The Big Deal About Drones

fun reasons and some of them are not so fun recently. Right, they are a really interesting development in robotics that has a lot of very positive applications and unfortunately a lot of negative ones as well. Right, So we're going to cover kind of the whole spectrum. Right, We're gonna look at everything from the silly and sublime to the pretty serious, pretty serious and scary really uh, and and also talk

about why is there a debate about drones. But so, to start off, Jonathan, what actually is a U A b okay so unmanned aerial vehicle? You can essentially say that this is any sort of flying device that doesn't carry a passenger in it, that is used for some other purpose. Usually we go one step beyond what would

be a typical r C airplane or RC helicopter. You wouldn't really call that a drone because there's not really anything on there other than the fact that this is something for you to pilot around and have fun with. So like a remote control air shark, maybe maybe not a drone. Yeah, probably not a drone. But if you were to put say a camera in that remote controlled air shark and you could actually spy on people, that would be a air shark drone. Probably not the most

subtle of unmanned drones that you've ever seen. But maybe you were to create something like a camera on it, and also to have some sort of fabric display, which is a possibility. Let's say you have a fabric display and then on the underside it can actually show you pictures. That would be like a crazy kind of art experiment that I would expect to see it burning man or dragon con. I really want that now, actually totally something

that could be a possibility. And so when we're talking about drones, were usually talking about something that does something on top of just flying around. Now that might mean that it's got some cameras and sensors on it that allow it to do some things like navigate through spaces or give you a look at a particular area. Maybe it doesn't have those sensors. Maybe it just carries stuff. And we'll talk about some of the crazy delivery drones

that have popped up, sometimes literally across the globe. But usually these are controlled remotely by a pilot using some sort of interface that connects via radio signal to the vehicle's navigation and control systems, or the vehicles themselves are autonomous, meaning that they can use their own sensors. Yeah, exactly, you have to program what it's going to do ahead

of time. It's not like they have artificial intelligence. And can you know, it's not RoboCop on wings, you know, I suppose it could could hypothetically be one day, One day we might get there. But right now we're talking about devices that you you give it a pre program set of parameters. Perhaps it's to fly to a specific coordinate and then fly back, and it's using things like the GPS sensor to navigate to where it needs to go. Uh. But otherwise, once once you've said in motion, it takes

control of itself. I think most drones tend to be under human control. Although we have drastically increased that capability, it used to be that it was all line of sight. In other words, the controller had to be able to see the the drone in order to maintain control. That's not the case now. Increases in miniaturization and GPS technology has has really pushed that field force certainly. Yeah, satellite communications has made it possible for us to have ridiculous

kinds of control over unmanned aerial vehicles. So they can often stay in the air for longer than a day, particularly when we start talking about some of the ones that are used in scientific research and military applications, they can go for up to up I've heard up to forty eight hours and without refueling in some cases. Yeah, exactly, so you can have forty eight hours of consistent flight time.

And now, obviously, if you're talking about a manned control situation, you then are also talking about having shifts switching off teams of pilots, right, And there's there's usually for for this kind of thing to pilots, one to actually do the controlling assumed assuming that it's not being autonomously controlled, and a second watching the sensory readouts and helping the pilot there, right, And then some some cases you're talking about even larger teams. But we'll talk about some of

the more complex ones in a bit. So they also can very pretty widely in size and sophistication. So a typical tiny little drone you might think of like the parrot drone, which is a quadrocopter drone. It's the kind of has the rotors on the four corners, so it gives it a very stable flight path, and you can

even do some crazy trips tricks. Rather, you can do crazy trips too if you wanted to, but crazy tricks letting it do things like barrel rolls, although it's more like a very quick flip because obviously you lose stabilization once those those uh, those those blades go vertical as opposed to horizontal, and then you can control that with an iPhone, So you can actually use a smartphone to control a parrot drone. I was talking earlier today about

how I had a really crazy schedule today. So today Jonathan schedule included a phone call with FEMA uh A talk about electronics in the f a A, which was an episode that we recorded earlier today, although when it publishes is a mystery, and then also talking about drones, and so a friend of mine said, oh, so is that is this all in preparation for talking about how FEMA could control a drone with a an iPhone because the Apple event was also the day that we're recording

this and said, you know, you're making a joke, but that's totally possible. But as the parent drone allows you to control it with an iPhone, absolutely, and uh yeah, these are small, you know, commercial devices. You can you can go out and buy something. Yeah, yeah, you can actually buy one right now. And I remember the first time I saw one at ce S several years ago, maybe twenty ten or maybe even earlier, and I was

