Posted on 06/20/2013 9:20:57 PM PDT by TexGrill
LE BOURGET, FRANCE – Unmanned aircraft have helped rescue stranded hikers, worked to contain wildfires and gathered data at nuclear disasters. One helped a Russian tanker find its way through Arctic ice to bring oil to a stranded Alaskan community.
These remote-controlled planes have many more potential peacetime uses. But unmanned aircraft have an image problem: They are also known as drones.
That word conjures up pilotless planes dropping bombs or spying in war zones. But industry officials and regulators say the day is coming when unmanned aircraft will be regularly used for more mundane purposes — and people will be at ease with them appearing in their skies. For people to change their opinion, they “have to see the benefits,” said John Langford, chief executive of Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. “They haven’t seen any benefits on the civil side, but they’ve seen kind of the scary part.”
A report commissioned by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry lobby, predicts that the integration of unmanned aircraft into U.S. aviation will create 70,000 jobs for the first three years and generate $13.6 billion of business.
At the Paris Air Show this week, manufacturers were pushing the civil uses of the products.
(Excerpt) Read more at japantimes.co.jp ...
1930s. A chicken in every pot...
2010s. A drone on every block...
Why would robot killers have a bad image?
They say Hitler loved dogs. This story is similar. Sure drones are killers — but, in their spare time, they find lost kittens.
“Drones struggle to shed bad image”
I don’t know if those democrat voters will ever shed their bad image.
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