EXCLUSIVE: Drones vulnerable to terrorist hijacking, researchers say Read more: http

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EXCLUSIVE: Drones vulnerable to terrorist hijacking, researchers say | Fox News

 

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Granny says, "Dat's right - drones reduce the overall body count...

The New York Times makes the “moral case” for drones
19 July 2012 - On July 14, the New York Times published an article by national security reporter Scott Shane entitled “The Moral Case for Drones.” At first glance, one might have thought that the headline was intended as a Swiftian satire, in the spirit of “A Modest Proposal,” of a particularly gruesome violation of legality by the Obama administration. But no satire was intended. Quite the opposite: the piece seeks to justify the assassination program run out of the Obama White House, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths of civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

Shane first notes that the “lethal operations [of the drones] inside sovereign countries that are not at war with the United States raise contentious legal questions”—only to ignore those questions in the remainder of his article. On the basis of interviews with “some moral philosophers, political scientists and weapons specialists,” Shane suggests that “armed, unmanned aircraft” may “offer marked moral advantages over almost any other tool of warfare.” The latest article is a follow-up of sorts to a May 29 report in the Times co-authored by Shane, detailing President Barack Obama’s personal and apparently eager participation in drawing up lists of those to be killed in drone and other attacks. The level of state criminality exposed in that piece, although presumably commissioned by the White House itself, has vast legal and moral implications.

The account of the president’s role produced widespread outrage and, within the ranks of Obama supporters, considerable unease. Responding to that nervousness, Shane’s July 14 article is an effort to legitimize the use of drone strikes, to present criminal, homicidal behavior as a positive good. He is attempting to condition and intimidate public opinion, to morally implicate the broader public in these atrocities. Shane and the experts he interviews aim to make killing something natural, politically astute and even, all things considered, humane. Shane wants his liberal readers to get over whatever moral qualms they may feel. “This is the way of the world; deal with it!” the article’s cynical tone suggests. No, this is the way Shane and his ilk would like to make the world.

The Times reporter devotes much of his July 14 piece to considering the rates at which various modes of warfare kill civilians. He finds that the highest estimate of collateral deaths associated with drones “compares favorably” (in the words of one his interviewees) with “similar operations and contemporary armed conflict more generally.” Shane and the crowd of apologists for state murder he sounded out inevitably bring to mind the notion of the “banality of evil,” a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt in regard to the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in 1963.

Shane attempts to comfort his readers by claiming that only one in five of the victims of American drones may be civilians (there is no reason whatsoever to credit this figure), as opposed to the Pakistani army’s rate of 46 percent in its raids on tribal areas or the Israeli military’s “collateral death rate” of 41 percent, and that the CIA war criminals “are improving their performance.” Someone able to write this bureaucratic-murderous filth, worthy of an Eichmann, is capable of anything.

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Drones for terrorists?...

Terror and toy planes - not so remote
August 7th, 2012: The video recovered by Spanish security services shows a man guiding a large remote-controlled plane in the skies of southern Spain. The plane banks and begins a controlled descent. Two packets drop - one from either wing - to the delight of the "pilot."

According to Fernando Reinares, senior terrorism analyst at Madrid's Elcano Royal Institute, Spanish security services believe the video was made not by an enthusiastic hobbyist, but by a committed terrorist trying to convert a toy plane into a potentially deadly bomber. The home video was recovered last week, along with explosives, in what Spanish authorities called one of the most significant operations against al Qaeda in the country. Three men were arrested, including the man seen flying the remote-controlled aircraft. He is Cengiz Yalcin, a Turkish national who lived near Gibraltar, and Spanish authorities allege he was an al Qaeda's cell's facilitator. Two Chechen associates - alleged to have significant expertise in bomb-making - were also arrested.

According to Reinares, Spanish security services suspect the purported cell planned to launch attacks using model aircraft to coincide with the London Olympics, and that one of their targets was a shopping center near Gibraltar. The notion that terrorists could use their own crude versions of pilotless drones might seem fantastical - a scenario dreamed up and posted on blogs by radio-controlled aircraft hobbyists in their darker moments. But this is not the first time that model planes have featured in a terrorist investigation. Last month Rezwan Ferdaus, a Massachusetts resident inspired by al Qaeda's ideology, pleaded guilty to a plot to fly a remote-controlled plane with high explosives into the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. He had been arrested in September 2011. According to court documents, Rezwan, a Northeastern University graduate with a degree in physics, planned to use a model of the F-86 Sabre, a fighter jet in the Korean War, packed with C4 explosives.

A remote controlled model of the US Navy's 1950s Sabre jet fighter that allegedly belonged to Rezwan Ferdaus.

Miniature versions of the plane - between 5 feet and 6 feet, 6 inches long - can be acquired for less than $200 from websites serving model plane enthusiasts. "Provides authoritative rudder control so you can execute point rolls and knife-edge flight with precision," reads the promotion material for the model on one website. According to court documents, one of these F-86 models was delivered in August 2011 to a storage facility in Framingham, Massachusetts, that Ferdaus had rented under a false name to build his attack planes and maintain his equipment. He was arrested the following month in an FBI sting operation, after undercover agents handed him the explosives. Authorities said Ferdaus had planed to fill three remote-controlled aircraft - which he referred to as "small drone airplanes" - with explosives, launch them from an east Potomac park, and guide them by GPS into their targets.

And before Ferdaus, Christopher Paul, a Columbus, Ohio, resident pleaded guilty in 2008 to planning terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe. According to the indictment in that case, Paul conducted research in 2006 on a variety of remote-controlled models, including a boat and a 5-foot-long helicopter. Paul was accused of joining al Qaeda in the early 1990s. According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report published last month, Ferdaus' plot "highlighted the potential for model aircraft to be used for non-approved or unintended purposes." But the report stated that "apart from FAA's voluntary safety standards for model aircraft operators, FAA (the Fedeal Aviation Administration) has no regulations relating to model aircraft." According to the report, new rules set to be introduced in late 2012 may require certain model aircraft to be registered.

Advances in remote-control technology mean that there are now a wide variety of easily purchased machines that terrorists might contemplate using. And dozens of videos uploaded to social media sites show models as long as 12 feet and as sophisticated as the C-17 - some capable of flying at speeds of more than 100 mph. One remote-controlled helicopter that retails online for $10,000 in the U.S. is described as capable of lifting a payload of at least 20 pounds (9 kilograms) It can be accessorized with a built-in camera providing real-time video transmitted back to the controller, a feature that would be of obvious help to terrorists seeking to home in on a target - and record a propaganda video of the attack at the same time.

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