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Pakistan's 1st drone strikes should worry Obama

Maybe we're looking too deep into it.

Drones are becoming more common and that will change the face of combat in the near future, faster than what the US anticipated.

The article was written from an American point of view and rightly acknowledges that American refusal to sell sophisticated drone tech to Pakistan resulted in us seeking another supplier, which turns out to be China. That is not all, it hints that other countries may soon follow suit in drone production and/or increase their purchases from China.

The US not only faces more non-American drones, but China's global sales will propel it into the leading arms supplier for many countries.

China is the hinted concern, from what I gathered.

By the time other countries have mastered drones, USA will have moved on to massive swarms of autonomous bots. By the time others catch up, self-assembling self-repairable capabilities will give the US swarms a further edge.
 
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By the time other countries have mastered drones, USA will have moved on to massive swarms of autonomous bots. By the time others catch up, self-assembling self-repairable capabilities will give the US swarms a further edge.

All hail Uncle Sam!
 
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All hail Uncle Sam!

No, all hail trolling when done by Mods. :D

Seriously, the point is that all countries strive to keep the advantage by enormous efforts in R&D. Those who can throw the most resources usually remain ahead. If China does it better than USA in the future, of course they will gain the advantage. Uncle Sam has no exclusive rights to lead.
 
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By the time other countries have mastered drones, USA will have moved on to massive swarms of autonomous bots. By the time others catch up, self-assembling self-repairable capabilities will give the US swarms a further edge.
True.

Every country has only been playing catch-up to something the Americans used years or even decades ago.
We're still stuck on ballistic missiles while Laser-defense systems are becoming a reality.
We're struggling with PIA when the US is pushing for commercialized space travel (esp Virgin Galactic).

Still, there are concerns over China's growth and pace of development. While the Americans can produce better tech, China's strength is in numbers. Citing an example: German precision-engineered tanks in WW2 were no match for primitive Soviet ones, whose numbers overwhelmed their counterparts.
 
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True.

Every country has only been playing catch-up to something the Americans used years or even decades ago.
We're still stuck on ballistic missiles while Laser-defense systems are becoming a reality.
We're struggling with PIA when the US is pushing for commercialized space travel (esp Virgin Galactic).

Still, there are concerns over China's growth and pace of development. While the Americans can produce better tech, China's strength is in numbers. Citing an example: German precision-engineered tanks in WW2 were no match for primitive Soviet ones, whose numbers overwhelmed their counterparts.

Of course. USA has no guaranteed lead. If China works harder and better, it will soon lead.
 
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So you are gonna constantly moan and cry about that for the rest of the year?
he can always go to GHQ or explain why he thinks he is being trolled?

Of course. USA has no guaranteed lead. If China works harder and better, it will soon lead.
actually North Korea will surpass all the imperialist usurpers in next few years
 
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he is saying only whites are allowed to kill by drones.

Basically this.

It was A-OK when the US and its allies did it. But its not OK when Pakistan, Russia or Iran do it. Reminds me of the curbs put in place by the Americans on nuclear technology. Its OK if we use it or threaten you with it, but you guys can't have it.

the US will soon face a world in which other states are following Pakistan into the targeted killing club, replicating many of the policies that the United States has embraced over the last decade.

The US should also consider engaging in an international convention to regulate the sale and use of drone technology to prevent the global spread of the practice of targeted killings.

all of whom will use drone strikes in ways that the US does not approve.
 
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he can always go to GHQ or explain why he thinks he is being trolled?


actually North Korea will surpass all the imperialist usurpers in next few years

As I said, no nation has a guaranteed lead. If North Korea works hard enough and smart enough, it can of course leave everyone behind, imperialists, capitalists, socialists, islamists and communists behind. Oh wait, except communists. They are communists themselves. :D

(When Mods troll, it is only PDF that loses. What goes of my father, as they say. :D )
 
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Its just a Expression of Liberal mindset as their have been Human Rights groups protesting against drone even in USA now when a country like Pakistan got their hands on this tech then they are concerned that many other countries would also be encouraged in getting them in one way or the other and this whole drone thing would become a Tool of every war despite of how many Human Rights group protest against it in USA, in Pakistan or any other part of the World.
 
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Soon, drones will be everywhere in the civilian domain, not just the military:

http://www.economist.com/news/scien...rcraft-are-verge-becoming-commonplace-welcome

Unmanned aerial vehicles
Welcome to the Drone Age
Miniature, pilotless aircraft are on the verge of becoming commonplace
From the print edition

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THE scale and scope of the revolution in the use of small, civilian drones has caught many by surprise. In 2010 America’s Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) estimated that there would, by 2020, be perhaps 15,000 such drones in the country. More than that number are now sold there every month. And it is not just an American craze. Some analysts think the number of drones made and sold around the world this year will exceed 1m. In their view, what is now happening to drones is similar to what happened to personal computers in the 1980s, when Apple launched the Macintosh and IBM the PS/2, and such machines went from being hobbyists’ toys to business essentials.

