic intelligence, communications intelligence, and bomb damage assessment: cheaper and safer than manned aircraft.
However, although UAVs have been around for half a century, it has only been recently that UAVs have made headlines, eye catching for both the upper echelons of the military establishment and the public sector. What weight is there behind the proposal that UAVs will challenge the efficiencies gained from manned aircraft in future military operations? And, with particular focus on UK defence, could they be an alternative to the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) which will be the last major fast jet procurement for some time? Spiralling costs in the JSF/carrier program has cast doubt as to how many will finally be deployed, and one suggestion has been the downscaling of the second proposed carrier in favour of a short-base platform viable for unmanned drones.
There are a number of arguments in favour for extending UAV usage, including; the increasing demand for immediate intelligence on the battlefield; limited numbers of manned aircraft assets; decreasing defence budgets; increasing operations tempos; and the high cost of and low tolerance for aerial casualties. More specifically, there must be a discussion into the issue of UAV development, and the potential for UAVs to replace other roles and missions currently dominated by manned aircraft, due to the overall cost effectiveness.
Currently, the UAV program is divided into two major areas: the Joint Tactical UAV Program and the Endurance Program. These two programs provide tactical and theatre commanders with direct, continuous, all-weather intelligence of the battlefield. 2 major advances have been made recently. Firstly, the Endurance program has increased the available flight time to 83 hours for each drone. Secondly, the US should unveil both a refuelling process in 2010 ensuring unlimited flight time and a drone of different design capable of 5 years continuous stratospheric flight, possibly using solar electric fuel. This also links in with the recent test flight of the Solar Impulse. This will allow IED (Improvised Explosive Device) planters to be spotted in play-back and neutralised more often than is already happening.
Since 1972 the UK UAV development and deployment has changed remarkably. The Canadair Midge 501 Drone system was the first to be fully utilised. The Drone system gathered data by flight over pre-planned flight paths using 'wet film' EO and IR sensors, resulting in data always being several hours old. This was replaced by the Phoenix series, which provided live video, with near real time target acquisition data, and the ability to dynamically re-task in flight. Phoenix was decommissioned in March 2008 to make way for the Watchkeeper Series, which will start service in 2010. In the interim period, the Lydian Hermes 450 System will be used and is currently operating in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These UAVs provide reconnaissance and intelligence to ground troops, artillery divisions and HQ.
Prevalence in UAV development is currently focussed on intelligence gathering, however, there are numerous other roles being developed and deployed. Among these roles are: psychological operations, laser designation and range finding, communications, NBC, and a strike capability. However, it must be noted, that despite ever advancing technologies, the targeting systems and air-ground strike capabilities of UAVs have their problems. Humanitarian sources have noted since 2006, drone-launched missiles have killed between 750 and 1,000 people in Pakistan. Of these, about 20 people were leaders of Al Qaeda, Taliban, and associated groups. Overall, about 66 to 68 percent of the people killed were militants, and between 31 and 33 percent were civilians, according to the report. Others describe the targeting and killing of civilians misinterpreted as hostiles by operational controllers. Future military operations will also be characterized by "Peace Support Operations" which encompass peacekeeping, peacemaking, peace enforcement and peace building. As such these will demand minimising costs, both in financial and human terms
In terms of payload carrying UAVs there has been much evolution. Reaper, a remotely flown drone has both air-to-ground missile capabilities and laser-guided bombs. It also acts as an all-weather Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance drone. This is followed by the Mantis, providing much the same whilst being highly autonomous and having a higher endurance (up to 24 hours). It also boasts high quality multi-sensor capabilities. Future advancement will see the deployment of Taranis, amalgamating the benefits of the Reaper and Mantis, but having a low signature (stealth technology), and better performance, command and control, lower maintenance and further communications upgrades.
An area currently being widely debated is the advance in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its role in future UAV missions. Many worry about the proposals and the advances in AI programs that allow UAVs to track, target and destroy vehicles and other targets autonomously. Friendly fire incidents and civilian casualties are among the biggest concerns. Despite recent reports on this situation clearly stating that a human 'sign-off' protocol would still be in place in order to destroy any target it continues to worry many on the grounds of error or malfunction.
Some argue that UAVs will not result in the complete phasing out of the manned fighter jet and professional pilot, and cast a suspicious eye east at countries such China, Russia and less so, North Korea for their basis. Whilst the cost of UAV equipment makes them beneficial and favourable, this does not take into account the research and development costs. These, coupled with the level in advanced technologies required to produce and utilise UAVs obviously make them unavailable to some countries. This, it is argued, will ensure that development in fighter jets and pilots will continue, and therefore, surpass those of the west who drop manned fighter vehicles for warfare. Does the west really want to see such countries leading the way in manned fighter development and training?
The current meteoric rise of UAV development highlights the growing importance of UAVs in the future, and leads to the upshot question of whether UAVs will replace manned aircraft's roles and missions. With dwindling defence budgets, UAVs will be cheaper to field than conventional manned aircraft. With this in mind, UAVs will be able to relieve some of the pressures on the high-demand, manned aircraft community.
Will UAVs see the end of the fighter pilot/jet in the UK? Probably not, for some time at least. UAVs may play a significant part in the answer since they have proven their combat mettle, but there are still too many roles they cannot fully complete. However, it should also be noted that the RAF is trialling the use of non-pilots - four "air minded individuals" - as operators of Predator UAVs. "Do [UAV pilots] need to have gone through the same level of scrutiny and seat-of-the-pants training as might be required for your JSF or Typhoon pilot? We just don't know, and that's the whole purpose of this trial," Wing Commander Jules Ball Officer Commanding 39 Squadron RAF told Jane's Defence Weekly recently.
UAVs are no doubt better equipped for intelligence gathering, and dangerous strike missions behind enemy lines, or black ops, but still fall behind when it come to air-to-air combat. It is also very unlikely, unless advances are made in aerial combat UAVs that other countries would be allowed to take the lead in manned aerial operations. The political backdrop to the issue in the west will ensure this. At present, the best is a combination of the two, retaining a small, highly developed, marine deployable, group of elite pilots and fighter jets to complement a larger UAV force. Logistical operations could then be transferred to the Army Air Corps. As such, one could envisage the disbanding of the RAF to achieve this. UAVs will continue to replace manned aircraft in many areas, but only time and technology will tell how much, and it will not be complete.
If the Taranis has sophisticated field ready A.I. then its a very disturbing and scary development.
It seems the American congress cant trust themselves to behave and want to be observed by UAV Drones at all times.
http://theoldspeakjournal.wordpress....rol-u-s-skies/
Within weeks and possibly days, President Obama is likely to sign into law a bill that will bring unmanned aerial vehicles – drones – into US general airspace, crisscrossing the country in company with passenger planes and other human-carrying aircraft.
The story of how planes without on-board pilots will gain entry into our crowded airspace, where birds are life threatening, possibly within the next three years, is one involving campaign contributions, jobs and fear. As we will see, safety appears not to be the top priority.
I became aware of the pro-drone legislation from a February 10, 2011, Syracuse Post Standard report that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) was supporting an amendment to the pending Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill (S. 223) that would create test zones for the introduction of drones into general airspace.
Senator Schumer was interested in the pro-drone amendment because MQ-9 Reaper drones, killer drones that are flying over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, are stationed at Hancock Air Base near Syracuse. However, FAA safety restrictions have limited drone flights out of Hancock.
"If Schumer's legislative move succeeds this week," said the Post Standard, "it would help ensure the future of 1,215 jobs at the (air) base in Mattydale (New York) and potentially lead to millions of dollars in radar research contracts for local defense companies."
Bad Drones – Good Drones?
Drones have a grisly war history of misidentification. For example, on April 11, 2011, The Los Angeles Times carried a story of how a failure of US Air Force drone operators at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada to accurately identify the enemy led to the deaths in February 2010 of at least 15 non-combatant Afghani men, the wounding of 12 more and the deaths of a woman and three children.