really impressed. And it included a little camera on the device itself, so it could allow you to look around and you were you were able to play games with other people who had parent drones and do kind of a virtual shoot him up type thing that would be reflected with your actual drones real world location. So it's

kind of neat stuff. But if you want to talk about the other end of the spectrum, now, that's on the simple side, right, that's that's a very small, portable device that the average person can use and you're using a very simple interface to control it. The other end of that spectrum is drones that are the size of an actual like manned aircraft, like a small business jet or so I think is the size that which I think are the largest military drone and predators are both

pretty big. Yeah, because a predator. If you see a picture of a predator drone, you might think, what's the size of that? Is that like maybe you know, half the size of a car? No, those are much bigger than cars, but they if from casual glance, if you were near one, you might think, well, that's an interesting jet. Where's the cockpit because I don't see where the person

would look out because it looks blank. Yeah, but it's in fact a drone, and so you end up flying it using all the different sensors and cameras that are on it as the guidance. Although for aerodynamic purposes it's still shaped more or less the way that a passenger airplane would be, right, I mean, and that just makes sense for pure physics, right, I Mean, it's not like theoretically we could have it shaped anything that would fly, But why would you change it up so much if

that's the most efficient shape. I kind of want them to paint just just go ahead and paint like a cylon toaster, have like a little led that goes back and forth and it just constantly chanced by your command. That's from the nineteen superior version of Bellstar Galatica. Um, we're really gonna have to have a geek fight about that same day, Chaathan. Anyway, there will be a reckoning. So with those kind of military style drones are the

ones that scientific endeavors are using. These large, large drones, those are the ones that need multiple people to really control it. And also they usually have a link up where you can control it from quite a far away away. But we'll get into that a little bit later. Uh. Now, there's some rules about drones though, right, Yes, some some countries China for example, and this will become important in

a moment. Uh. It's it's basically legal to operate commercial drones anywhere that you want, as long as you get local authorization. Here in the US, um, drones are authorized in some military airspace and patroller borders. Also there's some three public agencies that can use them at low altitudes away from airport. Right. It's essentially the same sort of rules that the Guide r C h r C flight vehicles like anything like a remote control plane and remote

controlled helicopter. There are specific rules that that are dictated by the US government and most of them are the same as for the drones. Sure, sure, And now, um, the f a A. H the Federal Administration, thank you. I always want to say aeronautics, and that's not quite the right word. Um, it does is working on new regulations right now. They're supposed to come out in and at that point we're probably going to see a lot

more commercial and private drones flying around. Yeah, it's going to be one of those those things where they'll be there may be some more specific rules to guide this sort of thing. You know. This is again another one of those examples of how technology evolves faster than the laure because I don't know if you've ever noticed, but the government does not move in the speed of night, certainly not by Morris law. No, no, no, no no. So so we see these developments happen faster than the

way agencies can legislate them. But that is coming. The two thousand fifteen will be interesting to see exactly how the f a A handles that and and how, you know, is it going to be really restricted? Is it going to open things up. Will there be specific agencies that people who operate drones will have to report to? We don't know. We have to wait. It's a it's it's part of a larger like sixty three point four billion dollar initiative for the f A to to update traffic

control systems and expand airspace. So that's important stuff. So let's talk about some uses fun uses of some drones, like scientific research. So there are a lot of organizations out there that are using drones in some way or another to conduct scientific research, and that includes NASA and Noah. Those organizations are both using drones to study inhospitable environments here on Earth, right, you know, lots of places that it would either be uh overly expensive or difficult or

dangerous to get humans out to to take a look at. Right, Yeah, if we can get an unmanned aerial vehicle to fly by, say a giant crater that's remote and difficult to access otherwise, oh, to say, or in a volcano or at an oil spill or exactly. Yeah. So here's some of the examples, and we've mentioned a couple of them. Oil spills, volcanic ash,

that kind of stuff. Looking at these sort of things that's that can be hazardous, but also they using UH drones to explore repositories of ice in Greenland, Antarctica, and Alaska. In other words, trying to get a real look at what how how these giant areas of ice are doing because the melt off is happening pretty quick quickly, but it's hard to get a good look at it because these are pretty remote areas. U a v s can

give us a much closer look at that. NASA is using them to study hurricanes, so we're looking at the way hurricanes develop and sort of the paths they take, and also how hurricanes how storms can change when they start to encounter different types of land masses. This hurricane season in particular, NASA is using a lot of drones to um to just watch the way storms are developing and and send information back. Yeah, they're using what are called global Hawk drones, which are the same type of