That is probably an exaggeration. It is hard to think of a business which could not benefit from a PC, whereas many may not benefit (at least directly) from drones. But the practical use of these small, remote-controlled aircraft is expanding rapidly. After dragging its feet for several years the FAA had, by August, approved more than 1,000 commercial drone operations. These involved areas as diverse as agriculture (farmers use drones to monitor crop growth, insect infestations and areas in need of watering at a fraction of the cost of manned aerial surveys); land-surveying; film-making (some of the spectacular footage in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” was shot from a drone, which could fly lower and thus collect more dramatic pictures than a helicopter); security; and delivering things (Swiss Post has a trial drone-borne parcel service for packages weighing up to 1kg, and many others, including Amazon, UPS and Google, are looking at similar ideas).

The drones’ club

Nor is commerce the only area in which drones are making a mark. A glance at the academic world suggests many more uses await discovery. Because drones are cheap, geographers who could never afford conventional aerial surveys are able to use them to track erosion, follow changes in rivers’ sources and inspect glaciers. Archaeologists and historians are taking advantage of software that permits drones fitted with ordinary digital cameras to produce accurate 3D models of landscapes or buildings. This lets them map ancient ruins and earthworks. Drones can also go where manned aircraft cannot, including the craters of active volcanoes and the interiors of caves. A drone operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, has even snatched breath samples from spouting whales for DNA analysis. And drones are, as might be expected, particularly useful for studying birds. A standard shop-bought drone can, for example, be used unmodified for counting nests high in a forest’s canopy.

Public servants, too, are putting drones through their paces. In the case of nest-counting, the idea is not to disturb the wildlife in question. In Ottawa officials have taken the opposite approach, with a “goosebuster” drone that is fitted with speakers which play the calls of birds of prey. This has kept a city park on Petrie Island free from the hundreds of geese whose droppings were causing problems. Police in Michigan are considering using drones for mapping the scenes of accidents, so that roads can be reopened more quickly. And drones can save lives, as well as keeping parks clean and traffic moving. In June, for example, Frank Roma, a fireman, rescued two boys from a river in Maine with the help of a drone. The boys were stuck on a rock in the middle of a powerful current. Mr Roma employed a drone to carry a line out to them, along which he passed life jackets that they were able to put on before an inflatable boat went out to perform the tricky manoeuvre of picking them up.

Other roles for drones are more questionable. Their use to smuggle drugs and phones into prisons is growing. Instances have been reported in America, Australia, Brazil, Britain and Canada, to name but a few places. In Britain the police have also caught criminals using drones to scout houses to burgle. The crash of a drone on to the White House lawn in January highlighted the risk that they might be used for acts of terrorism. And in June a video emerged of KATSU, a pseudonymous graffito artist, using a drone equipped with an aerosol spray to deface one of New York’s most prominent billboards.

How all this activity will be regulated and policed is, as the FAA’s own flat-footed response has shown, not yet being properly addressed. There are implications for safety (being hit by an out-of-control drone weighing several kilograms would be no joke); for privacy, from both the state and nosy neighbours; and for sheer nuisance—for drones can be noisy. But the new machines are so cheap, so useful and have so much unpredictable potential that the best approach to regulation may simply be to let a thousand flyers zoom.



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The trailblazers of the field—the Mac and the PS/2 of the drone world, if you like—are the AR and the Phantom. The AR, built by Parrot, a French company, became a bestseller in 2010. It is an easy-to-fly quadcopter that beams video back to a smartphone. Then, in 2013, a Chinese firm called DJI introduced the Phantom. That brought professional-quality aerial photography within the reach of general users. The Phantom’s latest incarnation, which costs less than $2,000, can shoot 20 minutes’ worth of footage before it has to land.

How long these two firms will dominate the world of drones is anybody’s guess. Andrew Amato of Dronelife.com, an American consultancy, says that the Phantom’s limited flight time makes it vulnerable. A drone that could fly for significantly longer—an hour, perhaps—would change the marketplace, as would one that was fitted with “sense-and-avoid” technology that would stop it running into obstacles by mistake. Researchers are busy in both these fields.

Up, up and away

Sense-and-avoid, needed for drones to operate safely in shared airspace without close human supervision, is hard without extra sensors, such as radar. Using a drone’s own video camera to recognise objects in real time requires tremendous computing power. Some firms are, however, attempting to do just that. One, Bio Inspired Technologies of Boise, Idaho, is tackling the problem with a hard-wired neural network, a type of device that is good at learning things. This can, the firm’s engineers believe, be trained to recognise and avoid aerial obstacles. Alternatively, a conventional, if high-end, computer can be programmed with algorithms pre-designed to recognise and evade threats, by understanding how objects visible to a drone’s camera are moving. Percepto, a firm based in Tel Aviv, uses this approach, which it dubs “intelligent vision”. Percepto’s system might also be used to frame camera shots, by taking into account such things as lighting angles.