"Technology can occasionally give you a false sense of security that you can see everything, that you can hear everything, that you know everything," said Air Force Major Gen. James O. Poss, who oversaw the Air Force investigation, according to the Times. "I really do think we have learned from this."
The newspaper said that survivors were compensated with $2,900 and families of the dead got $4,800.
Drones like the Reaper are also used for assassination, killing people without trial or conviction, a violation of international law, compounded by the problem of misidentification.
The Reaper can also be used strictly for surveillance and there are a variety of drones that can perform either killer or surveillance functions. Drones are also being produced for commercial uses, which include scanning land and oceans for agricultural, mining and fishing enterprises.
Given the deadly record of drones, I and others in New York State and elsewhere, moved to lobby Senator Schumer to end his support of the drone amendment.
Drone Envy
We knew we were starting very late. On February 15, we presented a letter (appearing at the end of this article) at Senator Schumer's Peekskill, New York, office urging him to abandon the drone amendment. He did not respond and his staff did not provide any information to us until well after the FAA reauthorization bill, with the pro-drone language embodied in an omnibus amendment, cleared the Senate on February 17.
According to Open Secrets.org, Senator Schumer received $10,000 for his 2010 re-election campaign from Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is one of at least 50 companies making drones of various sizes and types and it produces Hellfire missiles, used by drones and other aircraft. Lockheed employs 2,200 in Syracuse.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) also supported the drone amendment, saying in a press release: "This bill is about making southwest Ohio a critical part of this high-growth initiative. UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) could be used for a host of important purposes, from to surveying Kandahar province, to combating drug smuggling and it's critical that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base plays a key role in their development and testing. I've worked on a bipartisan basis – first with (former) Sen. (George) Voinovich and now with Sen. (Rob) Portman – to enable the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson and the Springfield National Guard to test unmanned aerial systems in Southwest Ohio."
Among other Senate supporters of the drone amendment were Sens. Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) and John Hoeven (R-North Dakota), whose state seeks to be a center of drone development and where the University of North Dakota claims to be the first in offering a four-year degree program for drone pilots "hoping to take the sticks in a field expected to swell to a $20 billion industry over the next decade."
Senator Hoeven said on the Senate floor, in support of the amendment:
"We're already flying UAVs in airspace all over the world. Now we need to open the skies for them at home to make our nation more secure, our communities safer and our economy more dynamic, creating jobs and opportunities in our country. If we don't you can be sure other nations will."
(Note: Open Secrets shows no major aerospace companies contributing to Senators Brown or Hoeven in 2010; Senator Conrad received $22,600 in 2010 from Carlyle Group, which owns ARINC, a company with drone business.)
With Senate approval of the FAA bill, our anti-drone lobbying shifted to the House of Representatives where the FAA reauthorization (H.R. 658) containing pro-drone amendments similar to those in the Senate was still under consideration. While the senate drone legislation did not set a deadline for drone entry into general US skyways; a House amendment, which was ultimately approved, sets a deadline of September 30, 2015, for integration of commercial drones.
It is obvious that many in Congress have embraced drones of all kinds for money, for themselves and their constituents, willfully ignoring what drones are doing in war or the real dangers they will bring with them into the skies over the US.
In March 2010, Congressman Tierney held drone hearings and heard testimony that addressed ways in which the US use of killer drones has violated international law.
Ideally, Congress would by now have banned the use of drones for assassination and limited their battlefield use to situations in which troops on the ground can make visual identification of enemy forces. This is presuming that the US is involved in wars that do not violate international law, unlike the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As for use of drones over the United States, at this writing, the FAA restricts drone flights to specific zones where they can be carefully segregated from general air traffic. As suggested above, the military, some law enforcement officials and drone manufacturers have been pushing the FAA to move fast to allow drones to fly much more freely. The FAA has resisted quick introduction for safety reasons, as indicated in the following testimony by Henry Krakowski, chief operating officer of the FAA air traffic organization before Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Aviation Operations in September 2010:
"As the most complex airspace in the world, the NAS (National Airspace System) encompasses an average of over 100,000 aviation operations per day, including commercial air traffic, cargo operations, business jets, etc. Additionally, there are over 238,000 general aviation aircraft that represent a wide range of sophistication and capabilities that may enter the system at any time. There are over 500 air traffic control facilities, more than 12,000 air navigation facilities and over 19,000 airports, not to mention the thousands of other communications, surveillance, weather reporting and other aviation support facilities. With this volume of traffic and high degree of complexity, the FAA maintains an extremely safe airspace through diligent oversight and the strong commitment to our safety mission …
"While UASs (unmanned aerial systems) offer a promising new technology, the limited safety and operational data available to date does not support the expedited or full integration in the NAS. Because current available data is insufficient to allow unfettered integration of UASs into the NAS – where the public travels every day – the FAA must continue to move forward deliberately and cautiously, in accordance with our safety mandate."
At the same time that Congress is pushing the FAA to allow drones to fly everywhere, the House version of the FAA bill would roll back the agency's budget to 2008 levels, allocating $57.8 billion for a four-year period.The larger issue is whether drone technology can ever be perfected to the point where pilots on the ground are going to be able to look out for danger in the same way pilots in the air can. As Air Force General Poss said in the quote at the beginning of this article, technology can lead to unwarranted confidence. It seems certain that if Congress, the military, law enforcement agencies and the aerospace industry get their way, we will be having drone hits on passenger aircraft just as we are having bird hits now.
In addition, there is no restriction in the FAA reauthorization against drones flying in US airspace carrying weapons, raising the specter of accidental firings at other aircraft and at people and objects on the ground and of mid-air explosions from accidental hits on other aircraft. The Pentagon is also planning drone aircraft that can carry nuclear weapons.
2. Who Will Watch the Watchers?
Drones also present a real threat to personal privacy and safety. Drones are envisioned as eyes in the sky for police departments as well as for border patrols. Although members of Congress touted drones for surveillance, nothing in the FAA legislation discusses when surveillance can be undertaken or any restrictions on use of material gathered in drone surveillance.
This becomes of even greater concern in view of the problems of drone misidentification, demonstrated in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
There is also the possibility, not addressed in the FAA reauthorization, of police arming their drones to fight crime, which raises the fundamental issues of misidentification, due process and collateral damage, among others.
This article is obviously being written at a very late date. How could we have known sooner about the pro-drone amendments and their implications?
3. Citizen Surveillance
At this point, there is no anti-war legislative action office in Washington, DC, that is devoted solely to: (1) providing continuing information to grassroots organizers on weapons and war funding; and (2) building grassroots response organizations in Congressional districts.
Matt Southworth of the Friends Committee on National Legislation was helpful in identifying some Congressional aides who might wish to help address the drone amendments, but he was stretched thin and had only limited time to make calls, much less visits. Ideally grassroots anti-war groups would have the benefit of one or two people in Washington who would follow weapons and war funding legislation, such as the drone amendments, and provide early warning to local anti-war organizers.
A model for this would be Bread for the World, which develops grassroots organizations to lobby Congress on hunger and food policy issues.
This points also to the need for local educational groups that work to inform the public not only on current wars but on business/job alternatives to the military contracting work being done by plants in their areas.
What we need immediately is legislation banning the use of US drones for assassination and banning drones from US general aviation skyways.
Now putting aside all the politics, heres an interesting video showing Israeli drones being used on a captive population.
Now if that drone was weaponised and the population had no place to hide, then what are the implications of this? Imagine weaponised drones flying over London, Paris, or New York being able to target civilians, or political protestors with no accountability whatsoever.....
Last edited by yamayama; 21-06-2011 at 12:49 PM.
Heres a report from The Guardian in 2009 showing how Israeli weaponised drones purposely targeted unarmed civilians sitting in their own homes peacefully, going about their business.