drones that are used in some military surveillance operations. Global Hawk is not the most prevalent of the drones that the military uses, but it's sort of one of the precursors to what we tend to use today. We've also seen agencies use these drones to study wildfires and to get an idea of where the wildfire is spreading. Again, obviously a very dangerous situation to send people into. And you know, the worst case scenario with a drone in this kind of situation is that you lose an expensive

piece of equipment. But the worst case scenario in other situations is that you lose human life. So that's obviously one of those reasons why it's very attractive for science. Diffic study also is a bonus. These things can can fly lower, slower, and more quietly than um than a typical manned aircraft, right, so you can get a longer look at things. And perhaps if you're using it even

to study things like wildlife, it's not as likely. Uh. And and these research vehicles can vary, just like the U A v's we talked about at the top of the show. And and Lauren, I think you found an interesting U A V that's being used in scientific research, something that's actually using solar power. Right, there's something called a pathfinder that was built in the nineties for civilian purposes like collecting data on on weather and the climate. UM.

It's it's reached. It's it's reached a record of of height for solar powered aircraft, which is what's that sixty feet? Yeah, which is something like twenty kilometers kilometers. That's that's pretty incredible elevation for an unmanned vehicle, right and you know not not too and that kind of data is is important. Yep yep. Uh. So other uses for drones include things

like historic research. I came across an article that was interesting was talking about Peruvian archaeologists who were using drones to explore ancient ruins without disturbing the area with actual vehicle or foot traffic. So they didn't want to disturb an area that had a lot of cultural and historical significance. Also, they want to use drones as a way of monitoring a site, so not just mapping a site, which has

turned out to be incredibly useful. In fact, I read one archaeologist report that said that they were able to do in a few days the same sort of work that normally would take them years to map out a site. But they also want to use it in order to monitor a site and keep people from taking advantage of it.

There are examples of people who have squatted on land that's directly a adjacent to historic sites, either as a means of trying to monetize that or just because they figure that by being close to something like that they are less likely to be displaced. So it's kind of, uh, it's this idea of trying to protect the area before people try and leverage that in some other way. You also have a note about using using this for pest control. Yeah,

Florida is looking at using drones for pest control. Now they're not actually talking about arming drones with some sort of pesticide and then blasting it at laser mosquitoes, app or something like that. They're outfitting all the drones with these two giant robot arms that come together in a slapping motion and then they're just gonna squish them one by one. So that's not true. Now, it's Florida's using looking at using drones in a way of controlling the

mosquito population. Now, mosquitoes obviously can carry lots of different diseases that can be very harmful to animals and people, and they mostly they must be breed in very shallow pools of water. Still shallow pools of water. That's where you get the mosquitoes breeding, you get all the mosquito larva and uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Florida having lived there for so long, only four years.

So there's some some there's like a little puddle called the Everglades that's out there where there could that's a lot of It's a large area, right, We're talking like lots and lots of square miles or kilometers if you prefer, that could potentially have this kind of shallow water where

mosquitoes could breed. Now, traditionally what would happen is Florida would send out people to go and cover this ground and look for places that would be mosquito breeding grounds and then treat those areas so that they could control the mosquito population somewhat. But that's time consuming and expensive, and it's it's hard. It's hard to send people out and really, you know, covered all that ground, because it really is a great deal of ground. There's alligators and

sometimes crocodiles if you get far enough towards the coast. Anyway, the point being that there are many things that could potentially cause someone harm or just be difficult to navigate around. Um and uh not to mention things like boa constrictors and anacondas. But more importantly, drones can be used to deliver cakes. Okay, yes, alright, so we're going beyond past control here, we're going into using drones to deliver things, including possibly cake, although that may or may not also

be a lie. Uh no, no. Drone delivery is something that has popped up a few places, and it's mostly, I would argue, a kind of us A publicity stunts,

the marketing. It's not not meant as actual like here here's service because it is so much more expensive and unreliabing, and it's still very werek intensive because you still have to have someone navigating the drones and in most of these cases the drones are remote controlled, so there's actually you have to have a car or a person following the drone right when you could just have that person

deliver whatever it is. But that's not nearly as cool as having this rhodocopter thing dropped from the sky and deliver your pizza. And by the way, pizza is one of the things in fact Domino's Pizza, the doma coopter demacopter this is this is in the UK right, Yeah, as in the UK. It was a joint effort between Aero Site, which was the company that built the drone, a company called Big Communications, in another company called T

Plus Biscuits. It's cute that very very British. Um. And so this was a sort of a publicity stunt where they showed a a quad copter very similar to something like the Parrot drone that you could you could look up online. There's a quad copter that could carry a bag that would contain pizzas. Um, there's a heat bag, you know. It's one of those that is lined with a reflective material on the inside to try and keep

as much heat in as possible. And I saw a video where they loaded one up with two pizzas and then flew it over some fields into a different, uh like neighborhood and landed it near a guy who pulled his pizzas out, and then it flew off again. Very clever, but again mostly just a marketing kind of stunt here.

