Posted on 05/12/2008 10:07:01 AM PDT by shrinkermd
The sniper never knew what hit him. The Marines patrolling the street below were taking fire, but did not have a clear shot at the third-story window that the sniper was shooting from. They were pinned down and called for reinforcements.
Help came from a Predator drone circling the skies 20 miles away. As the unmanned plane closed in, the infrared camera underneath its nose picked up the muzzle flashes from the window. The sniper was still firing when the Predator's 100-pound Hellfire missile came through the window and eliminated the threat.
The airman who fired that missile was 8,000 miles away, here at Creech Air Force Base, home of the 432nd air wing. The 432nd officially "stood up," in the jargon of the Air Force, on May 1, 2007. One year later, two dozen of its drones patrol the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan every hour of every day. And almost all of them are flown by two-man crews sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of a "ground control station" (GCS) in the Nevada desert
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Powered by Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator?
Nothing like the Blue Screen of Death on the instrument panels.
From 8,000 miles away. Gives new meaning to, “reach out and touch someone”.
As my grandpa would have said ... if he had said it... Not enough of em to spread on toast.
The drones tend to work best in a situation of high-tech vs. low tech combat. I'm sure some advanced missiles could take down a squadron of drones if used against us.
It does me too, but damnit I don’t really want so much information to be aired in public. There are just some things I’d rather have left unsaid. It’s controled from iside the United States 8,000 miles away. That’s very cool, but why is it necessary to broadcast the exact base?
“One year later, two dozen of its drones patrol the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan every hour of every day.”
Money well spent. I’d blanket the country with them..
are those available at the local 7-11 these days? :)
With compliments to the Discovery Channel commercial ... “BOOM DE ADDAH”
That’s something I think about on at least a weekly basis, sometimes on a daily basis.
I had already thought of it this morning on another topic here.
I wish it weren’t so necessary to think along these lines in this day and age.
Interesting that you say that. When I’m involved in govt specs for anything other than trivial desktop machine stuff, I specify some Unix variant, or even Apple. Microsoft products are strictly forbidden for exactly what you joked about. No one in their right mind trusts that company for anything approaching quality.
Bump for later reading.
GET SOME!
“Nothing like the Blue Screen of Death on the instrument panels.”
Funny, that’s what the AF pilots sitting in the team chairs call it when they tell the Predator to fire the missile.
“Say goodbye Ahab, here comes the Blue Screen of Death”.
I love it. Zap the bad guys with a robot from twenty miles away without risking one of our boys. We should be cranking these babies out like cans of tuna fish until they blacken the skies over Afghanistan and Iran.
Of course, what can be used can also be abused. Let’s hope that such systems are used only for good, never for evil.
With Mack firing his 40mm grenade and a smile on his face.
To be honest as liberal as they are I am surprised they put that in the commercial.
I absolutely LOVED reading this story.
The drones are good in an area where we have absolute air superiority. They wouldn’t live a minute in an area protected by effective AA missiles.
I saw an interesting show on the History Channel Saturday. It was about future air combat. The Predators would be used as decoys for the real bombers to come in and destroy the AA sites. However, it seems to me that the Predator itself could be used as an expendable platform to launch HARM (High-speed Anti Radiation) missiles as soon as the AA radar sites came on line. Expendable because, as the AF pilot said, a Predator doesn’t have a mother or wife or kids.
When that happens, the fact that the targets are “citizens” will be secondary to the excuse that they use.
I was in the Marines '74-'78. Was a radio tech. Never saw any combat.
Yes, things have sure changed since then. Much more sophisticated stuff.
The day that stuff gets used against American citizens (by a socialist future President dealing with states that want to leave the union or perhaps enforcing gun control confiscation laws against radicals who just won't get with the program, or whatever Civil War Two type situation anyone can think of) this country and it's individual citizens will have much bigger problems than the tactics of hiding from and dealing with remote controlled missiles.
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