This is whats coming to London, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Belfast, and Dublin over the next 20 years. Guaranteed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...-crimes-drones
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ology-internet
Two apparently unconnected items of news appeared on the same day, 19 June – though one can be forgiven overlooking their appearance… As any news, they arrived floating in an "information tsunami" – just two tiny drops in a flood of news meant/hoped to do the job of enlightening and clarifying while serving that of obscuring and befuddling.
One item, authored by Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, informed of the spectacular rise in the number of drones reduced to the size of a dragonfly, or of a hummingbird comfortably perching on windowsills; both designed, in the juicy expression of Greg Parker, an aerospace engineer, "to hide in plain sight". The second, penned down by Brian Stelter, proclaimed the internet to be "the place where anonymity dies". The two messages spoke in unison, they both augured/portended the end of invisibility and autonomy, the two defining attributes of privacy – even if each of the two items was composed independently of the other and without awareness of the other's existence.
The unmanned drones, performing the spying/striking tasks for which the "Predators" have become notorious ("More than 1,900 insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas have been killed by American drones since 2006") are about to be shrunk to the size of birds, but preferably insects (the flapping of insects' wings is ostensibly much easier to technologically imitate than the movements of birds' wings), and the exquisite aerodynamic skills of the hawk moth, an insect known for its hovering skills, have been, according to Major Michael L Anderson, a doctoral student in advanced navigation technology, selected as a not-yet-attained, but certain to be soon reached target of the present designing flurry – because of its potential to leave far behind everything "what our clumsy aircraft can do".
The new generation of drones will stay invisible while making everything else accessible to view; they will stay immune while rendering everything else vulnerable. In the words of Peter Baker, an ethics professor at the United States Naval Academy, those drones will usher wars in the "post-heroic age"; but they will also, according to other "military ethicists", push yet wider the already vast "disconnect between the American public and its war"; they will perform, in other words, another leap (second after the substitution of the conscript by a professional army) towards making the war itself all but invisible to the nation in whose name the war is waged (no native lives will be at risk) and so that much easier – indeed so much more tempting – to conduct, thanks to the almost complete absence of collateral damages and political costs.
The next generation drones will see all while staying comfortably invisible – literally as well as metaphorically. Against being spied on, there will be no shelter – and for no one. Even the technicians who send drones into action will renounce control over their movements and so become unable, however strongly pressed, to exempt any object from the chance of falling under surveillance: the "new and improved" drones will be programmed to fly on their own – following itineraries of their own choice in times of their own choice. Sky is the limit for the information they will supply once they are put in operation in planned numbers.
This is, as a matter of fact, the aspect of the new spying/surveilling technology armed with the capacities of acting-at-distance and autonomously, that worries most its designers and so also the two news-writers reporting their preoccupations: "a tsunami of data", already overflowing the staff of the air force headquarters and threatening to run out of their digesting/absorbing powers, and thus also out of their (or anybody's for that matter) control.
Since 9/11, the number of hours which air force employees need in order to recycle the intelligence supplied by the drones went up by 3,100% – and each day 1,500 more hours of videos and 1,500 more images are added to the volume of information clamouring to be processed. Once the limited "soda straw" view of drone sensors is replaced with a "gorgon stare" able to embrace a whole city in one go (also an imminent development), 2,000 analysts will be required to cope with the feeds of but one drone, instead of 19 doing such a job today. But that only means, let me comment, that fishing an "interesting", "relevant" object out of the bottomless container of "data" will take some hard work and cost rather a lot of money; not that any of the potentially interesting objects may insure oneself against falling into that container in the first place. No one would ever know when the hummingbird lands on his or her windowsill.
As for the "death of anonymity" courtesy of the internet, the story is slightly different: we submit our rights to privacy to slaughter on our own will. Or perhaps we just consent to the loss of privacy as a reasonable price for the wonders offered in exchange. Or the pressure to deliver our personal autonomy to the slaughter house is so overwhelming, so close to the condition of a flock of sheep, that only few exceptionally rebellious, bold, pugnacious and resolute wills would earnestly attempt to withstand it. One way or the other, we are however offered, at least nominally, a choice, as well as a semblance at least of a two-way contract, and at least a formal right to protest and sue in case of its breach: something that in the case of drones is never given.
All the same: once we are in, we stay hostages to fate. As Brian Stelter observes, "the collective intelligence of the internet's two billion users, and the digital fingerprints that so many users leave on websites, combine to make it more and more likely that every embarrassing video, every intimate photo, and every indelicate email is attributed to its source, whether that source wants it to be or not." It took Rich Lam, a freelance photographer taking pictures of street riots in Vancouver, just one day to trace and identify a couple caught (by accident) passionately kissing on one of his photos.
Everything private is now done, potentially, in public – and is potentially available to public consumption; and remains available for the duration, till the end of time, as the internet "can't be made to forget" anything once recorded on any of its innumerable servers. "This erosion of anonymity is a product of pervasive social media services, cheap cell phone cameras, free photo and video web-hosts, and perhaps most important of all, a change in people's views about what ought to be public and what ought to be private". And let me add: the choice between the public and the private is slipping out of people's hands, with the people's enthusiastic co-operation and deafening applause. A present-day Etienne de la Boétie would be probably tempted to speak not of voluntary, but a DIY servitude.
presidentgas
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Location: Upper Ramsbottom
Originally Posted by yamayama
Heres some info on the british version of the Predator drone; Taranis.
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/tanaris/
WOW! Look at the pic in the link, the "Corax". I saw one of these in the summer of 2005, flying over Eastbourne in SE England, way, way up high. I looked up while I was working and said to my workmate "Did you see that?" He told me to STFU and get on with my work, we didn't have time to be looking up at the sky and seeing imaginary planes! Wait til I show him this link! I'll say it again WOW!
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...out-drone-base
Pakistan has stopped US drone flights from a remote airbase in the western province of Balochistan and ordered US personnel to vacate it, the defence minister has said.
"We have told them to leave the Shamsi airbase," Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said on Wednesday night, adding that US personnel had already started to shift equipment from the base.
A US embassy spokesman declined to comment, referring queries to Washington.
Shamsi is located in a remote valley 350 miles south-west of Waziristan, where most of the CIA-directed Predator and Reaper drone strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban targets take place.
The closure of the base is a blow to a covert programme that has killed up to 2,500 people since its inception seven years ago and forms a cornerstone of President Barack Obama's strategy to flush al-Qaida from its Pakistani havens.
The US insists it will press ahead with the strikes. In unusually direct comments, Obama's counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said on Wednesday that the US would continue to "deliver precise and overwhelming force against al-Qaida" in the tribal areas.
The attacks are likely to continue from CIA bases in Afghanistan – the latest took place on June 20 in Kurram tribal agency. A senior Pakistani military official said the US had not used Shamsi for "several months" and was already flying drones across the border.
Senior civilian officials said they closed Shamsi in retaliation for an American reduction of coalition support funds, a multibillion-dollar subsidy for Pakistani military operations. The defence minister said US forces had already vacated Ghazi airbase, 40 miles north-west of Islamabad.
A US official in Pakistan accused the government of engaging in "diplomacy by headline" but refused to comment further.
The spat marks another low point in Pakistan-US relations after the raid to kill Osama bin Laden on 2 May and the furore over a CIA agent, Raymond Davis, who shot dead two men in Lahore in January.
Pakistan's military and the ISI intelligence service have sought to restrict CIA activities by seeking lists of spies, closing intelligence cooperation centres, and restricting visas for US personnel.
The US, meanwhile, is trying to repair the relationship, recognising Pakistan's importance in fighting al-Qaida and, perhaps, reaching a peace settlement in Afghanistan.
Although at least 120 military trainers have been ordered to leave the country, the US recently agreed to replace two Orion surveillance planes that were destroyed in a militant assault on a Karachi naval base in May.
The CIA use of Shamsi is controversial in Pakistan, where drone strikes are extremely unpopular. A recent Pew poll found 97% of respondents viewed them negatively.