Whichever approach—training and learning, or pre-cooked recognition software—wins, drones that are able to understand their environments to even a limited extent will be a lot more useful. They could, for example, recognise their operator and home in on him when required. They might be set loose on frost-damaged roads, to look for potholes. They could be released to cruise over forests to spot fires early, or sent off to seek errant hikers who have failed to report in when expected.

Extended flight time will make all these putative uses more plausible, and many people are working on that, too. The most common approach is to switch in mid-air from being a helicopter, which relies on power-hungry rotor blades to stay aloft, to being an aeroplane, which gets its lift, more efficiently, from fixed wings.

The SkyProwler, from Krossblade, a firm based in Tempe, Arizona, looks like an aeroplane, but has four rotor blades which flick out of its body for vertical take-offs and landings. Dan Lubrich, the company’s boss, claims it is efficient at both hovering and forward flight, and says the transformation mechanism adds only about 10% to the drone’s weight. The SkyProwler cruises at 100kph (60mph) and has a flying time of 40 minutes. It can travel up to 25km, hover to shoot video or drop off a package when it arrives, and then return. It should go on sale in December.

Engineers at VTOL Technologies, a company spun out of the University of Reading, in Britain, are working on Flying Wing, a drone with a 120cm wingspan. Four ducted fans propel it forward in level flight, but their attitudes can be adjusted to allow them to provide lift directly. The upshot is a device which can be angled into the wind, to provide yet more lift. That permits it to hover in the way that gulls and other soaring birds do, with little expenditure of energy. VTOL estimates it will be able to do so for an hour, or remain in level flight for more than two hours.

The days of the Parrot/DJI duopoly thus look numbered. Mr Amato extends the comparison to PCs to the time when IBM’s grip on its half of the personal-computer duopoly faltered and numerous competitors rushed in. This did not, of course, prevent Apple’s business surviving on the back of a loyal and particular group of consumers, but it did mean that small computers became commodity products. Like a drone in a gust of wind, the future of the this market will have many twists and turns—but all the signs suggest that the air will soon be abuzz with machines.

From the print edition: Science and technology
 
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As I mentioned before, after drones will come swarms of drones:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/10/economist-explains

How swarm drones are mimicking nature
Oct 1st 2015, 23:00 BY K.B.

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THE notion of autonomous drones can conjure up dreams of easy, efficient parcel delivery—and nightmares of algorithms taking the place of human judgment in warfare. And now, robotic swarms are on their way. Researchers are working out how to deliver their most basic requirements: a swarm must fly without drones crashing into their surroundings or each other; the whole system must also act and make decisions rapidly within the limits of the processors and information available to each drone. How are researchers achieving this?

The key has been to take a cue from swarm intelligence in nature. As with an ant colony—which makes decisions about problems like job allocation that a single insect could not fathom—each drone in a swarm can make decisions based on the stimulus of its neighbours and immediate surroundings. Unlike a single sophisticated drone, a swarm of drones could function even if some members break down. Swarm intelligence self-organises, so it has no problem absorbing new members that only have to follow simple rules.

An effective swarm would be based on minimal but effective communication between its members, each of which makes its own decisions based on local stimuli. Flying towards a narrow pass, for instance, would be a cue to bunch up, while turbulence might require the opposite. GPS receivers could be used to orient each drone relative to its neighbours, but cameras and software capable of object recognition are more versatile and less prone to system failure. Researchers are taking inspiration from ant colonies which regulate their activity without central control: the first foragers will only venture out if stimulated by the scent of sufficient numbers of returning patrollers. This protects them from dangerous weather or predators. If the first ants struggle to find food they will return in a trickle too slow to stimulate others. Thus by following a simple rule, the colony organises itself. Drones could similarly make more complex collective decisions beyond simply following each other in a flock.

The possibilities are endless. Algorithms already exist to clean up grids with swarm intelligence in models where some tiles are "dirty" and spread their dirtiness to adjacent tiles over time. Collaborative “agents”, which have limited vision of the grid, render tiles clean when they travel over them and follow simple rules to clean up the grid efficiently. The framework is reminiscent of forest fire control, for which drone swarms may be ideally suited, and the algorithms can be adapted to solve similar problems in hunting evasive targets. Unmanned military aircraft could overwhelm targets from all directions without the loss of individual units posing a problem. For agriculture and environmental monitoring, they could amass a huge amount of data to inform practices and policy: a swarm may monitor an area continuously even as its members swap in and out as they break down or recharge. Indeed, drones may emerge as the solution to many problems and in swarms, beyond mere parcels, they may deliver.
 
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