It's not something you're not going to get robot delivery of pizzas because, like you were saying, Lauren, you had to have a human pilot who had to have a line of sight on this to make sure that they were not going to pilot into a tree or or drop the pizza in the wrong place. I mean, nothing is more irritating. I think you'll agree that when you order pizza and you find out that you know you're you're my pizza drone has delivered to the next house

over right. Yeah, like all those people who listen to fish all night long at all your pizza, you know what I'm talking about, Lauren. Anyway, so all the time with those pizza drones. Also in Shanghai, China, a company called in Cake was was delivering cakes in a very similar way. Yeah. Another delivery company in China called SF

Express was using drunes to deliver packages. The packages could weigh up to six point six pounds or just under three kilograms, and the drones themselves could fly at an elevation of three thirty feet or just over one which is pretty high for one of those old quad copters. Supposedly that that in Cake company got got shut down, or the drone delivery system anyway got shut down by Shanghai police when they got worried calls in from the populace saying like I am in danger from this cake Drone.

There are from this cake drone aliens flying over the city and they're dropping confectionery on us. Uh, I think we're like three D cakes. I'm still I'm a little bit obsessed with this. Yeah, I need some flying cake. So in Philadelphia there was a cleaner, a dry cleaner. The men a young cleaners and I'm sure I'm this pronouncing that, but any kind of Native American names from the Northeast are completely beyond my ability to pronounce. But anyway, this was a dry cleaners that used a drone to

deliver dry cleaned clothing to cut to mers. But that one required two operators, and it required someone who was holding the controller and also a spotter. There was no camera, right, most most of these rigs have included cameras, right, But like the one the Dominoes, one had a camera bill it so if you watch the video you can actually see it from the the drones point of view as it flies across the English countryside delivering pizza by by

by flight. But there's also the Taco copter, which I really hope this becomes a thing because I want if I could get my tacos delivered by robot I don't think I'd ever leave the house. Um to San Francisco area Bay Area invite only app where you can order tacos and have them delivered via drone. Although it's more or less just a concept right now, it's not really

a service. And again, this is one of those things where they are talking about waiting for the f a a S regulations to really you know, it doesn't make sense to pour a lot of money into a business that might not be able to operate depending upon what the FAA's regulations are. Right. Sure that goes along with your next note, which is for a burrito bomber. Yes, Darwin Arrow spaces burrito bomber. It's a drone that drops burritos on you. But the burritos also have little little parachutes. Yeah,

so you get parachute dropped burritos. I would also be I would welcome I would welcome a delivery of burritos by a parachute over my place. UM, I do not welcome people just pelting my place with burritos. I want to be clear about this. I want to go home and find a bunch of burritos splatted against my house. You guys, I have to admit, I think that would be hilarious. Yeah, what's your address, Lauren? So yeah, these are these are some of those kind of gimmicky, clever

things that we're seeing. But I don't think that it's necessarily going to become a real delivery service anytime soon beyond just the the curiosity. Certainly not until here in the U s. The f A passes this new regulation. The China one, I can almost understand because at least the SF Express one was all about delivering in a city in China that was known for its massive traffic congestion. Right,

it's a city of about eight million. I think that that was on relatively small territory and uh, and it was in the testing phases as of the last time that I read an article about it, but it seemed

like it was operating within parameters as of yet. So and since and since it is legal in China, basically, yeah, in that case, I can kind of see it happening in the sense that, well, there are some use case scenarios where it would actually be more efficient to have someone who perhaps is on like a fairly tall building and can navigate something that way. But even then it's

you know, it's a little it's a little weird. Um. So that kind of covers the civilian and corporate uses of drones, as well as the re search institute uses of drones. But there's another use that we need to cover, and that of course is military. But that's a huge, huge topic. So before we get into that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, so here's the part of our our conversation where we really do get pretty serious and talk about a controversial use

