Cofer Black, head of the CIA’s counterterrorist Center, requested that the Predator be armed, David Hambling reports (in Swarm Troopers), and USAF General John Jumper requested a demonstration of a Predator that could “find a target, then eliminate it”:
Hellfire was chosen because it was a proven, mature missile with many years of successful service. In fact, mature is something of an understatement: Hellfire was positively middle-aged, dating back to the Nixon administration in 1974.
[…]
Hellfire has laser guidance, so the target needs to be marked with a laser designator right up until the missile hits. It is highly accurate, usually hitting within half a meter of the aim point, but it can take a while to arrive. Hellfire is faster than the speed of sound, but fired from a range of six miles, it still takes about twenty seconds to reach the target.
[…]
Hellfire is uncomfortably large to hang off a Predator but small compared to anything else available in the inventory. At the time, the Air Force’s smallest guided bomb was five hundred pounds.
[…]
The other challenge when firing a Hellfire from a Predator is the unavoidable two-second time lag caused by satellite communications. This means the laser spot effectively takes two seconds to move, so the Predator can only engage a stationary target in this mode. To hit a moving target, the operator uses targeting software to lock on to a moving vehicle; the software keeps the laser spot in place, an indirect way of engaging the target with its own risks if the system fails.
[…]
Hellfire does not tidily disintegrate the target as in a video game but leaves recognizable bodies and body parts around ground zero.
[…]
If fired in a straight line, Hellfire’s supersonic speed means the target will not hear it coming.
[…]
Hellfire may be precise, but it is not surgical. The twenty-pound high-explosive warhead can cause major “collateral damage,” killing innocent bystanders or building occupants when the target is a single terrorist.
Worse, the long time of flight means there is the risk of somebody wandering into the target area after the missile has been launched.
In particular their Mavic range of affordable drones which fold up small enough to fit in a cargo pocket are outstanding platforms for rock-steady aerial videos or swooping shots of scenery. Mavics also make great battlefield scouts, and both sides in the conflict have used the drones heavily for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, spotting hidden targets from miles away.
Small drones also multiply the effectiveness of artillery: by precisely directing rounds on target, drones make artillery five to ten times as effective. Everything from 155mm howitzers to 30mm automatic grenade launches now uses drone guidance, and they assist tanks to score indirect-fire kills from long range in a way that was previously impossible.
And of course, small drones are used as bombers. 3D printed bombing rigs arm small quadcopters with one or two grenades (typically Russian VOG-17 or American M433 “Golden eggs”) to drop into foxholes or trenches, or through hatches to destroy abandoned vehicles.
DJI deplores the military use of their drones. The company banned sales of their products in both Ukraine and Russia in April 2022 and has issued several strongly-worded statements, but these have been ignored.
But in Ukraine, ‘Mavik’ is now a generic term for any small drone, just as ‘Hoover’ and ‘Fridge’ were applied to any product of a certain type. In October 2023, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal claimed his country bought 60% of the Mavic drones produced,DJI immediately denied this claim, and it does seem unlikely as DJI produce millions of drones and Ukraine’s purchases are likely to be in the hundreds of thousands, but it gives an idea of how significant they are.
DJI might deplore the military use of its drones, but its new FlyCart 30 delivery drones looks perfect for delivering ordnance on target:
With eight rotors on four arms, the FlyCart30 can haul up to 30 kilos/66 pounds a distance of ten miles, or carry lesser payloads greater distances. The control range is given as 13 miles, but extra features allow one-button transfer to a second operator.
Top speed is 45 mph, and the drone can fly in winds of up to 27 mph.
A mass of safety features include automatic radar and visual obstacle avoidance day or night, and a parachute which deploys if the engines fail, so the drone will always make a soft landing.
For deliveries, the FlyCart30 can carry a 70-liter cargo pod – a container the size of a suitcase – or, if there is no landing site, it can lower a payload on a winch while the drone hovers 60 feet above.
Like the Mavics, FlyCart30 folds up for easy transport. No international price has been announced, but last year the drone was advertised in China for just $17,000.
[…]
Ukraine’s heavy drones have recently taken on a new role as minelayers. Their engineers have developed a special fuse so a mine can be dropped from the air and only arm itself after it has handed. The drones can lay mines on roads or tracks from several miles away. They can also repair gaps in minefield where Russian engineers have started to clear a path.
