In the past few years we have been enlightened by a lot of drone news. The evidence of their deployment for surveillance of civilian populations, their world wide location and some of their capabilities were known through documented examples of real life applications. Drones were also hacked with equipment available for just a few dollars, taken over and misdirected to a different “target”, they have also crashed and assassinated. These were some of the headlines:
- “Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones”
- “Drone Incident Highlights U.S. Efforts Against Iran”
- “Seychelles becomes site of another US drone crash”
- “North Dakota Uses Predator Drone to Bust Family for “Taking” 6 Cows”
A little history on drones
For those of us who know, those news are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the underlying operations for which most drones are used, under the cover of blue skies the world of Nikola Tesla comes back to haunt us…
The first documented idea of using drones in the way they are used today can probably be attributed to Nikola Tesla, in his view it would be how future wars would be fought.
In the late 1960’s Project Aquiline involved some of the first remote controlled aircraft experiments that would later become the drones that are operating around the world today. It was a six-foot remote controlled drone designed to look like an eagle or buzzard in flight. It was equipped with a television camera, sensors and other electronic surveillance equipment. The project began as an attempt to investigate a mysterious watercraft the Soviet Union had constructed and was spotted testing, by satellite reconnaissance on the Caspian Sea. It was later nicknamed the Caspian Monster.
This project remains classified, although a British documentary uncovered that the target for the Aquiline drone might have been a Soviet hydrofoil called Ekranopian. The Aquiline drone was designed to track in on its target following established communication lines in foreign countries, and would be launched from submarines. The drone built and tested crash landed often and the CIA eventually canceled the program.
Another attempt by the CIA to develop this technology was Project Ornithopter which involved a birdlike drone designed to blend in with nature by flapping its wings. Then another even smaller drone was designed to look like a crow that would land on window ledges and photograph, through the window, what was going on inside the building. Insectothopter took the concept to an even smaller animal, a drone designed to look like a dragonfly. Insectothopter was a green drone that flapped wings powered by miniature gas engines.
The CIA also used actual animals to do surveillance, including pigeons with “pigeon-cams” attached to their necks and Project Acoustic Kitty, which placed acoustic listening devices on household cats. Another point I wanted to get across is that it is also well documented through history the use of animals in such a way through the power of the mind and the gifts that some people might poses.
Some of what is publicly known
The U.S. first said it used targeted killing in November 2002, with the cooperation and approval of the government of Yemen.
- There is a list of targets whose capture or death had been called for by US President George W. Bush. Among those a CIA-controlled Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile at an SUV in the Yemeni desert containing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a Yemeni suspected senior al-Qaeda lieutenant, in addition to al-Harethi, five other occupants of the SUV were killed, all of whom were suspected al-Qaeda terrorists, and one of whom (Kamal Derwish) was an American.
- In May 2010 an errant US drone attack targeting al Qaeda terrorists in Wadi Abida, Yemen, killed five people, among them Jaber al-Shabwani, deputy governor of Maarib province who was mediating between the government and the militants.
- On May 5, 2011, a missile fired from a U.S. drone killed Abdullah and Mosaad Mubarak, brothers who may have been militants. The missile was fired on their car and both died instantly. The strike was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, but al-Awlaki appears to have survived.
- Air strikes intensified in Yemen’s territory during 2011 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Yemen#US_air_attacks)
Real life, remote control assassinations from a list with “errant” and non errant drones? Admitted publicly since 9-2002 under the flag of the war against terror, a direct consequence of 9-11. What followed was total deployment of yet another technological layer of surveillance and harassment against human beings.
In 2009 some were surprised with the following news: “Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.” and then in 2012 Iran manages to intercept the communications controlling an US drone and gives it new instructions telling it to land in their country.
Can we learn anything from a decade of public history of drones? DARPA seems to have, maybe they are thinking of an angry drones game… maybe it is not a game.
On a recent announcement The Department of Defense, by way of their research arm DARPA, (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) are now fast at it to incorporate a smart-phone application that can control not just one unmanned drone — but swarms of drones linked through a smart system application as if they are one-minded. “DARPA is looking to tap the smartphone application development community with experience in application creation,” said Mark Rich, DARPA program manager.
According to Rich, “The rapid advancement and sophisticated capabilities in today’s smartphone technology provide opportunities to revolutionize the way sensor systems are developed and used. The integrated processing, storage, communications, navigation and orientation functions built into smartphone hardware and software can be leveraged to create far more powerful distributed sensor devices than we use today.”
AeroVironment video of flight tests of its Nano Hummingbird flapping-wing nano air vehicle, developed for DARPA. Battery-powered and remote-controlled, the hummingbird-like prototype uses flapping wings for propulsion and control. Carring a video camera and downlink…
Reality is that drones have been around for many decades now, collecting information, invading people’s private spaces and operating under secret directives that would surprise even those involved in some of those programs.
In North Dakota 2011, summoned by the sheriff, an unmanned Predator drone was used to get the Brossarts. Their alleged crime? They wouldn’t give back three cows and their calves that wandered onto their 3,000-acre farm this summer. These are the same aerial vehicles used by the CIA to track down and assassinate terrorists and militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These drones are now being deployed by different agencies to spy, harass, torture and more, on Americans, in their own backyards.
Convenient as it was 9=11 for the subsequent agreement of other nations to the deployment of drones against terrorism, so it is now the NDAA for their actions in US territory and abroad. I hope you are not on a list…