of of drones. And there are a couple of different ways that the military uses them, um and and one is certainly far more controversial than the other. But first let's look at sort of the history of unmanned aerial vehicles in the military, because yeah, in fact, the first one is arguably you can argue this is the first use of u a v s in military. The first one actually pre dates powered manned flight, and that would

be on August twenty two, eighteen forty nine. And I know what you're all thinking, like, how could there be a drone in eighteen forty nine. It wasn't so much a drone as it was this concept of I want to be able to UH to attack a certain target, and I want to do it in a way that's going to minimize risk to my resources. How do I

do that? Well, the Austrians figured during the First Italian War of Independence, which was a war that was fought between the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Empire for control, really they figured, well, we want to attack Venice, but we don't want to risk our own resources. We're going to use two hundred balloons, and each balloon is going to carry a bomb, and those bombs will have some

method of detonation. I have read different reports, nothing that was completely confirmed, but one was that there was actually a wire that would come back that they would apply an electric charge too, and that would detonate the bombs. Others said it was just a fuse, but at any rate, the balloons were meant to float over towards Venice and then detonate their UH. From why I understand it was

not a very successful attack. I think only a handful of balloons actually made it towards Venice, but a shift in the wind meant that some of them just started floating right back toward the Austrian lines, which is not what you want to see when you're launching an attack. Of course, if they had complete control of when those bombs detonated, then that would be that would just mean it would be a failed attack as opposed to accus danger.

Right um. During the American Civil War, a patent was filed for a similar time delay fuse mechanism balloon based bomber that I don't think ever went into use because they couldn't ever quite figure out how to make that fuse work proper rate in a non hazardous way right where you you know, you're not just as likely to blow up yourself as you are your target. Sure. In the eighteen eighties, cameras were used on kites during the

Spanish American War for reconnaissance purposes. Right uh. The British Royal Navy began to experiment with radio controlled Queen b This was this was a drone of radio controlled drone for mostly for target practice. But but but it could fly like a hundred miles per hour, which I feel

like it is a pretty impressive drone capacity for the time. Um. During World War Two, the Nazis developed what was called the Revenge Weapon one or or V one more commonly, which was an unmanned bomber that was responsible form for over nine British civilian deaths. And that was when ah, wait, what bomb wielding bats? Am I reading this note? Right? So so Franklin D. Roosevelt approved research into releasing bomb

wielding bats from airplanes. And ideally with the way this would work would be that the bats would seek shelter and buildings too through the strings separating themselves from the devices, and then the device would detonate, you know, blowing up the enemy's buildings. In In the only test that ever happened that I've heard about, um, a bunch of hibernating bomb ladin acts were dropped to their deaths from an airplane. So the bats were asleep and then just were dropped

and then they splatted. Wow, well we salute you splatted bats. So in the sixties and seventies, the US used the a q M thirty four Ryan fire bees and elect and lightning bugs. So what these are re reconnaissance robots? Yeah, yeah, they were. They were controlled from a host plane. Um those lightning bugs where were joystick controlled? Actually? And those

were used for reconnaissance in China and Vietnam. They had a lot of problems with these reconnaissance vehicles, particularly in in harsh weather conditions, and that was one of the things that would uh really spur the military to try

and develop more robust, unmanned aerial vehicles. It also was one of the things that critics would point out as saying, this is kind of a fool's errand like, we're spending a lot of money developing and building these things, but if they crash just as frequently as they come back, and it's not because of enemy encounters, it is just because of the weather, then there have to be better use for our resources. So uh, in fact, you could argue that drone technology isn't as far along as it

could be because of things like this. Sure Israel, in fact, is was the first country to to develop very modern advanced drones in the in the seventies and eighties. They developed gliders along the same the same concept as the quadrocopters and octocopters that we have these days, called the

Scout and the Pioneer. The Scout had live video and like three sixty degree views views, so I could see an entire like all the way around the actual vehicle itself right right, and Um, the pioneers the US acquired from Israel for use in the Gulf War, gotcha. So now, one of the main uses the military has for these drones is for surveillance and reconnaissance, and in those cases you don't have to necessarily have weapons aboard the drones.

So absolutely not. And I think that the development of most of these in in the US anyway, has has been for reconnaissance purposes, and and that weaponizing them has been a secondary step taken afterwards, right right, And I think I think when it comes to the controversy, while reconstance and surveillance of course has its own set of I would argue that I think most people when they hear about drones are specifically thinking of the weaponized versions.

We'll talk about those in a minute. Um. And obviously those have their own set of really big issues that I think merit debate. In fact, and I think all of it merits debate, but I think those in particular ones that we really got to take a very close look at and ask some very tough questions and maybe finally get some answers, because that's that's part of the problem.

