US drones blur the edges
History The emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles has several decades. They were used by American troops during the Vietnam War. In the time that has passed since Drones were greatly improved, and their new capabilities were demonstrated during the war in Lebanon in 1982. Then Israel managed to disable about two dozen batteries of anti-aircraft missile systems with the help of drones. It was then that the possibility of using unmanned aerial vehicles not only for reconnaissance, but also as a combat unit became obvious.
The first to understand this came the Americans, who began to actively develop and improve UAVs. The result of their work was the conduct of tests and the commissioning of the Predator and Global Hawk machines at the beginning of the 2000-s. Both of these drone can be in the air for a long period of time, while refueling they are not required. In addition, they can carry reconnaissance equipment and good weapons. The process of their production is not very expensive, because they are assembled from components and assemblies that are used in aircraft. The most modern models are armed with rockets.
In addition to the United States of America, Israel has achieved great success in terms of development and the use of drones.
Many experts call among the advantages of devices of this type the fact that human participation is completely excluded in their management, so they can withstand large overloads and not depend on the psychological or physical condition of the pilot.
In the United States, drones are actively developing. Moreover, it should be noted that the President of the country B.Obama not only continued the implementation of the program, but also greatly accelerated its pace and expanded the list of targeted applications. And for an ordinary American resident, it became familiar to see reports on the use of UAVs in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
At the same time, the main enemy of Americans - Al-Qaeda is at the stage of mutation and radicalization. Its combat units are becoming the main source of terrorist threat. And in order to overcome them, it may be necessary to use unmanned vehicles over large African spaces. But it should not be forgotten that drones are not as invulnerable as they appear at first glance. And if certain technical tools and skills are available, they can be fairly easily intercepted or considered necessary information. So, in particular, several years ago, information appeared that militants got access to video records from UAVs, because secret frames are transmitted openly, without using any ciphers. It must be said that the American military leadership was well aware of this lack of UAVs, but stubbornly did not pay attention to it. The situation changed a little when, in 2007, records from the drones were found on the computers of Iraqi Shiite militants. Moreover, it became known that the militants managed to intercept information using low-cost programs. The Pentagon hastened to assure the public that in the near future, these shortcomings will be eliminated by equipping the robotic devices with new transceivers with data coding and communication protocols that will exclude the possibility of intercepting information. As a result, only about 30-50 percent of American UAVs use fully classified information transfer. According to experts, to install such equipment on all UAVs, time is needed, so at the moment this equipment is used only on those machines that work abroad.
But information insecurity is far from the only drawback of UAVs. In the spring of 2011, the drone, which was located on the American military base in Africa, launched the engine without human intervention as a result of some unknown software failure. In Las Vegas, a virus was detected in the boardless computers on board computers, and it took more than one week to eliminate. In addition, any unmanned robotic vehicle that is controlled by GPS navigation can be intercepted. To do this, according to experts, is quite simple - you just need to disorient it in space by creating noise and suppressing GPS signals.
In addition, despite all their ultra-modern stuffing, unmanned aerial vehicle is not a robot that is programmed to work independently. All these devices are controlled by people who tend to make mistakes. So, for example, in the spring of 2010, one of the American UAVs crashed, after the pilots who drove the vehicle for 8 hours from America transferred control to another team that was supposed to land the UAV. This second team did not check the sensor readings, and in fact they showed the difference of the order of 100-120 meters. It should be noted that the group included experienced pilots who have more than one thousand hours of UAV control.
However, America - this is not the only country that is engaged in the development and manufacture of UAVs. To put it mildly, a new UAV made in China became an unpleasant surprise for Americans. It is called "Pterodactyl". The development of the Chinese device began 7 years ago, and in the fall of 2007, the drone made its first flight. Since this is an export model, it is quite obvious that soon its owner will be China’s closest ally, North Korea. The Japanese are not very complimentary about the Chinese development, saying that it has a very weak engine. However, the Chinese have denied such information by demonstrating a commercial in which their drone can easily destroy a large ship.