Shamsi was built by Arab Sheikhs from the United Arab Emirates to facilitate hunting falcon trips for the houbara bustard, a rare bird some Arabs believe has aphrodisiac properties. The CIA presence was detected in 2004, when the first drone strikes occurred. Google Earth images showed Predator drones parked on the runway.
Since then CIA contractors have been stationed at Shamsi, fuelling and arming Predator and the newer Reaper drones. Operators at the base control the pilotless planes during takeoff but control quickly passes to a "reachback operator"sitting at a video screen thousands of miles away at the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia.
The drones use different warheads, from Hellfire missiles that travel at supersonic speeds to laser-guided Stingers and other missiles using thermobaric warheads that create percussion waves which can penetrate deep bunkers and caves.
According to the New America Foundation, which tracks drone strikes, there have been 253 since 2004, with 42 so far this year. Various press reports put the death toll from the strikes at between 1,557 and 2,464.
The varying figures highlight the difficulty of obtaining accurate information from the tribal belt, which is out of bounds to foreigners and most local reporters, and where Taliban fighters take control of drone attack sites immediately after the strikes occur.
The most contentious issue is civilian casualties. The New American foundation, based on press reporters, estimates non-militant deaths at 20% of the total, although in 2010 this fell to 5%.
Pakistan's military has previously tried to distance itself from Shamsi by claiming that the airbase was the territory of the United Arab Emirates. However base security and other logistics have been provided by Pakistani forces.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...nsurgency.html
The strike last week is believed to have wounded the two leading militants and came amid increasing concern among US officials about growing ties between Shabaab and the global terror network, the Post said.
"They (Shebab fighters) have become somewhat emboldened of late and, as a result, we have become more focused on inhibiting their activities," it quoted an official as saying. "They were planning operations outside of Somalia."
The US military could not immediately be reached for comment.
The official quoted by the Post said the two commanders had "direct ties" to Anwar al-Awlaqi, a charismatic American-born preacher believed to be hiding in his family's native Yemen.
The US military has carried out a number of attacks in recent years against top al-Qaeda militants believed to be hiding in Somalia, but last week's incident appeared to be the first drone strike, the Post said.
Last Thursday residents reported huge explosions near Kismayo, a southern port town controlled by Shabaab, followed by the sound of aircraft.
A Shabaab official in the area said his men had reported an aerial bombing raid on a Shabaab base that wounded several fighters, including foreigners, and that he believed it was carried out by US aircraft.
In January 2007 a US air raid left dozens of people dead at Ras Kamboni in the far south of Somalia. It was coupled with a second raid 155 kilometres further north.
One of the presumed targets of those raids was al-Qaeda's chief in east Africa Fazul Abdullah Muhammad, who was gunned down earlier this month in a shoot-out at a roadblock in Mogadishu after he made a wrong turn.
Fazul was believed to be behind the August 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the worst attack by al-Qaeda until the September 2001 attacks on the United States.
Outgoing CIA chief Leon Panetta, who is poised to become the next US defence secretary, said earlier this month that the Shabaab were looking to extend their operations and carry out attacks abroad.
The Shabaab still control most of south and central Somalia and roughly half of the capital Mogadishu despite gains in recent months by the African Union AMISOM forces that are propping up the Shabaab-opposed transitional government.
A US drone fired at leaders of Somalia's Shabaab Islamist insurgency after they were found to have ties to al-Qaeda, the Washington Post reported late Wednesday, citing US officials.
"They (Shabaab fighters) have become somewhat emboldened of late and, as a result, we have become more focused on inhibiting their activities," it quoted an official as saying. "They were planning operations outside of Somalia."
A Sheabaab official in the area said his men had reported an aerial bombing raid on a Shabaab base that wounded several fighters, including foreigners, and that he believed it was carried out by US aircraft.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...litary/4347306
Like its waterfowl namesake, the Heron unmanned aerial vehicle has the excellent vision of a hunter. Today, the 27-foot-long Israeli UAV is making a rare flight over the United States, using a high-definition video camera to track a speedboat buzzing across the Patuxent River in Maryland. The camera shares space with an infrared thermal imager and laser rangefinder inside a 17-inch sphere mounted under the aircraft's nose. The camera and the UAV both turn automatically to track the boat below, no satellite-linked joysticks required. On the Patuxent, a Coast Guard crew in a shallow-water patrol boat uses a real-time video feed from the Heron to locate the speedboat.
Less than 5 miles away, several hundred spectators watch the camera's feed on a massive color television monitor. The crowd of defense officials, defense industry wonks and military aviation buffs--many with bumper stickers on their cars that say "My other vehicle is unmanned"--is thick here at Webster Field, an auxiliary naval airfield in Maryland. The Heron is just one of about a dozen UAVs making flight demonstrations. As each one sweeps overhead, an announcer gushes over its abilities with the over-enthusiasm of a county fair emcee describing a prize sheep.
The crowd watches on the massive screen as the two boats converge and the Coast Guard crew completes the mock interception. The image of the river scene wheels as the Heron banks away from the boats and returns to the airfield. The UAV glides into a smooth, autonomous landing and as the Heron taxis, the goofball emcee coos over the PA speakers: "Aw, isn't that just pretty?"
The day is a spectacle of flying robots. A unit of Textron shows off an aircraft that it is pitching to the Marine Corps. It has a 12-foot wingspan and a pusher propeller mounted between its fuselage and inverted V-tail; it can be launched from a moving vehicle and is recovered by flying it into a net. The U.S. Army also has a marquee UAV to demo, the MQ-8B Fire Scout. The 3150-pound unmanned helicopter, the Army's first, may soon scan battlefields for chemical weapons, minefields and radio transmissions. And the showstopper, even while remaining earthbound, is the Navy's Joint Unmanned Combat Air System, a sleek, blended-wing aircraft with the maw of an air inlet placed almost mockingly where a cockpit would go. It sits like a resting bird, its 31-foot-long wings folded up for better storage on a warship. It is scheduled to perform an autonomous takeoff and landing from an aircraft carrier deck this year.
Unmanned aircraft are the biggest thing to happen in military aviation since stealth geometry, and the Air Force's leadership is dramatically increasing the UAV fleet this year. However, the service is still struggling over how the technology can be maximized in the future. "Today, the evolution of the machine is beginning to outpace the capability of the people we put in them," Air Force chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said late last year in a speech to the Air Force Association. "We now must reconsider the relationship."
Under his direction, the Air Force is trying to become the Pentagon's leader of future UAV development. Schwartz's primary tool is the "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan, 2009-2047," a comprehensive look at how the U.S. military can expand the use of UAVs over the next 38 years. The Air Force is proposing to use next-generation unmanned aircraft in a slate of new missions, including air strikes, aerial refueling, cargo transport and long-range bombing.
But how much freedom will the Air Force be willing to grant unmanned airplanes? Its airmen are only now coming to accept UAVs--they fly them every day over Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and other hot spots--but the service has articulated a way forward that not only marginalizes pilots, it also promises to replace many UAV ground-control crews with automation. Today's highly trained airmen may not embrace this vision of the future. One Air Force officer working with unmanned aircraft would only say he supports the report "because it's a plan. And having a plan is better than not having a plan."
he Air Force squandered decades' worth of opportunities to lead U.S. military UAV development. In the 1970s, the service experimented with unmanned surveillance craft in Vietnam but dropped all funding after it decided the technology did not offer improvements over traditional airplanes. Continued advances of Soviet warplanes, such as the MiG fighter, kept a Cold War premium on air superiority won by high-performance, expertly piloted airplanes.
The idea of unmanned airplanes also runs contrary to the airman-centric ethos that has defined the Air Force since it became an independent military branch in 1947. Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine in 1973 quoted an Air Force official's disparaging verdict on remote-control warplanes: "How can you be a tiger sitting behind a console?" That attitude proved to be shortsighted. In 1982, Israel used UAVs to spoof Syrian radar in Lebanon, but the status quo in America continued for another decade. The Pentagon started UAV research in the mid-1990s, but even then the funding was tepid, in part because of Washington's bias toward large, job-generating manned airplane programs.
Guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan changed all that; the need for constant overhead video is driving a UAV spending spree. When facing insurgents who blend into a local population, good intelligence is worth more than even the smartest bomb. In 2010 the Defense Department will spend $5.4 billion on unmanned aircraft development, procurement and operations--about $2.5 billion more than the military spent on UAVs during the 1990s.
The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force, which drafted the plan, is headquartered in a modest office that takes up a small fraction of one floor inside a banal building in Crystal City, Va. The full-time staff here tops out at a handful, but National Guard and Air Force Reserve temps fill out the administrative positions. Dozens of moonlighting planners from the Pentagon also volunteer for the task force, forgoing their free time for a chance to work on a project with high-ranking luminaries at Air Force headquarters who advise the task force.
The day-to-day work is supervised by the task force's director, Col. Eric Mathewson. The former F-15 pilot is a compact man with a soft, smooth voice that always sounds earnest. Mathewson often places a hand on his head when he speaks, as if his ideas could burst from his temple if he weren't holding them in. "It was clear we had been reactive, reactive, reactive," Mathewson says. "It was time to develop a vision."
That vision depends on developing smarter unmanned aircraft that can make life-and-death combat decisions on their own. According to the Flight Plan, UAVs will demonstrate "sense and avoid" collision-avoidance systems by the end of this year. Unmanned aircraft will be able to refuel each other by 2030. Global strike capability, perhaps even with nuclear weapons, is projected for 2047. "As technology advances, machines will automatically perform some repairs in flight," the Flight Plan reads. "Routine ground maintenance will be conducted by machines without human touch labor." The Air Force document not only discusses once-taboo subjects, such as automatic target engagement and autonomous UAVs flying in commercial airspace, it also includes short-term recommendations and goals to one day make them feasible.
Mathewson says that by 2020 just one control crew--airborne or ground-based--will be able to control multiple UAVs at once. Ground-control crews today, even when aided by advanced autopiloting, continuously monitor a single UAV. This level of direct control and supervision is referred to as man-in-the-loop. But a robotic system that only alerts humans when a critical decision needs to be made is called man-on-the-loop. A ground-control crew can opt to redirect the UAV or assume direct control until the key choice is made. "I don't think it's an overstatement that this is a revolution of military affairs," Mathewson says. "The revolution is the conscious application of automated technology."
Robot-Assisted Air Strike
Man-on-the-loop controls could make a battlefield look like this: An F-35A Lightning II fighter cuts through the night sky. The pilot's mission is simple--destroy an enemy bunker protected by a network of radar and antiaircraft missile batteries. His three wingmen--one flying scant feet away, another 150 miles ahead and the third preparing to cause a diversion far to the east--are following a meticulous battle plan meant to defeat these defenses. Of the four aircraft in the strike group, only the F-35A has a cockpit; the rest are semiautonomous UAVs that the pilot must trust with his life.
One of the most dangerous missions in military aviation is suppression of enemy air defenses, or SEAD. The lead UAV becomes bait as it flies into radar range of antiaircraft missile batteries. An icon on the F-35 pilot's virtual head-up display, projected onto the faceplate of his helmet, alerts him that the SEAD unmanned airplane has automatically identified the emissions of an enemy radar site. This is the first time in the mission that the SEAD airplane has communicated with any human.
Miles from the danger, the F-35A pilot coolly assesses the situation displayed on one of the screens in his cockpit, confirms the target is legitimate and authorizes the lead UAV to fire. The AGM-88 high-speed antiradiation missile follows the radar waves back to their source, obliterating the dish and its crew. There is now a gap in the enemy radar screen, and the pilot directs the UAV to return to base.
Meanwhile, another UAV east of the target, navigating by using a mix of GPS and accelerometer data, is busy scrambling other enemy radar installations by flooding the skies with emissions that share the radar's frequency. The jamming pods under the UAV's wings also disrupt radio transmissions from the air-defense network, covering up the sudden loss of contact with the radar sites protecting the bunker. Otherwise, an enemy commander could discover the location of the actual raid. After a preset amount of time spreading confusion, the UAV returns to base.
The F-35A pilot is closing in on the target fast and needs to carefully aim the F-35's electro-optical targeting system to release a bomb that will hit the structure at an angle calculated to collapse it without destroying nearby civilian buildings. He triggers the laser designator and authorizes the nearby unmanned airplane to drop a pair of bombs, which use fins to steer toward the laser-designated sweet spot. The pilot watches the twin, concurrent explosions, makes a quick battle-damage assessment and, satisfied, banks the airplane and heads back to base. His robotic wingman follows his lead, flying evenly at his side.
t can be hard to see the Flight Plan's vision of autonomous flying robots from the human-intensive work being done at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The desert base is in the midst of an unprecedented boom as it hosts the fast-growing 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, the only one dedicated solely to flying unmanned aircraft. Every aircraft and satellite-linked ground-control station here is being used to fly missions in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and points beyond. New buildings fill up with staff as soon as the construction dust settles. "Every time the fishbowl grows, the fish get too big for it," says Col. Pete Gersten, the 432nd's commander. Mathewson served at Creech as group commander before Gersten's arrival, but their jobs now are pointed in opposite directions. As Gersten wrestles with recruiting ground-control crews, Mathewson promotes ways to replace the airmen with artificial intelligence.
Every time an airman is replaced by a machine, the Air Force cuts the cost of health benefits, base upkeep and recruitment. Current unmanned systems require as many, if not more, people to fly missions than piloted airplanes do. For example, it takes a crew of three to operate a Reaper, even while it's on autopilot: one to fly, another to operate the sensor ball in its nose and a third to serve as military intelligence liaison. Another pair must deploy to the forward airfield to guide the UAV, using line-of-sight radio during takeoff and landing. By replacing these positions with automated functions, the cost of joystick operators could plummet.
But Gersten--who calls his unmanned airplanes remotely piloted vehicles to emphasize the crews operating them--does not give up human control over the aircraft unless it provides a clear war-fighting edge. For example, the Flight Plan pegs autonomous takeoff and landing for the Reaper by the end of 2010, but Gersten is not begging for that ability. In fact, when faced with a rash of accidents during landings, Gersten chose a solution to help, not replace, the joystick pilot.
The landing gear would collapse when Gersten's UAVs bounced down the runway. Operators have a tough time finding the correct pitch of the nose after a UAV's wheels bounce off the runway, causing oscillations that can destroy the aircraft on the third or fourth bounce. The seemingly obvious solution: Program the machines to take over and land automatically--something the Army's Sky Warrior, which is nearly identical to a Predator, already does. But Gersten opted for a simpler fix, adding a triangular carrot icon on the flight-control screen that sets the correct pitch to prevent the oscillation cycle from starting. This change will be made to ground-control stations this year, and he says "the cost is minuscule."
Gersten's reaction to the Flight Plan is coolly receptive. (He rolls his eyes at the report's language that suggests that UAVs one day could carry nuclear weapons.) The lower ranks on the base are more frankly skeptical of autonomy. Senior Airman Jessie Grace, a sensor-operator instructor at Creech, has spent wrist-aching hours keeping a UAV's camera trained on a target vehicle or locking his tired eyes on display screens to catch subtle signs of insurgent activity. While he does say that pilots could control more than one airplane at once, Grace sees things differently when it comes to his specialty. "I can't imagine a computer doing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance better than a person," he says.
Mathewson lists battlefield demands as the biggest hindrance to the Flight Plan, but he notes inflexible attitudes as another roadblock. "You see a cultural resistance," Mathewson says. "It's the same thing with the horse cavalry during the introduction of the tank."