[…]
The larger capacity also opens up the possibility of new types of attack drone. Several developers have already come up with stabilised weapon mounts for drones, such as the Baduga rifle system which comes with a high-powered rifle with 60 rounds. It can reliably hit a human-sized target with one shot from 200 meters. The Baduga system complete with a rifle and ammo weights less than 20 pounds.
In 2021, Nammo test-fired their M72 anti-armor rocket from a heavy drone. M72s weigh about eight pounds each, so FlyCart could carry a whole rack of them, benefitting from being able to attack the thin top armor.
The FlyCart could also act as a drone carrier, a mothership for multiple FPV attack drones. Both Ukraine and Russia have experimented with this concept, but an affordable heavy lift platform would make it far more feasible.
More concretely, it focuses on the intertwined lives of two cultural anthropologists — Mead and Gregory Bateson, who were married for 14 years — and the extraordinary circle of social scientists, psychoanalysts, artists and spies who gathered around them from the 1930s through the ’70s.
[…]
People in the ’20s and ’30s genuinely thought science could, for instance, lead to the formation of a world government.
Mead and Bateson thought that scientists would lead the vanguard of a revolution in bringing the wisdom and the experiences of other cultures into the modern world, the creation of a sort of global culture that would allow for some form of transcendence. World War II really changed their view.
So there was a strong belief that in the aftermath of the atomic bomb that the way to win a war was to never end up in actual combat. Psychological warfare was the way to go — you know, basically the idea of game theory. For instance, the American side imagined, “What if the Soviets have a mind-altering drug and they give it to the president of the United States or slip it into the ambassador to Moscow’s drink?” That concern actually prompted parallel work by the CIA and the U.S. military. Drug and chemical warfare was sort of a parallel arms race alongside the nuclear arms race.
And that is what we mostly associate today with MKUltra. But it was much bigger than that. There were many other programs. and I barely scratched the surface. For instance, the idea of dropping aerosolized LSD over cities was something people thought about, but also [to use it] as a tool of diplomacy, a way of interrogating suspected double agents, even as a way of inuring Americans in the State Department. There were many layers of paranoia.
In 2013, David Hambling reports (in Swarm Troopers), the Pentagon abandoned plans for a “Distinguished Warfare Medal” that would be awarded to drone pilots who had an impact on combat operations while not actually serving on the front line:
Congress had attacked the new medal, which would rank higher than a Bronze Star or Purple Heart, as “a disservice to our service members and veterans who have, or who currently are, serving overseas in hostile and austere conditions.”
I’m reminded of how militaries have always lionized stalwart heavy infantry, who held the line, rather than skirmishers.
Mephedrone, amphetamines, and alpha-PVP, known as “salt”, are among the substances that Russian soldiers on the frontline take, with effects including paranoia and hallucinations, the report said.
[…]
Access to the drugs is easy, according to Verstka, as they are either sold by locals, brought in by the men themselves, or found on the Telegram messaging app.
However, the drugs found online are not cheap due to the risk of delivery in the war zone, one soldier told the outlet. Three syringes of an illegal substance could cost about 15,000 rubles ($150), he said.
This is not the first time a report has outlined drug use among Russian troops.
In a report in May, the British think-thank Royal United Service Institute said that Russian soldiers often appear to be “under the influence of amphetamines or other narcotic substances” on the battlefield.
By 2001, David Hambling notes (in Swarm Troopers), the Predator had, in the words of the Air Force, “become the commander’s real-time eye in the sky, providing real-time streaming video back to the command post”:
The imagery appeared to be highly addictive, leading to it being called “Predator crack” because it seemed that commanders right up to the White House could never get enough of it.
[…]
On the other hand, intelligence analysts were accustomed to imagery in the form of black-and-white still photographs, not color video. Initially their approach was to take stills from the video feed and print them out.
[…]
The plane can be broken down and stored in a shipping container known as a “coffin” and flown around the world on a transport aircraft. In theatre, it needs a five-thousand foot runway and a dedicated ground support team. Once it is rolled onto the runway, the drone is piloted by a local crew who get it into the air and on its way. Then it is handed over via satellite link–it has its own special twenty-foot dish and dedicated satellite systems–to a remote team. From then on the Predator is flown from Creech Air Force Base, forty minutes outside Las Vegas.
