Posted on 11/19/2001 4:20:08 AM PST by Eyes Now Opened
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:31:39 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
There was no moonlight in Afghanistan on Wednesday night. The new moon, marking the beginning of Ramadan, had yet to appear. Invisible under the stars, an unmanned American spy plane circled inaudibly over a stretch of dark landscape, transmitting grainy images back to the United States. Its night-vision camera was focused on a pinpoint of light in the distance, a three-story hotel building, where it detected a great deal of movement. Turbaned men talked agitatedly outside among parked pick-up trucks and military vehicles. Others moved in and out of the building. The drone's controllers, thousands of miles away in a bunker on the eastern seaboard of America, knew who they were. For two days since being roused from their beds in Kabul, these ragged figures had been fleeing south, trying to stay ahead of enemy forces and anxious to avoid satellites and surveillance planes. Moving furtively in small groups across the parched plains, they had spread out on side tracks and dirt roads, avoiding the main highway. Progress was slow. They were still less than 100 miles from the capital when they reached the end of the second day of flight. Many thousands of men had fled in the Taliban withdrawal from Kabul. But amid all the chaos of the retreat, this small convoy was given special attention. It was believed by American intelligence to consist of fighters from Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. Predator spy planes, capable of staying aloft for 24 hours on station, and JSTARS surveillance planes, equipped with radar that can monitor ground movements across a vast area, tracked them from the moment they left Kabul
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How?
Also, you declined to address the main point of the discussion, that is, "you can put together a lot of this sort of capability with stuff from Radio Shack and the local model & hobby shop."
Waco could have been worse than it was. It could have been the whole city of Waco, e.g.
I'm a strong supporter of George Bush; he is a good man, and I trust him, but suppose we had a president of a different stripe--more on the order of, say, Caligula. The U.S. has had presidents who were scoundrels and presidents who were fools.
We Americans have more reason than ever before to fear Big Government--and Big Brother.
Right now, the US government can destroy Waco, Texas with ridiculous ease. It's called "nuclear weapons." This capability would not destroy all of Waco, it would have merely aided the destruction of the house on Mount Carmel--and that task did not need any assistance, IIRC.
My worry is that this technique can be copied by someone with enough funding--and that the enemies of America would not be averse to supplying said techniques to our various flavors of ecofreak, black nationalist, and white supremacist, in order to expand their reach and power and thus make our own problems that much harder to handle.
This means that somewhere there is some IIR video of of these GBU-15 attacking the target. I hope the pentagon releases this video. ;-))
Just for your information, the government doesn't need remote controlled airplanes to attack Waco or Ruby Ridge. Conventional artillery or an M1 tank could be used to attack such an easy, stationary target. I wouldn't worry too much about Predators being used for domestic repression (or M1 tanks either). It's not easy to cover up an attack with anti-tank missiles. There would be essentially no circumstances when a Predator attack on a domestic target would be justified. The FBI doesn't need that kind of firepower and I seriously doubt that it will ever be used inside the United States by the U.S. government.
His idea is right on the money here.
Keep the Faith for Freedom
MAY GOD BLESS AND PROTECT THIS HONORABLE REPUBLIC
Greg
Maybe so. But we'll still need fetching wives for our future Fly-Boys........
"Hi Honey. (Kiss. Kiss) How did your day at the war go?"
"Well, it started out great. I splashed 3 MiG's. But then a fourth MiG got on my six, shot a missle up my tailpipe and I was killed. Damn! I shouldn't have let that bogey sneak up on me. I'm bummed."
"Well, don't take it so hard, Sweety. Viper's wife called me to tell me you got killed so I made you your favorite dinner and I'll give you a back rub tonight."
"Thanks, Honey! Say, after the back rub do you think that we could...er...ummm.....well...you know...."
"Not tonight, Honey. I still have a headache."
War is Hell.
Not only is this accurate..........but you're behind by about 20 years.
Example: the F-16, as designed, could easily exceed the ability of a man to stay conscious enough to actually fly it. It has LONG been realized that the biggest single limitation in fighter design.......the "weakest link", if you will.........is the man in the cockpit.
The German 'smart' bombs were pathetic and primitive devices; most of them failed to destroy anything but themselves.
--Boris
Exactly Right! LET'S ROLL!!!
Now THAT is some new very dangerous thinking!
It may come to this in the future, that our best fighters are the video game players. But currently, it's the B-52 and F-18 drivers who own the day, along with the brave targeting specialists on the ground.
Terrorists will rue the day that we can put our game players up front. For now, we have to Find them and Fight them!
Let's Roll!
Absolutely right, you may notice that we use it upon very seldom circumstance.
Give your paranoia a rest. Go out fishing or something.
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