Programmed Killer Instincts
Until the Flight Plan, it was nearly impossible to find officials who would even discuss the possibility of unmanned airplanes firing their weapons without human permission. But the report states that by 2030, flying robots could be programmed with "automatic target engagement" abilities. A UAV would open fire only after clearing a checklist of technical details from its sensors--its preset rules of engagement. Such a system would be an heir to ones currently used in Patriot antiaircraft batteries and some antimissile weapons on Navy ships. The legacy of the Patriot is mixed. During the second Gulf War, the system downed a pair of friendly airplanes, killing one American and two British pilots, after mistaking the planes for enemy missiles. Many military officials faulted an over-reliance on automation, but think-tank analysts noted that a lack of training caused the dependence and was the root cause of the tragedies.
Mathewson says that keeping people directly involved at the end of the kill chain is optional but preferred. "There are not that many cases where you'll have free fire, where you're going to have the system completely automated," he says. "If you look at the way we employ unmanned aircraft in the current fights, the rules of engagement require that someone [in charge at the rear] has to approve it, to say, `Yes, indeed, you're cleared hot' for every single case. And that would hold true."
While Gersten normally keeps any pride in check, the former F-16 pilot can be moralistic in arguing to have a man at the helm of a system that can bring death to its targets. "Warfare should be humanistic," he says. "Human value requires a human interface." It's his way of saying that even sworn enemies deserve to have an actual person, rather than an algorithm, make the decision to kill them.
lizzyking
Location: mittenville sector Z5-1
The Mexican government statement did not specify which U.S. agency was running the drones, and presidential spokesman Alejandro Poire did not return a call for comment.
The U.S. government has flown drones on the American side of the border for years. American officials have publicly hinted that the United States shares information from those flights with Mexico. Those drones are operated by the Department of Homeland Security.
On Wednesday, asked about the latest disclosure, one senior U.S. official said: "It's been a process of cooperation over time, and so some suggestion that this is 10 days old wouldn't be accurate." The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Source of above excerpt: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...EZg_story.html
Oh yeah, and then there is the "Golden Crescent"
William S. Burroughs scene in the film "Drugstore Cowboy":
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/natio...untry-20110701
The Central Intelligence Agency is continuing to use a covert base inside Pakistan for drone strikes and other counterterrorism operations despite Islamabad's public insistence that the facility has been closed, highlighting the increasingly complicated relationship between the two nominal allies in the wake of Osama bin Laden's killing there earlier this year.
Senior U.S. and Pakistani officials said in interviews on Friday that CIA operations at the Shamsi air base in western Pakistan, a short distance from the Afghan border, were continuing unabated and that no American personnel had been withdrawn from the facility. The base is the hub of the CIA's escalating campaign of drone strikes against militant leaders throughout Pakistan, a push that Obama administration officials credit with decimating the leadership of al-Qaida and many of its Islamist allies.
(PICTURES: Obama's Six Wars—So Far)
"It's business as usual," a U.S. official familiar with the matter said. "There have been no operational changes there."
The comments contradicted earlier remarks from Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, who told The Financial Times in an interview published on Friday that Islamabad had forced the CIA to stop using Shamsi for drone strikes and to withdraw its personnel from the facility.
"No U.S. flights are taking place from Shamsi any longer. If there have to be flights from this base, it will only be Pakistani flights," Mukhtar told the newspaper. "We have ended all U.S. flights from the base."
Pakistani officials have made similar statements before, only to quietly acknowledge later that operations at Shamsi were allowed to continue. That appears to be the case this time as well. A senior Pakistani official said in an interview that Shamsi wasn't closing down and suggested that Mukhtar made his comments largely for public consumption within Pakistan, where the drone strikes are the source of widespread public fury. Pakistani officials like Mukhtar routinely blame the drone attacks for hundreds of civilian deaths and argue that they represent a serious infringement on Pakistani sovereignity.
Still, the contretemps underscores the bad blood between Washington and Islamabad in the wake of the unilateral American Special Operations raid on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan in May. Pakistan's initial unease about bin Laden's ability to live undetected within its borders for so long quickly morphed into a nationalistic anti-American backlash, prompting senior Pakistani military officials to explicitly warn that they would use force if American forces mounted any similar raids within their borders. Pakistan has also expelled about 140 American and British military trainers.
American officials, for their part, have made clear that they have no plans to wind down the drone campaign against militant targets inside Pakistan. Unmanned CIA Predator drones carried out at least 12 strikes inside Pakistan in June, the highest monthly total of the year, according to Long War Journal, a Web site tracking the campaign. So far this year, the CIA has carried out at least 40 such strikes, killing an estimated 269 militants, according to the site. Last year, the U.S. carried out a record 117 drone strikes inside Pakistan, double the 2009 level.
The Obama administration estimates that the drones have helped to wipe out roughly 20 of al-Qaida's top leaders, including several militants once thought to be possible successors to bin Laden at the helm of the armed group. New Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in a written message to the U.S. armed forces sent out shortly after he was sworn in on Friday morning, said the campaign against al-Qaida wouldn't slow down anytime soon.
"We must prevail against our enemies," said Panetta, who led the CIA during the successful bin Laden raid in May. "We will persist in our efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately defeat al-Qaida."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/ju...ivilian-deaths
Four Afghan civilians were mistakenly killed and two others injured in an attack by a remotely controlled RAF "drone" targeting insurgent leaders in Helmand province, the Guardian has learned.
The airstrike marks the first confirmed operation in which one of the UK's Reaper aircraft has been responsible for the deaths of civilians, and comes amid growing concern on both sides of the Atlantic about increased use of drones in combat zones.
The revelation may also complicate the task of British commanders in the province as they try to secure the trust of local people ahead of "transition" – the symbolic moment later this month when Afghan forces take the lead for security in areas currently under UK control.
However, the British military remain convinced about the use of Reapers and insist the civilian deaths were due to intelligence failures on the ground rather than problems with the aircraft. Military officials have told the Guardian it is possible that almost one third of the RAF could be made up of remotely controlled aircraft within 20 years, such is the confidence in their capability.
The airstrike that caused the civilian casualties was meant to kill a Taliban commander who was being tracked on the ground in the Now Zad district of north Helmand. According to sources, the leader was correctly identified and the Reaper, which was flying close by, was instructed to attack. The Reaper pilots were thousands of miles away at a US Airforce base in Nevada when they were given the all clear to fire on two trucks.
Both vehicles were destroyed – at least one of them is thought to have been packed with explosive. An insurgent commander and an associate were killed, but it soon became clear that civilians were also in the vehicles.
"It was extremely unfortunate that the civilians were killed," said a Whitehall source. "The attack would not have taken place if we had known that there were civilians in the vehicles as well."
The incident took place on 25 March this year and an inquiry was launched by investigators from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
ISAF confirmed that "civilians were discovered in the vehicles following the airstrike during a battle damage assessment"; this was conducted by soldiers sent to confirm what had happened.
"This is the first case when civilian deaths have been caused by one of our Reapers," said the source. "There has been a comprehensive investigation to ensure it doesn't happen again."
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "Any incident involving civilian casualties is a matter of deep regret and we take every possible measure to avoid such incidents. On 25 March a UK Reaper was tasked to engage and destroy two pick up trucks. The strike resulted in the deaths of two insurgents and the destruction of a significant quantity of explosives being carried on the trucks. Sadly, four Afghan civilians were also killed and a further two Afghan civilians were injured. There are strict procedures, frequently updated in light of experience, intended to both minimise the risk of casualties occurring and to investigate any incidents that do happen.
"An ISAF investigation was conducted to establish if any lessons could be learnt from the incident or if errors in operational procedures could be identified; the report noted that the UK Reaper's crews actions had been in accordance with procedures and UK Rules of Engagement."
The families of the civilian victims will be entitled to compensation if they report to a British base and can prove their identity.
Chris Cole, a campaigner who runs the Drone Wars UK website, which monitors the development of unmanned weapons systems, said he was concerned at the time it took for the attack to be made public.
"The secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding the use of British armed drones is a matter of great concern. There needs to be a full and public investigation of all the issues raised by the increasing use of armed unmanned drones by British forces."