Unmanned aircraft like Predator have major support requirements, but each flight provides twenty-four hours of continuous surveillance on station with cameras, infrared, and radar sensors. By using the drones in relays, the Air Force can maintain a permanent presence over an area, known as a “combat air patrol,” “CAP” or “orbit.” Each CAP requires at least three drones. In 2010 there were fifty Predator/Reaper CAPs; by 2013 the number was up to sixty-five, with plans to replace all the Predators with Reapers by 2016.
[…]
The plane may keep going for twenty-four hours, but that requires several shifts of pilots, with replacements for those that are sick or otherwise not available.
[…]
One study suggested that ten pilots were needed for each predator CAP to keep operations going 24/7. These days less than half of drone pilots qualified on other aircraft first. Pure drone pilots may have some advantages; reports suggests that pilots have to unlearn some of their skills before they can fly the Predator effectively, as they may have become reliant on feeling the tilt of the aircraft or the change in note of the engine to tell how it was flying.
[…]
One of the biggest differences from other aircraft is the time lag of a few seconds (latency) due to the satellite communications.
[…]
The real business end of the Predator is a “sensor ball” eighteen inches in diameter. This is the AN/ AAS-52 Multi-Spectral Targeting System (3), which has a stabilized gimbal mount with two axes of rotation, keeping the cameras pointed in exactly the same direction regardless of the motion of the drone. It has normal visible-light cameras for daytime use and image-intensified night cameras, as well as infrared imaging, along with software that combines the inputs from different cameras into a single image. It features various levels of zoom, from a forty-five degree wide-angle view down to an ultra-narrow 0.2-degree view. This is equal to a x200 zoom range. On a standard 35mm camera, the equivalent lenses at the extreme ends would be a 50mm wide-angle lens and a 12,000mm telephoto.
[…]
The sensor ball also contains a laser illuminator, like an invisible searchlight indicating targets for friendly forces, a laser designator for the Hellfire missile, and a laser rangefinder to determine the exact location of the target.
Even in pitch darkness–or in the rain, which was a problem previously–the Predator can pick out objects on the ground with great accuracy. This is thanks to a radar system called Lynx developed in 1998 by Sandia National Laboratories (4) to overcome the limitations of cameras. Existing radar was too large for the Predator at some four hundred pounds. In a major feat of miniaturization, the necessary electronics were crammed into a package weighing just a hundred and twenty pounds which generates an image resembling a black and white video with an impressive level of detail.
From fifteen miles away, Lynx produces images in which features four inches across can be distinguished. It also has some other clever tricks. A process called coherent change detection shows the difference between the current scene and one recorded previously. This is accurate enough to pick up the disturbance left by a bomb buried under the road surface.
[…]
The Predator can also carry various electronic warfare packages that allow it to detect, locate, and intercept radio signals. The simplest of these was a radio receiver bought from Radio Shack; the most advanced are highly classified and cost millions. These could, for example, pick up walkie-talkie or cell phone transmissions and pinpoint the users. Predators can reportedly track individual cell phones when they are on by their SIM cards.
A DIME weapon consists of a carbon fiber casing filled with a mixture of explosive and very dense microshrapnel, consisting of very small particles (1–2 mm) or powder of a heavy metal. To date, tungsten alloy (heavy metal tungsten alloy, or HMTA) composed of tungsten and other metals such as cobalt and nickel or iron has been the preferred material for the dense microshrapnel or powder.
[…’
The HMTA powder acts like micro-shrapnel which is very lethal at close range (about 4 m or 13 ft), but loses momentum very quickly due to air resistance, coming to a halt within approximately 40 times the diameter of the charge. This increases the probability of killing people within a few meters of the explosion while reducing the probability of causing death and injuries or damage farther away. Survivors close to the lethal zone may still have their limbs amputated by the HMTA microshrapnel, which can slice through soft tissue and bone.
[…]
In July and August 2006, doctors in the Gaza Strip reported unusual wounds caused by Israel Defense Forces attacks against Palestinians, claiming that they were from previously unknown weapons. A lab analysis of the metals found in the victims’ bodies was reportedly “compatible with the hypothesis” that DIME weapons were involved. Israel denied possessing or using such weapons, and an Israeli military expert said that the wounds were consistent with ordinary explosives.
Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, reported on their use against Hamas a few years ago:
There’ve been reports out of Gaza that when the Israelis blast one of these Hamas guys outside a coffee house or his home, there’ve been weird injuries to the people standing next to the target — their arms and legs get sheared off clean, as if God himself lowered a big rotary saw over him and lifted him up into the sky like a core sample from an oil rig, along with the odd arm or leg of other people who happened to be inside the magic 4 meters. The wounds have supposedly stopped clean at that point, cauterized by the blast.