That would be good too, But but so so these these drones these days, thanks to satellite umplinks have you know, you can get live video of a place that would be dangerous to send manned forces into, right. And not only that, but you can have real time control of a drone by someone who is nowhere near that actual

that actual zone. So, for example, if you need to run a drone through a war zone so that you can get real time look at what the conditions are on the ground, you can send one of these drones out and the pilot maybe on the other side of the world. Uh. In fact, in the United States, there's a desert in Nevada where you can find some of

the trailers that that the US Air Force uses. And the CIA also has its own drone program where the pilots are nowhere near where the the actual drone is, which means that the risk to pilot life is is completely negated. You don't have to worry about the pilot being put in danger. Uh if even if the drone flies into a truly hot spot of dangerous activity, and you can hypothetically save military lives um out in those areas by you know, getting information about what what what's

out there. Yeah, so it's you know, really meant to maximize data while minimizing risk to human life. And these are less expensive than military aircraft or satellites, so it's considered to be a better, uh you know, better investment in that sense as well. And not only are you minimizing the risk to human life, but it's not as expensive as something like a YouTube spy plane or a spy satellite. Now there's the weaponized version, which is the

truly problematic one. Not that not that surveillance again is you know, we can't give it a free pass. But the weaponized ones are the ones that really come under scrutiny recently. Um. These are battle drones, so they're armed for combat. They actually carry weapons, usually in the form of either missiles or bombs or some combination thereof, and usually more lightweight missiles or bombs than you would find on on manned aircraft. However, yeah, like hell fire missiles.

I mean, these are still weapons designed to damage. The very first use of armed drones were in the Balkans War. UM. The Predator drone is an example of a U S military unmanned aerial vehicle capable of firing weapons. So it's not the only one the UK has the Reaper drone, which also can be weaponized, and and we do use Reapers in the US as well. That the Predator. Predator was originally met for surveillance and was later added. Yeah.

In fact, the first thing that was added to it were targeting lasers and that was before it even had weapons on the Predator. It was just sort of a next step in the evolution of the Predator from surveillance drone to battle drone. And keep in mind that the military and the CIA both use these different variations. It's not that all drones are weaponized. Uh, that's not the case.

Some of them are and some of them aren't. UM. It all depends upon the parameters of the mission and uh and what it is you are trying to actually achieve. So usually the way this works is that you've got three operators who are controlling the drone. One of them is controlling the flight systems, another one, like you said, Lauren,

is monitoring those cameras and sensors. The third acts as a communications officer between the flight crew and the ground operations that are closer to the actual war zone, so that to keep that line of communication open, so that if you notice something with the drone where it's going to affect operations in the ground. You can get that information to the people who need it immediately and they're not going to be surprised by it. UM. So perhaps the best known bell drone I guess would be the

at least in the United States, is the Predator. UM. You've probably seen pictures of it. It's it's pretty spooky looking, uh, and it is larger, like I said, than you would think if you see just a picture of it flying, you don't really have anything necessarily to give you the scale of this thing. But I've seen pictures of a person standing next to them, and it does look like, you know, like a fairly small but normal manned vehicle. I mean, it was like there could be a pilot

in there, if there were a cockpit. Who just isn't it's it's it's weird because the c i A was able to really develop a predator program. And when I say weird, I mean that you would think that would normally fall under the purview of the United States military, right, and the Department of Defense did spend some three billion in drone research in the nineteen nineties. However, since the CIA basically since since the bombings of two thousand one,

the World Trade Center and attacks. I suppose you you would say, since then the CIA kind of took over. You kind of used a loophole. Yeah, what what really was happening was that the military had run into kind of you know, they had consolidated a lot of departments, and so the whole drone program now fell under a sub department of a sub department of a department, and it was one of those things where it is really hard to get any kind of funding for the drone program.

The CIA could sort of sidestep that, and because they're not a military organization, they could end up requesting under their budget their own drone program. And so that's exactly what they did. Um, and that's that's part of the reason why it started as a reconnaissance issue and since since two thousand one, developed into a targeted strike program. Yeah. So these predator drones can hover for forty hours before needing to refuel. Um, they are kind of uh there.

