This is a government power that should absolutely be outlawed in American airspace. You want to deploy it to the battlefield, fine. But you can’t operate the things in American airspace except over predesignated military sites for training purposes (say, Nellis).
When you combine this capability to visually track targets with the ability of a drone to spoof a cell site and track cell phone conversations from the target...you have an impressive capability to match up a subject and a visual target and destroy it. Real time, or to back track and identify their hide outs.
Just as soon as you put the battery in your cell phone they can find you and kill you.
I suppose that the terrorists already know this, but the technique was demonstrated in O Dark Thrity..and it has now been confirmed that they can do it from the sky.
“This is a government power that should absolutely be outlawed in American airspace.”
You will note that the ARGUS demonstration was made over Quantico VA, just down the Potomac River from Wash DC and right over the Marine Corps base, so ARGUS is already in US airspace as of this 2011 demonstration and probably earlier.
I strongly expect that the inauguration this week was covered by an ARGUS drone (maybe several)...and some armed Predator drones as well that would have been piloted by a dedicated Secret Service detail. This is “merely” an extension of the sniper protection of the POTUS to a third dimension. I also expect that POTUS has Predator and ARGUS coverage in place for all US appearances around the US and probably in many foreign appearances as well.
This same logic that I suspect has already brought armed drones into US airspace will inevitably bring armed drones to local law enforcement as part of SWAT teams.