I don't see how it's any different than using a helicopter to track him or anyone else in extraordinary situations.

Now if you're talking about round the clock flybys and surveillance that is a different issue.

If this is in response to me, I was mostly making fun of LAPD's propensity to shoot everything that moves. Normally they don't need a justification of a cop-killer on the loose but it certainly doesn't improve their judgement or marksmanship.

It wasn't.

To me, the "for this ex-cop" part is irrelevant. No, I'm not fine with using a surveillance-only drone to search for people.

Men Love Drone Strikes More Than Women

http://gizmodo.com/5983539/men-love-dro ... than-women

Also, love the 1st comment:
What kind of faggot likes drones over women? Given a choice I'd slam some fresh pussy any day of the week over some flying piece of metal.

Unfortunately it looks like I was right. He attacked another couple and shot 2 more cops. If the best way to take out a guy like this is with a drone, so it goes.

As opposed to kicking a door in and shooting them in the face person to person?

One of my fears about these drones is how we control them. Iran was able to basically trick one into landing where they could retrieve it. Assuming they were aided by China in doing this, which analysts have said is likely, how else can the Chinese trick these things?

There's concern that the radar on the drone might be of particular use for the warhead on China's ballistic anti-ship missile. Whether or not China was involved with the capture, undoubtedly chinese engineers got a good look at all its components, much like the stealthy blackhawk that crashed in Pakistan. I say we retire a couple of our carrier battlegroups and pass the savings on to China's neighbors. Vietnam has a good history of resisting Chinese aggression.

Back to the topic: the only real difference between police helicopters and drones is cost of use. Police have to prioritise helicopters for only special occasions. Drones might make it too easy/cost effective for general surveillance, much like they make it too easy to kill 'bad guys' overseas.

If the stories about GPS spoofing being what defeated the drone in Iran are true, then the command/control of drones may have serious issues. We wouldn't want a drone helicopter that was sent to resupply troops kamikaze into them instead. China could "open source" the electronic warfare methods it uses to defeat the drones and cripple a whole generation of them.



Well, it's also civil liberties. Drones can see things (and through things) that a donut-muncher with a pair of binoculars cannot so transparency and oversight are very important. They could fly around looking for unpermitted decks just as easily as they could look for exhausted chemical gas from drug manufacturing or track a stolen car.

I'm curious as to how it would be different than using an LAPD chopper in the skies searching for this guy, or anyone? I'm trying to learn both sides here.

another day, another child killed...

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworl ... cation=rss

c'est la vie, amirite America?

We can hardly get Americans to care that LA cops lit up a newspaper delivery truck. Why should they care when we kill brown people over there?

With New Yorks "Stop and Frisk" policy and the widespread police misconduct that only gets prosecuted with sufficent video evidence (see Oscar Grant) we might as well be an occupied country. In the aggregate we may very well deserve the government we have, but for the rest of us why do they wonder why we aren't super stoked for a state monopoly of force?

It would be interesting to see if the Taliban would use Lindsey Grahams words the other way around. We're at war, and sometimes you kill innocent people and we hate that, but we took out the world trade center and got noticed, so it was worth it.

Individually speaking, it's a pretty stupid quote though I understand the justification.

The US government has decided to fight a global war outside of its borders for a variety of reasons, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper and more politically effective at home to fight it with drones than US troops.

It's just sort of interesting that they have all this technology yet they use something as crude as a missile. Surely Drone Snipers are soon to come, and the LAPD will fuck that up too.

Its really hard to stabilize a gun from a flying platform. Sure, it works for strafing (when accuracy isn't a huge issue) but you have to factor in the recoil from the gun if you want a follow up shot. No, their prescription for civilian casualties is simply a smaller missile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-176_Griffin. Perhaps they will go smaller than that.

Also, whats so crude about a missile? 20th (or 21st, depending on how elaborate it is) versus 19th century technology for a fixed case, rifled bullet.

The girls parents who died when unintended schrapnel hit their child probably find them crude is all I meant. Compared to conventional bombs they are pretty genius, but in this situation (killing 2 people) it's a little like killing a fly with a brick. Just saying. In the context of this thread, where we're talking mostly about unintended casualties, a couple of well positioned snipers are the only military option I'd think that would produce less collateral damage if that option were possible.

Don't forget lots of the drone strikes have 'double taps'.

Have you ever been to an 'occupied' country? If we were an occupied country, we would be praying for the good old days of 'stop and frisk'.