They were kind of the evolution of earlier drones developed called Amber and NAT. These were drones that were used previously but had had their own limitations, including things like weather issues with a you know, inclement weather, So the Predator was meant to withstand that sort of stuff. UH. It was built by a company called General Atomics, and UH it uses a SAT calm link up. So that's why you can control these all the way out in Nevada while the drones themselves are flying around perhaps in

Afghanistan or Pakistan or something like that. UH. They were first flown in June n in the Balkans under Operation Nomad Vigil and then in Operation Deliberate Force. And in those initial phases it was just surveillance, like we had said. But the Air Force and CIA both began to develop their Predator piloting programs. The Air Forces is called the eleventh Reconnaissance Squadron at Indian Springs Auxiliary Airfield in Nevada, which later became known as Creech Air Force Base UH

and tends to concentrate on on missions in places like Afghanistan. UH. In two thousand one, the military began to test the Predator drone as a weapon, and by October seventh, two thousand one, armed Predator drones were deployed in the Middle East, and that was very much in response to the September eleventh attacks in two thousand one. UH. Prior to that, they were just being used as reconnaissance. But those attacks kind of spurred the development of weaponized drones and put

them on the fast track. And on February four, two thousand two, we had the first use of a CIA controlled Predator drone using a weapon. And what had happened was a drone operator had identified a potential target. They saw a tall man in robes and UH it seemed to fit the description of Osama bin Laden, which obviously was a top target of the c I A. And so they the believing that to be Osama bin Laden, the drone the pilot of the drone and they fired

a hellfire missile and it was actually three civilians. UM. None of them are were identified as being connected to any enemy forces whatsoever. UM. They had been gathering scrap metal at the time. Now, they had been gathering scrap metal that were from old pieces of missiles, but they were, from what I understand, trying to sell those in Pakistan for about fifty cents. So it turned out that these

were appeared to be innocent victims. Although the United States government continued to say that that they felt that they got that the that firing on the targets were justified. They just didn't know who they were, which I thought

was a weird way of putting it. That seems like a poor justification to me personally, and that that is kind of what was said by many people afterwards, right, And this is this is illustrating very clearly, and you'll keep in mind, this is the first use of the CIA using a predator drone as a weapon, and the very first use is a misidentification, a tragic mistake, and that that illustrated very much the criticism that a lot

of people had. It's that multiple on multiple fronts. One uh in this case that they were in a zone that had been under contention in the past. So perhaps the war zone question will put aside for a moment.

But the real question is that if you have a weapon where you are in no danger at all, that the operator of the weapon is in no danger, right, there's no risk to the operator whatsoever, does that lower the bar to using the weapon because you don't have to worry about anything, you know, any kind of direct consequences as far as a life or death situation, meaning that are you more likely to fire a gun if it means that there's absolutely no way the other person

is going to fire back, and that furthermore, are you not going to take time to assess the situation responsibly? Right if you think that you have a target, are you going to act rapidly because you think that you have the opportunity to take the target out rather than to take the time you would need to assess the situation. If your life was at risk, obviously you would be assessing the situation very carefully to try and determine your

best chance of success and survival of that event. And maybe in that process you might notice if someone is not who you thought they were, in which case you would abort the mission and no one would die. Um. So there these were some of the objections that were raised, saying that this is making it too easy to kill people.

And then on top of that, if it's outside a war zone, because the CIA was essentially given carte blanche to go and go after what a lot of people have called the kill list, a list of people that the United States government had identified as top level threats. UH if the CIA were to use an unmanned aerial vehicle to take out one of those targets in a place that's not a war zone. So this is not someone who is a soldier fighting a war in the

traditional sense. Does that not amount to assassination? So how is that any different than say, sending out somebody with a sniper right full to take another person out in the middle of a city. Uh. And and you know there's they have no benefit of any sort of trial or formal charges. It's just it's just a political assassination. In this case, Instead of a sniper with a rifle, you're talking about a pilot using a Predator drone and that in reality, that's not any difference. So wouldn't that

mean that this is under international law illegal? And and furthermore, isn't it something that shortly before the attacks of September eleventh, the the US came down on Israel for for using drones for assassinations. Yeah, and so this is I mean, this is very tricky. We've got we've we've got government officials on record as saying this is not something we should do and then immediately authorizing it. Um. And you know, certainly the fear of terrorism at that time and continually

is an understandably serious. It's a powerful motivator. Absolutely, it's a powerful motive later, and sometimes that means going to a course of action that perhaps, in hindsight we would say this was not the right choice. UH. The American Civil Liberties Union the a c l U condemns these actions and have said all right that they are essentially assassinations, that people are being killed when they are are not