Naturally, such precise munitions are considered a crime against humanity — because tungsten powder can cause cancer.
Roadrunner is a modular, twin-jet powered autonomous air vehicle with extraordinary performance at low cost. Vertical takeoff and landing capability gives Roadrunner the flexibility to rapidly launch from and return to any location, pairing high subsonic speed with exceptional agility and stability.
[…]
Similar to traditional approaches to deter and defeat incoming aerial threats like scrambling expensive and airfield-dependent jets, Roadrunner-M can take off, follow, and intercept distant targets at the first hint of danger, giving operators more information and time to assess the target and rules of engagement. If there is no need to destroy the target, Roadrunner-M can simply return to base and land at a pre-designated location for immediate refueling and reuse. If the target does need to be destroyed, Roadrunner-M will swiftly do so. Unlike legacy missile systems, you can reuse all craft that are launched but not consumed. This radical shift in thinking allows for large-scale defensive launches at extraordinarily low cost, increasing redundancy for higher probability of lethality and enhancing the ability to simultaneously engage many targets.
[…]
A single operator can launch and supervise multiple Roadrunner or Roadrunner-M squadrons. Roadrunner-M can be controlled by Lattice, Anduril’s AI-powered software suite for command and control, or be fully integrated into existing air defense radars, sensors, and architectures to provide immediately deployable capability.
A total of 44,042 new Army recruits were categorized by the service as white in 2018, but that number has fallen consistently each year to a low of 25,070 in 2023, with a 6% dip from 2022 to 2023 being the most significant drop. No other demographic group has seen such a precipitous decline, though there have been ups and downs from year to year.
In 2018, 56.4% of new recruits were categorized as white. In 2023, that number had fallen to 44%. During that same five-year period, Black recruits have gone from 20% to 24% of the pool, and Hispanic recruits have risen from 17% to 24%, with both groups seeing largely flat recruiting totals but increasing as a percentage of incoming soldiers as white recruiting has fallen.
Early Predator losses were high, David Hambling notes (in Swarm Troopers), but acceptable:
By 2001, twenty of the sixty Predators had been lost to a mixture of pilot error, bad weather, accidents, and enemy fire. “Situational awareness” in unmanned aircraft is notoriously poor because of the limited view and the lack of feedback from other senses. You cannot hear the engine or feel vibration. The extreme case occurred when a pilot crashed during landing because she did not realize that her Predator had been flipped over and was flying upside down. Lesser mishaps are common. The accident rate peaked at one crash per 2,500 hours flown, far higher than any manned aircraft–but not unusual for a drone.
[…]
At less than $3 million an airframe, compared to over $200 million for some manned jets, and with no pilot casualties to worry about, the Predator was expendable. Improvements in training and additional safety features brought the accident rate down to one per 20,000 hours in 2010. By 2013, large drones had a lower accident rate than many manned aircraft.
“The results of field tests showed that the target detection radar of the Tor air defense system provides detection of small UAVs at ranges of only 3-4 km,” writes Makarenko.
This explains why drones are able to get so close and take video of these systems: the Russians are unable to spot a drone unless it is practically on top of them. When the drones are spotted, Makarenko says Tor has trouble shooting them down.
“The practical experience of experimental firing at small targets [with Tor] … indicates the low efficiency of their destruction. The main reasons for this are the imperfection of the SAM warhead detonation control system, as well as large errors in target tracking and SAM guidance on small-sized UAVs.“
This has been borne out in Ukraine, for example by this video of a Tor missile hurtling past a Ukrainian quadcopter without exploding. This is exactly what Makarenko means by a failure of detonation control.
Our Slovenian guest knows that I’ve been interested in camouflage, both orthodox and unorthodox, for some time, and pointed me to this history of camouflage by Severian, one of Z Man’s commenters.
Severian notes that primitive hunters probably didn’t use anything resembling modern camouflage, because animals don’t spot predators the way we spot enemies. They primarily spot movement and rely on their other senses. He wonders if prey animals like deer can even see color — which they can, but not like humans. This is why a tiger’s bright orange coat is excellent camouflage: orange and green are the same color, if you have red-green colorblindness. Mammal predators can’t produce green pigment, but they can produce orange, and their mammal prey can’t typically see the difference.