In addition to the United States and China, the development of UAVs engaged England, Japan, South Korea. Russia has also repeatedly stated its intention to begin its own development of the drone. Its prototype was demonstrated at air shows, but the Russian leadership, for whatever reasons, made the decision to purchase drones in Israel.
With each new generation of UAVs, their tasks are becoming more voluminous. And now we are not talking about using UAVs for tactical reconnaissance. Now they are actually considering the possibility of using them as a weapon to kill people disagreeable with America around the world. In the print publications of the USA, there are reports about the success of using UAVs in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. The word "success" Americans, as a rule, understand the destruction of a certain person who was included in the "black list". It should be noted that initially the information on the conduct of such operations was classified. About drones mentioned only in a few words. So, for example, in the middle of the first decade of 2000, information appeared in the press that the UAVs were used to fight terrorists after the terrorist attacks of 11 on September 2001 of the year. Then the amount of information increased slightly. The Los Angeles Times cited 19 cases of use of drones outside the state. And in 2012, journalists no longer stint on praise when American UAVs in Yemen were hitting the depots of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. A few months later, in the same place, with the help of a drone, one of the leaders of the organization who was suspected of involvement in the destroyer Cole in 2000, was killed. But the Americans did not calm down on this: in the summer in Pakistan, with the help of the same UAVs, Abu Yahya al-Libi’s second man was killed in Al-Qaida. At the same time, the winners are not interested in how many civilians suffered from such actions. According to some reports, since the 2004 of the year, American drones killed about eight hundred people, attacking weddings and other completely peaceful events, mistakenly mistaking them for a militant gathering.
Thus, the Americans were able to prove to the whole world that they would stop at nothing, if only to destroy those whom they consider to be their enemies. And at the same time, it doesn’t matter to them at what point of the world these enemies are. American politicians themselves are confident that they are justly punishing criminals, but by and large this is more like contract killings, performed using the most modern technology. Moreover, some experts even claim that it was the devices of this type that served as the weapon for the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in the 2005 year, although the Americans themselves disown it and accuse Damascus of everything.
In addition, there is even a version that among those planes that attacked the New York twin towers, there was at least one drone. This is evidenced by some eyewitnesses to the tragedy, who claim that they saw how one of the vehicles slowed down and corrected the flight trajectory before a collision with buildings ...
However, despite the success of American reconnaissance drones in the near future, it may soon be that their widespread distribution was in fact a great failure. Of course, drones are indispensable in the fight against terrorism, but their use has led to the fact that interstate deadly attacks as one of the main tools of national security have become the norm. The use of UAVs is growing at an accelerated pace along with America’s desire to intervene with the help of military force in the policies of other countries with the help of military force and with minimal risk for itself. The rest of the states are striving at all costs to keep up with the Americans.
However, it’s not worth talking about how the rest of the world cares about American drones in a businesslike manner in the airspace of Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, on the other hand, the presence of a UAV fleet can serve as another weighty argument in the “nuclear negotiations” with Russia. And if before Moscow threatened cruise missiles, now drones have been added to this. And in fact, if there was a scandal with the penetration of such an aircraft into foreign territory, it is practically impossible to prove that it belongs to some particular state: there is no pilot - there are no problems either.
To date, a specific program is being developed in Washington, a set of rules about what lethal attack by drones can be considered justified. But it seems that the United States has not fully understood the danger of using UAVs. After all, the war on terrorism today is being waged not only by Americans, but also by other countries. And it is quite possible that soon the world will witness a new arms race in the field of owning drones between America, China, Russia and India.
Materials used:
http://www.stoletie.ru/vzglyad/ptichki__ubijcy_126.htm
http://news.finance.ua/ru/~/2/0/all/2013/01/21/295154
http://oko-planet.su/politik/politiklist/119505-amerikanskie-bespilotniki-ubiycy-sposobstvuyut-rasprostraneniyu-terrora-the-guardian-velikobritaniya.html
http://www.yuggoth.ru/jenrof_shadanakara_v_mire/amerikanskie-bespilotniki-ubiytsyi.html
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