The RAF has been piloting Reapers from Creech Air Force base in Nevada since late 2007. The MoD bought the aircraft as an "urgent operational requirement" to help in the fight against the Taliban. Since then the Reapers have flown a total of 23,400 hours and fired 176 missiles and laser guided bombs. Last year David Cameron said 124 insurgents had been killed by UK drones during their Afghan deployment.
The RAF's leading expert on Reapers, Wing Commander Chris Thirtle, told the Guardian some pilots in the future may never have to actually fly aircraft, beyond their initial training. Instead, they will be trained to use remote controlled aircraft for combat missions.
Most of the concern about drones has centred on their extensive use by the CIA and American military commanders to attack al-Qaida commanders in Pakistan. Some studies have estimated that hundreds of civilians have also been killed in these strikes.
In 2009 an RAF drone fired on suspected insurgents in Sangin, helping Royal Marines who were patrolling in the area. The attack is thought to have injured two children, who were flown to the British base at Camp Bastion for treatment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/ju...stan-las-vegas
In a corner of Creech air force base near Las Vegas, Nevada, an RAF flag marks the home of 39 Squadron, an elite unit formed in some haste during 2007 and yet to return to the UK.
Bolted to the ground around the flagpole stand three identical sand-coloured metal containers of the kind transported by lorries and ships all over the world.
Every day, inside one of these "cabins", the RAF wages war against the Taliban in Afghanistan using technology that allows pilots to seek, track and attack insurgents several thousand miles away.
It was in one of these buildings on 25 March that pilots flying a Reaper drone locked on to and fired missiles at two vehicles that were understood to be carrying a Taliban commander.
He was killed, along with another insurgent. But it quickly become clear they were not the only ones to feel the blast.
An investigation by the International Security and Assistance Force has confirmed that six civilians were also in the trucks – four of them died, the others were injured. According to the Ministry of Defence, they are the first noncombatants to be killed by British Reapers since 39 Squadron was formed. And while officials say the deaths are deeply regrettable, there is little prospect the use of the aircraft will be curtailed. Quite the opposite.
In just four years, the five Reapers at Creech have become an essential part of Britain's 21st-century weaponry, and there are already plans to buy a new fleet of a successor aircraft for use in the UK.
By 2030, almost a third of the RAF could be made up of remotely controlled planes – a remarkable increase and testament to the faith that commanders have in them.
But ethical issues will not go away, and senior members of the military establishment admit being troubled by their deployment.
Sir Brian Burridge, a former air chief marshal, once described the use of remote-controlled aircraft as a "virtueless war".
And the way they have been used in Pakistan by the Americans has been of particular concern, raising fears that the CIA is essentially running a targeted assassination programme, which is not as targeted as the agency would have you believe.
The Pakistanis have complained that US strikes killed almost 700 civilians between 2006 and 2009 in their efforts to kill 14 al-Qaida militants.
As they become ever more central to the military, so there are emerging concerns about how such planes might be redeployed for policing – with the distinction between public and private spaces becoming ever more blurred.
The RAF does not dismiss the critics, but Wing Commander Chris Thirtle, the service's in-house expert, argues that remotely piloted air systems are here to stay. He bristles at the way they are called unmanned drones.
"Drone is the media's favourite word and I understand why. It's short, it's succinct but it is not right. The system is not unmanned. Someone needs to command and control it. That is, still be under some kind of human direction."
It is the manner in which this is done, and the geographical dislocation from the combat zone, that unsettles people.
Britain's Reapers are flown from inside the pods at Creech, with two pilots side by side. The cabin loosely resembles a cockpit. In the left-hand seat is a throttle and stick, just like the setup in a Tornado or Typhoon, that allows the pilot to fly and fire. But the two crew are also surrounded by 17 TV screens, providing high-quality, almost realtime surveillance from the range of cameras on the Reaper.
The aircraft can fire four Hellfire missiles and two 500lb laser-guided bombs from five miles away; the target would have no idea a Reaper was overhead.
The crews do not have to contend with the discomforts of flying at height, at speed and in a confined, hot environment. "(The Reaper pilot) hasn't got the g-force, the noise, the squealing," says Thirtle.
"His environment is more conducive to the job he is doing. It's much less stressful physically. In a combat aircraft ther is more room for error."With all the screens to look at, information overload is a big problem and crews are rotated every two hours during an eight- to 10-hour shift. They can nip out for a cup of coffee. And they can make and receive phone calls from a landline in the "cockpit".
Doesn't this encourage a PlayStation mentality?
"I won't go into how insulting that is," says Thirtle. All the pilots at Creech were once in fighter jets, and they have been retrained to work on the Reaper system.
"When they walk in that cabin, their mindset is 'now we are in Afghanistan'. Everything they do once they have shut that door behind them is in Afghanistan.
"They fly under same rules of engagement as any other pilot. They are not allowed to do anything that other combat aircraft cannot do. One of their hardest jobs is not to get emotionally involved in the fight. They have to stay within the rules … no matter how aware they are of what is going on on the ground."
The 110 members of 39 Squadron do not endure six- or nine-month tours, the standard across the armed forces. They remain in America for three years at a time, making them, argues Thirtle, "our most experienced people in Afghanistan". Except they are not in Afghanistan.
Once they have been briefed about a mission, the pilots rely on an array of systems to run the aircraft; the decisions they make in Nevada travel by fibre-optic cable to Europe, where they are beamed up to a satellite and then back down to Afghanistan. There is two second delay.
The view from the cameras can be accessed 'live' by just about anyone around the world with the right security clearance. The details of every mission are recorded on giant servers in the US.
So far, the system has proved remarkably robust; Reapers have flown 23,400 hours since October 2007, and fired 176 weapons – 130 Hellfire missiles and 46 bombs. It is, says Thirtle, "by far the most reliable aeroplane that we have ever operated" and they are in constant use.
And an unlike the Americans, he insists the British planes have not flown missions in Pakistan.
"UK Reaper only ever has, and only ever will, operate in Afghanistan. The border is absolutely sacrosanct, end of story."
Thirtle cannot see fully automated aircraft being used by the RAF anytime soon: "The bottom line is, the MoD believes there will be an enduring need for a human to fly these aircraft."
"Who is in control and who is making the decisions? Is it the human being or is it the machine? We are very far away from the latter."
But he can see the RAF using more of them, and that pilots in the future may never even step into the cockpit of an aircraft once they have gone through basic flying training. "They will be equally as skilled as the guy who comes off the street and we train to be a fighter pilot."
He also says it "would not be unreasonable in about 20 years' time to be looking at a 30:70 ratio of remotely piloted to piloted" aircraft in the RAF. It depends on money and advances in technology, but this is more than just an aspiration.
He concedes, though, that the ethical debate has only just begun, and that the RAF does not have all the answers.
"Is it right that you can hold your opponent at risk without any physical risk directly to yourself? That is a valid point, but there is another side of the argument.
"Flying a Reaper I can turn up over a target area and choose the moment I strike. I can wait hours, days, weeks for the best moment to minimise the risk to those not involved in the conflict."
Critics of drones are not reassured. Most of their concern has been directed at the US, which has taken the lead in the technology and which is why the British squadron is based in America.
But where the US leads, Britain has a habit of following, raising concerns about what doctrine the UK will adopt in future when the two countries' armed forces are so closely bound together.
The American author James Bamford, a respected security expert who has written extensively about the US intelligence agencies, believes drones are being used indiscriminately by the Americans, and that many innocent people, including women and children, have been killed by them. Numerous reported studies over the last three years suggest he is right.
According to the New America Foundation thinktank, one in four of those killed by US drones since 2004 was an innocent civilian. The Brookings Institute says the ratio is higher.
At the CIA, Bamford said, they call the use of drones the age of the "kill chain".
"Death warrants for targets are signed by mid-level bureaucrats, and soccer moms and dads double as joystick killers. They operate in comfort and safety, half the Earth away from their targets and close enough for many to run home for lunch between kills," Bamford said.