Anyway, Severian notes that military camouflage would’ve been useless in most of the conflicts in human history:
There’s simply no point in dressing a Roman legionary, a medieval knight, or a member of the Army of Northern Virginia in camouflage, because for those guys, movement is the entire point. Concealing the individual soldier would be counterproductive, because individual soldiers were pretty much worthless — big, mass movements were the only way to concentrate sufficient firepower (sword-power, lance-power, whatever) to win battles.
[I’m leaving aside guerrillas and whatnot, for the obvious reason that guerillas don’t win wars].
I can’t help but mention that Robin Hood and his Merry Men wore Lincoln green, if not modern camouflage.
There might even be a real advantage to gaudy uniforms in the black-powder era:
There’s smoke obscuring everything, command-and-control (such as it was) would be easier if you’re wearing something really bright and distinctive that can be seen through the haze.
It’s only when you get to a) static warfare, with b) long-range weapons that also c) have a high rate of fire that personal, sartorial camouflage starts to make sense.
[…]
It’s a conceptual reorientation: Pattern-disruption, not motion-disruption. Thanks to rapid-fire weapons, movement goes from an army’s biggest advantage to one of its biggest disadvantages. One needs to be still in no man’s land… but even if one is very still, the very regularity of one’s uniform is now a dead giveaway, because the human eye is unsurpassed at detecting patterns.
[…]
Throw in naked-eye gunnery and especially aerial photography and all of a sudden people start thinking about visual patterns as an abstract concept. The uniform goes from being “a mark of distinction” to “a means of unit identification” to “a part of combat in its own right.” German gray works pretty good, as does British khaki. I imagine that even the classic, distinctive French “horizon blue” worked well on occasion.
[…]
Indeed, as I understand it, camo was never issued to US regular troops in Vietnam. The standard combat uniform was GI green, official designation OG-107. Only Special Forces guys got camo, and it looked pretty cool.
World War I
By WW1, camouflage uniform were far from standard, but some troops were outfitted with camouflage akin to modern-day ghillie suits. If the terrain was particularly rocky, the early camo suits would resemble the rock surfaces that soldiers would inevitably find themselves hiding behind or lying atop of rocks. For greener environments, the outfits would be covered in materials resembling the elements of the environment such as moss and leaves.
World War II
In World War II, the camouflage uniform truly started to emerge. Certain army units were assigned the HBT camouflage. This was short lived though due to the uniforms looking too much like the German Waffen-SS uniforms and friendly fire becoming a major problem.
In fact, by 1943, U.S. Marines in the Solomon Islands began wearing reversible beach/jungle coveralls with totally new green-and-brown “frog” patterns, later known as “frog suits”. This type of camouflage pattern included speckled and disruptive coloration, similar to a frog’s skin. The Marine Corps soon adopted a two-piece uniform made of the same camouflage material and used that same material for a helmet cover during the Korean War.
1950′s
Camouflage uniforms in a leaf-and-twig pattern (with a four-color combination) were created by the Army’s Engineer Research and Development Laboratory and introduced. These had limited usage and underwhelming reviews, and they were quickly phased out.
In 1954, The Army Green Uniform came about as a result of a uniform improvement program and became the basis of the Army uniform and, at that time, was expected to remain until at least 2014.
1960′s
By 1965, Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other Special Forces in Vietnam started wearing unofficial camouflage uniforms. These locally produced uniforms were made with a camo pattern we know today as “Tigerstripe”.
This pattern was called “Tigerstripe” due to the resemblance the pattern bore to the stripes on actual tigers. The pattern consisted of narrow strips of green and brown which look like brush strokes from a painter’s brush as well as broader brush strokes in black painted over a lighter shade of olive or khaki.
These brushstroke stripes interlock rather than overlap.
Eventually, the Tigerstripe pattern was replaced by the official ERDL (leaf pattern) pattern in American recon units. With that said, The Civilian Irregular Defense Group (advised by the Special Forces) continued to wear Tigerstripe uniforms from 1963 until it was disbanded in 1971.
1970’s
The OG-107 was the standard uniform throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The OG-107 was one of the longest issued uniforms by the US Military. The use of this uniform began in 1952 and a poly-cotton blend (OG-507) was introduced in 1975. The name of this uniform came from the US Army’s “Olive Green 107″ and “Olive Green 507″. Both of these were shades of a darker green (OG-107 made with cotton and OG-507 made with poly-cotton). The two shades are nearly identical, but differentiated by the material. The Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) replaced the OG-107 and OG-507 throughout the 1980s. These uniforms were also used by other countries, including countries the United States gave military aid.