in war zones, and that's without charge or trial. And they've submitted several Freedom of Information Act requests to the government regarding missile strikes and various targets throughout the world, and they've cited that in many of these cases, civilians have died, children have died as a result of these UH these strikes, and they also have kind of met with a lot of non answers from the government. They await the responses, you know, they're they're going through the

official government channels and not getting much response. In March, Pitch Interactive released a report they they had gotten their information from the UH New America Foundation, this saying that UM the casualties from from drones in Pakistan alone totaled some three thousand, hundred and five people since two thousand four, and that that of that UM hundred, seventy five deaths were children, five thirty five were adult civilians, over two thousand were this gray area of of other they had

been deemed a military age appropriate men who had been termed military combatants, but whether or not they were actually involved in in any nefarious military wrongdoing was kind of like um and that only forty seven um one point five percent of those deaths were high profile targets, and there there had been somewhat under a hundred high profile targets from what I understand, and so having forty seven deaths from that list is is huge. And and however,

oh my goodness, gracious, that's that is just so many people. Yeah, it's this is this is an incredibly you know, emotionally charged topic obviously, and and should be I mean, this is again why we say there should be debate about this, and that there needs to be very close scrutiny over when it's appropriate or if it ever is appropriate to

use this. I mean, obviously, anytime we're talking about warfare in any capacity, uh, we're talking about the tragic loss of human life that kind of comes hand in hand with warfare. The problem is that warfare itself has changed dramatically since the you know, early twentieth century, when we had two sides line up on trenches and shoot at each other. Now, identifying who your enemy is and where that your enemy happens to be is much more complicated.

We don't necessarily have huge battalions of soldiers that we're having to to aim at. It's it's it's gotten to be a very messy situation, and so we've try to come up with some solutions to address that. The problem is that the solutions may not truly be addressing the issue and in fact could be causing far more harm than good. And that's where we have to sit there and really look and how we're using the technology, who is being affected? Are we causing more harm than good?

And if so, then what can we do instead of that? Because obviously that's a course of action. You cannot, you cannot, in any good conscience continue that and hope that there's going to be a positive outcome. How can there be a positive outcome if you're not hitting who you want to hit and the people you are hitting are completely innocent, you're really there's or or if you've got such a

high loss of innocent life connected to your targets. Yeah, I mean that's how can you criticize another government or regime or however you want to find it, for their behaviors if your own behaviors appear at least as if you considered an acceptable loss of life to kill the entire family someone who your target. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously this is and this is obviously, like we said, very tricky. It's not. It's not like we're trying to say that there is some easy solution that cost not

and these these hope high profile targeted people were committing atrocities. Absolutely, and so so it's you know, obviously by international law, the the argument is that what should happen is that every effort should be made to apprehend the individuals, put them on trial, and then have them face their crimes in a court of law, as opposed to uh kind of striking out and trying to to eliminate them. Uh,

whether it's in a war capacity or otherwise. Um, whether or not that's correct, also, I guess, is a matter of debated. It has to be answered by all the different countries involved. And like I said, this is pretty pretty sticky stuff. It goes pretty far outside the realm of just talking about how drones work. But we really wanted to talk about this because it's one of those topics that had has had a lot of conversation around

it over the last year or so. Absolutely, and I did want to say that in addition to to those military uses, UH, drones have also been used, for example, to detect detect bombs, which is wonderful and terrific, and you know, in in the future they could possibly be used to create wireless networks and disaster areas that will significantly improve disaster relief. Sure, yeah, there, So it's nothing again, just like any technology. We We've said this a lot

on the on various episodes of tech stuff. It's not the technology that's good or bad, it's how we put to use. We have to be responsible users of technology, and that goes all the way from the individual in the case of a parent drone that has a camera attached to it, you know what I'm talking about, or whether we're talking about a military program or CIA program. That level of responsibility is something that we cannot ignore

or take for granted. I really do believe that, And now I'm going to respon honsibly tie up the end of this podcast by letting you guys know that if you have anything you want to share with us. You have a topic that you think we should tackle. Maybe you have your own thoughts about the way that drones are being used throughout the world. Maybe you want a pizza. Let us know. We probably can't get a pizza to you, but we're happy to listen and then chat back with you.

Send us a line over at tech Stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a note on Facebook or Twitter. You can find our handle there tech Stuff hs W. And there's something else I always forget. It's oh right, because I don't do that one. We has a tumbler you did You did start it and then promptly forgot that it even existed. Yes, ore tumbler handle is also tex Stuff HSW. Alright, so track us down and h take us gently by the shoulder, look us in the eye, and tell us what it is you want us to

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