"Today there are more than 5,000 robotic vehicles and drones deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than 50 can be flown at the same time. The Pentagon and CIA will purchase more unmanned aircraft than manned ones this year, and they will train more drone aircraft pilots than those who fly all of the bomber and fighter jets combined."
The use of these aircraft is not only potentially unethical, he argues, but also counterproductive.
"Most of the recent acts and attempted acts of domestic terrorism [in the US], for example, are generated by America's wars in the Middle East, and especially the high civilian death toll caused by the drone attacks."
In the UK, Thirtle insists the Reapers, and all the other remotely controlled craft being used by the RAF and army, are regulated properly. The armed forces, though, remain distinctly nervous talking about what they do.
Next year, a new squadron for another generation of these aircraft will be based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. It will refocus attention on what they do, and where.
"At the moment," Thirtle says, "we are comfortable legally with what we are doing."
thoughtmage
If the Central Intelligence Agency can get attack drones, what's to stop the TSA from getting them too?
That's like giving an AK-47 to a doctor. The tool does not fit the user's role.
Geometry Alive!
Find More Posts by thoughtmage
thoughtmage imagnine the CIA or any other spy organisation having at their disposal , a UAV Drone that has total stealth capability, that can carry nuclear bombs and has the ability to remain in the air for months at a time due to solar tech. And having no legal or moral accountability.
Thats what is coming.


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text:
TEST PURPOSE, SCORING AND RELEASE OF TEST SCORES
The American Mensa Admission Tests are given for the purpose of admission into Mensa and not to quantify intelligence. A score at the 98th percentile on either of the two tests qualifies an applicant for Mensa membership. A qualifying score indicates that the applicant tests at, or better than 98 percent of the general population. American Mensa will release membership qualification only. No further information on test scores will be released.
You will receive a response from the National Office within two to three weeks of receipt of your testing information.
RE-TESTING
You are allowed to take the Mensa Admission Tests only once. If you do not qualify on the Mensa Admission Tests or if English is not your native language you may take our culture fair battery once.
ALTERNATIVE QUALIFICATIONS FOR MENSA MEMBERSHIP
American Mensa accepts the scores of approximately 200 tests for those individuals who do not qualify for Mensa membership via the Mensa Admissions Tests. These alternative tests include the SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, Stanford Binet and various Wechsler scales.
For more information about accepted tested and how to submit these scores, please visit our Web site ( www.us.mensa.org/joinmensa ). Information on acceptable tests and guidelines for submitting them as prior evidence can be found there.
Membership in Mensa is open to anyone who has scored within the top 2% of the general population on a supervised intelligence test, (recognized as such by the International Psychological Association or a national psychological association). There are approximately 200 tests accepted for membership. For information about some other tests and scores that American Mensa accepts, please see the Qualifying Test Scores link on the Join Mensa Page on the American Mensa, Ltd. website. www.us.mensa.org
If you do not have prior evidence of eligibility, you may qualify by taking two tests at a Mensa-sanctioned supervised testing session. You must be age 14 or over to attend a session. A Mensa testing session, which consists of two tests with a short break in between, usually lasts under two hours. If you are dyslexic, if your primary [first] language is not English, or if you have a physical condition that prevents you from taking a timed test, you may be eligible to take the Mensa non-language battery of tests, also known as the culture-free version. The cost of a Mensa testing session is $40. For a list of testing dates: https://bostonmensa.org/membership/join/
The American Mensa Admissions Tests are given for the purpose of admission into Mensa. A score at the 98th percentile on either of two tests qualifies you for Mensa membership. Note: American Mensa does not release test scores.
The geographic area of Boston Mensa covers eastern and central Massachusetts except for most of Bristol County.
For all other membership questions, such as how to renew, rejoin, or change your address, please contact:
American Mensa, Ltd.
1229 Corporate Drive West
You may also call (817) 607-0060 or (800) 66-MENSA (message and information line only), send a fax to (817) 649-5232, send an email to American Mensa, Ltd., or visit the American Mensa, Ltd., webpage. The final authority on admission matters rests with the American Mensa, Ltd., national office, under the aegis of the American Mensa supervisory psychologist. The material presented on this page is for informational purposes only, is non-binding, and is subject to change without notice.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Wednesday March 1, 2017
February 28, 2017 by Graeme MacKay
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 1, 2017
Guy Caron enters NDP leadership race, promises basic income
Guy Caron, a Quebec MP and former economist with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, is the third candidate to enter the race for the federal NDP leadership.
Caron, who represents the riding of Rimouski–Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, focused on economic issues in launching his campaign Monday in Gatineau, Que., saying his first policy proposal would be a basic income.
"The problem with the NDP is we were never able to submit an economic platform that would actually make people dream, inspire people. This is what I want to do," he told CBC's Power & Politics host Rosemary Barton.
"I am an economist by training…I decided to study economics because, fundamentally, economics is not for conservatives. I'm convinced that progressive forces cannot cede this ground to Bay Street and international financiers.
Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins—James Bay in Ontario and one of the party's leading advocates for Indigenous communities, declared his candidacy on Sunday.
Peter Julian, MP for Burnaby—New Westminster in British Columbia and a former NDP House leader, became the first candidate earlier this month.
Party members will begin voting for a new leader in September. (CBC News)
Posted in: Canada	Tagged: Canada, Charlie Angus, Charlie Brown, Guy Caron, Guy Smiley, Julian Assange, leadership, NDP, Peter Julian, Peter Pumpkin eater
Tuesday June 25, 2013
June 25, 2013 by Graeme MacKay
By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday June 25, 2013
Edward Snowden not spotted on flight to Cuba
Confusion over the whereabouts of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden grew on Monday after a jetliner flew from Moscow to Cuba with an empty seat booked in his name.
Aeroflot said earlier that Snowden had registered for the flight using his U.S. passport, which the United States recently annulled.
The founder of the WikiLeaks secrets-spilling organization, Julian Assange, insisted he couldn't go into details about where Snowden was, but said he was safe.
Snowden has applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries, Assange said. An Aeroflot representative who wouldn't give her name told The Associated Press that Snowden didn't board Flight SU150 to Havana, which was filled with journalists trying to track him down. Two AP journalists on the flight confirmed after it arrived Monday evening in Havana that Snowden wasn't on the plane.
A member of the Aeroflot crew spoke briefly to reporters gathered outside Havana's Jose Marti International Airport, but would not give his name. "No special people on board," he said, smiling. "Only journalists."
Security around the aircraft was heavy prior to boarding in Moscow and guards tried to prevent the scrum of photographers and cameramen from taking pictures of the plane, heightening speculation that Snowden might have been secretly escorted on board.
But about two dozen journalists who made the flight searched up and down the plane after boarding in a fruitless hunt for Snowden. One increasingly desperate Russian television reporter was briefly convinced that AP reporter Max Seddon might be the NSA leaker. (Source: CBC News)
Posted in: International	Tagged: asylum, Cuba, diplomacy, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, leaker, NSA, Russia, surveillance, WikiLeaks


text:
AC/DC album downloaded 400,000 times despite no digital release
NME Oct 13, 2008 12:24 pm BST
Angus Young of AC DC performing live in concert at Newcastle Arena.
'Black Ice' proving popular online
AC/DC's forthcoming new album, 'Black Ice', leaked onto file sharing service BitTorrent on October 7 and has been downloaded over 400,000 times.
The album, set for official release on Monday (October 20), will not be available as a legal download.
According to Undercover the band's label, Sony, released fake AC/DC songs online to hamper users attempting to download the album.
However, Torrentfreak claimed that there was no evidence of the fake tracks online.
AC/DC boycott Apple's iTunes download service as well as other similar services, but still enjoy huge sales of their albums. In 2007 they sold 1.3 million albums in the USA.
AC/DC's Angus Young has said that the band's decision to refrain from releasing music digitally was motivated by a desire to ensure their fans enjoy their albums as wholes, not simply a few tracks at a time.
"We don't make singles, we make albums," he told the Telegraph. "We believe the songs on any of our albums belong together."