1980’s
In 1981, a new pattern came about known originally as the Six-Color Desert Pattern, but getting the name “Chocolate-Chip Camouflage” and “Cookie Dough Camouflage” because of the close resemblance to chocolate chip cookie dough. The base pattern is light tan with broad strokes of pale green and two different bands of brown. There are clumps of black and white spots laid over that to help blend in with pebbles and shadows.
The M81 Woodland Camouflage Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) was introduced for the entire military. The colors included brown, green, black, and sand, and uniforms in this pattern were utilized by certain units well into the 2000s. The Woodland design was utilized during Vietnam but went through certain changes to more appropriately represent the longer-range environments that the troops would be encountering in the new era.
Few would call the Predator a design classic, David Hambling notes (in Swarm Troopers):
It is more a technological kludge of different components tacked together, with an engine derived from a snowmobile at the back, an outsize satellite communications pod stuck on top, and missiles so heavy it can barely carry them slung underneath. According to one estimate, it takes seventeen people just to fly this “unmanned” aircraft. And yet the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator has been immeasurably more successful than any previous drone.
[…]
DARPA, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, identified the need for a long-endurance drone and had carried out a classified study under the codename Teal Rain in the 1970s. This led to the construction of an aircraft called Amber with a wooden propeller and a distinctive upside-down-V tail.
Amber was designed by Abraham Karem, an expert on gliders and other soaring aircraft.
[…]
Leading Systems’ most important asset was a cheap export version of the Amber called the GNAT-750. The Turkish government had expressed an interest in the GNAT-750, a larger version of Amber, with a wingspan of thirty-six feet and an empty weight of five hundred pounds. Being an export model, it had less expensive electronics. The engine was a German Rotax 914 used in sailplanes and light aircraft (a smaller version is used in snowmobiles).
The GNAT-750 flew at barely a hundred miles an hour, but resembling a glider it required minimal power to stay in the air. A flight endurance of around forty-eight hours meant the GNAT-750 could maintain constant watch over a given area for longer than any manned aircraft.
[…]
When the 1993 conflict in Bosnia flared up, the US had no suitable reconnaissance drones on hand. Satellites were unable to see beneath the cloud cover. Existing spy planes were designed to operate in hostile skies, flying at extreme altitude like the U-2 or at extreme speed like the Mach-3 SR-71 Blackbird. The requirement was for a drone that could fly at low speed and low altitude, carry an off-the-shelf camera system, and beam back real-time video via a relay aircraft.
[…]
The GNAT-750 looked like the ideal solution. It provided a stable platform with long endurance and, because it was “export technology,” there was nothing sensitive that would cause problems if one was shot down and the remains analyzed.
All the GNAT-750 needed was the communications link to a relay aircraft.
[…]
One of the modifications overseen by the CIA was a security feature that shut down everything if the speed dropped too low, as it was assumed the aircraft must be on the ground. A gust of wind from behind caused the flight speed indicator to drop below the vital figure. The GNAT-750 duly switched itself off and dropped like a stone.
That sort of accident could kill a manned program along with the pilot, but the loss of a drone is not such a serious matter.
[…]
The CIA operated the GNAT-750 from Albania, flying missions to Bosnia with considerable success. Video was sent back via the manned relay aircraft — like the earlier TDR-1, DASH, and Firebee, radio range was the limitation — and missions only lasted as long as the relay plane was in place.
[…]
The resolution on the ground was eighteen inches — as good as many satellites, with the advantage that it could be sent when and where needed, whereas satellites only appear every ninety minutes as their orbit allows.
[…]
The drone turned out to be stealthy, not from design but because it was largely made of composite material and there was not much metal to give a radar return.
[…]
The Pentagon was not content to let the CIA have a monopoly on drones. As it was apparent that there might be further limited conflicts where such drones could be useful, they funded their own development of the GNAT-750. This was an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration or ACTD for a version known as the 750-45 or 750-TE Predator. The Predator name was chosen after a competition among General Atomics employees.
The result was a larger aircraft; the empty weight almost doubled to a thousand pounds. It could stay in position five hundred miles from its base for twenty-four hours. Most important, it had extra communication equipment, including a large and unwieldy but effective Ku-band satellite communications setup with a gimbaled antenna that swivels around under its cover to keep pointing at a satellite. Sudden maneuvers tended to break the link and contact could be lost for a minute; the autopilot kicked in while the drone found its satellite again. While it was not be entirely reliable, armed with this capability, the new drone could beam back video from anywhere in the world without a relay plane. And it could fly anywhere, watching for as long as fuel lasted. It entered service in 1995 as the RQ-1 Predator.
[…]
At ten thousand feet it was inaudible, and rarely noticed by those on the ground unless they actually craned their head back to look at it. Skilled operators learned to use the cover of the sun to shield their aircraft from those they were watching.
In former Yugoslavia the Predator was of little use in directing air strikes due to a lack of training and poor communication between different units. One officer complained it took about forty-five minutes to get a strike aircraft into the same area as the drone, while the drone operators sometimes provided poor descriptions of the target — “the house with orange tiles” was not enough in a village with twenty of them. This experience prompted the addition of a laser illuminator to the Predator so the operator could highlight an aim point by shining the laser light on it, “sparkling” it, in in Air Force slang.
[…]
In a later addition, originally known as Wartime Integrated Laser Designator (WILD), Predators were fitted with lasers to mark targets so laser-guided weapons could home in on them — “lasing” rather than just “sparkling.”
Silent Arrow has been selected by the USAF’s accelerator, AFWERX, for an SBIR contract focused on its CLS-300 (“Contested Logistics System, 300 Nautical Miles”) long-range attritable cargo drone — which sounds suspiciously like it’s not for cargo:
The CLS-300 is based on the commercially successful Silent Arrow GD-2000, which according to the company, is the world’s first heavy payload, autonomous and attritable cargo delivery aircraft designed to carry 1,500 lbs. of cargo over 35 nautical miles when deployed from cargo aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin C-130, Boeing C-17, and Airbus A400M.
Whereas the GD-2000 is a glider, the new CLS-300 can travel nearly 10 times as far by utilizing an innovative propulsion unit and propeller system that are inexpensive enough to allow the entire cargo drone to be attritable. In addition to being air droppable, it will also be capable of taking off from the ground including from unimproved surfaces, naval vessels and other launch points.
Before the war, Russia served as a hub for cross-border flows of all types of illicit products, such as money, guns, drugs, and people throughout Europe and beyond. Ukraine’s criminal underworld once played a key role in distribution, Galeotti said during a presentation on his report on Monday.
But since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Galeotti said, Ukrainian gangsters had suddenly “rediscovered their patriotism” and were refusing to cooperate with the Russians. Ukraine’s cold shoulder, coupled with the closing of land routes in countries such as Finland, has forced Russian gangsters to find alternative drug routes.
The report found that in order to get products out of Russia and into other parts of Europe, traffickers were increasingly turning to Belarus as a new crucial transit hub.
Despite border controls set up throughout Europe, heroin, cocaine, and other narcotics were being smuggled out of Russia via Belarus, Galeotti said, while sanctioned items such as microchips and luxury goods were being smuggled in.
Galeotti said the larger criminal networks in Russia had suffered under the new dynamics, but smaller gangs once relegated to the backwaters of the Belarus border were suddenly reaping the rewards.
The war also appears to have impacted the demand for narcotics within Russia itself.
The report found that while some international drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, were still finding their way into the country from countries in Latin America, economic pressure on ordinary Russians’ pocketbooks due to wartime sanctions had changed the game.
Even before the war, cocaine was too expensive for most of Russian society, and the report said the use of heroin was on the decline throughout the country.
The report found that a lack of affordable drugs coupled with unreliable trafficking routes had led to a spike in synthetic drugs throughout Russia.
Galeotti said synthetic opioids were cheaper to manufacture and more accessible for ordinary Russians.
The report found the war had also sped up the use of synthetic amphetamines such as mephedrone — known as “salt” in Russian slang — because of increased consumption in cities such as Donetsk, where many soldiers were either based or taking leave.
A Royal United Service Institute report from May found that some Russian soldiers were being given amphetamines to lower their inhibitions while in combat. Meanwhile, a Russian news outlet in October reported soldiers were getting hard drugs delivered to their trenches to stave off boredom.
Isegoria: I’m getting strong Terminator-future vibes from drones hunting survivors in the rubble.
Bruce: At Monte Cassino, we bombed the stone building to rubble, and the Germans put machine gun nests in the randomly scattered rubble. Pricy getting them out. I expect drones to routinely arrive just after a bomb strike and nest in the rubble. Maybe in Ukraine they already are. Next, they look at the field manuals on fortifications and start sneaking construction drones into inconvenient places. Maybe in Ukraine they already are.
Jim: That is an astute observation, Phileas. Indeed, to abuse Bill Gates, “People overestimate how much decline can occur in one year, and underestimate how much decline can occur in ten.”
Phileas Frogg: When degradation happens universally, at a roughly uniform rate, it’s much harder to detect, and much more likely to be accepted as, “normal,” than genuinely isolated incidents. Isolated asymmetric catastrophes are more jarring for the public and more like to cause a response than universal and uniform ones. “Family of 3 is carjacked and killed,” in a small town is more likely to elicit a response than, “Over the course of 10 years, your small...
Phileas Frogg: The fact that they both arrived at a general method is interesting, and naturally begs the age old philosophical question: “Is reality a mathematical structure? Or, is reality necessarily instantiated with mathematical properties? Or, is reality simply able to be modeled via mathematics?” I lean towards the 2nd, but I can’t wholly dismiss the 1st and 3rd, though this tidbit does seem to argue against the 3rd indirectly.
Phileas Frogg: Unless and until they release an actual sticker price, it’s only prudent to reserve judgement given the inflationary predilections of our bureaucracy.
Jim: Don’t worry, guys, not only would they not have participated, if Our Greatest Ally had somehow received advance notice, they would have helped to stop it.
Bob Sykes: Next thing you know, people will be claiming Mossad did 9/11.
Wanweilin: In the exact place it was upgraded… hmmm.
Jim: How fortunate that they hardened the structure in preparation of a bomb.
Bruce: The March 1971 Air Force Magazine claims a Soviet FOBS passed over the tip of South America and returned to Soviet territory near the Caspian. Got this from ChatGTP, which says the Soviet FOBS were normally passing over southern South America but did not reenter. It would take looking through all South American media reports of strange lights in the sky and comparing them to all Soviet launches of the period to have a better idea of what was happening. Pournelle had good contacts in aerospace...
Bob Sykes: In modern American textbooks, Newton’s notation for derivatives (f’) has displaced Leibniz’ (df/dx). A step backwards, in my opinion. As much as I found the calculus interesting and useful (I am an engineer.), complex numbers and the vast simplifications that follow from them were an astonishment.
Felix: “The average gun owner owns about 5.2 firearms…” That looks like a number that should represented by the median, not the mean. Ah, from the PDF, page 27, the median is 3. Graphs on page 29, figure 12.
McChuck: And at least half of all actual gun owners reported, “None of your business!”
Bob Sykes: China offers other countries real and substantial economic benefits. The US offers colonial subjugation, military intimidation, and exploitation and poverty.
Jim: This terrifying uptick from years prior resulted in the FAA and NTSB convening safety summits in March and May, respectively. Whether they dared to discuss root causes seems unlikely. Take it from me: the “aviation safety” “people” would rather disown their family than restore flight to the exclusive province of high-IQ young and youngish white men. That is not hyperbole—read it literally.
Bob Sykes: I see that I, myself, have provided a funny proof. Oh for an editing function. [Fortunately we have a Natural General Intelligence editor.]
Bob Sykes: It is claimed that 20% of American adults are illiterate, and that perhaps as many as 40% of Gen Alpha are illiterate. Elite colleges like Harvard and Berkeley are finding out that some of their freshman are illiterate and innumerate. We have entered a new Dark Age of illiteracy and superstition. Slavery and tyranny will soon follow.
Jim: Attention isn’t all you need. There is something else waiting to be discovered. And there is probably something genuinely irreducible about organic existence that will require the superintelligent silicon layer to be grafted on top of a carbon-and-water foundation. Plus, organic beings have a temporal gravity that cannot be simulated. Large language models are created by a Darwinian process that is a pale shadow of billions of years of the real one.
Isegoria: Longevity definitely has a genetic component: Three decades ago a famous study of Danish twins found that our genes “only moderately” influence how long we’re likely to live. Longevity, the authors estimated, was about 25 percent heritable, meaning the remaining three quarters was determined by environmental factors and lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise. Most subsequent studies found heritability to be somewhere in the 20 to 25 percent range, and 25 percent is now widely accepted....
Cofer Black, head of the CIA’s counterterrorist Center, requested that the Predator be armed, David Hambling reports (in Swarm Troopers), and USAF General John Jumper requested a demonstration of a Predator that could “find a target, then eliminate it”:
