Drones

Updated 28.2.2014 In addition to what we are used to seeing up in the skies - UFOs and model aircrafts included - the skies are crisscrossed by an increasing amount of all sorts of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones. At some point there might be a problem with the legal status of such devices, especially if they come with a camera - like who is allowed to film what and where - or if the traffic gets too heavy and risk of collisions too high. And ufologically the problem is of course that some of these drones are mistaken for extraterrestrial crafts or drones.

Nevertheless drones - or quodcopters as the commercial ones are sometimes called - will most probably be a popular means of  delivering products to the doorsteps of future consumers. Wouldn't you want your pizza delivered by Dominos DomiCopter and the like? Quick and crispy! Or the newly published book that you just can't wait to get your hands on? 

 But like said, some of these drones are not that harmless. They may carry cameras with whatever purpose in mind, some of them clandestine. The amount of police drones for surveillance purposes will most probably increase, at least that is the conclusion you could draw from the discussion after the Boston bombing 2013. But as Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington says: “I don’t think the Boston bombing will reframe the surveillance debate. People will persist in their skepticism even after this event. If attitudes about drones change, it will be over time, probably because of non-surveillance uses of drones that people get accustomed to, like in agriculture, or by hobbyists. That’s the way people are going to get acclimated to drones, not from police use.”UAVs will  likely play an increased role in search and rescue in the United States and elsewhere.

The military use of drones is of course widespread. Armed Predators were first used in late 2001 from bases in Pakistan and Uzbekistan, mostly aimed at assassinating high profile individuals inside Afghanistan. In 2012, the U.S. Air Force  trained more UAV pilots than ordinary jet fighter pilots for the first time. And whether the collateral damage would increase or decrease with the use of drones, it will always be also a moral issue. Be it as it may, as far as UFOs are concerned, military drones most certainly stand for quite a few of the alleged UFO sightings - for a UFO researcher just another item to check off.

IN THE NEWS
2009-0516 Death from above, outrage down below (New YorkTimes) ENG
2010-1027 Fliegende Kameras verwirren Datenschützer (Stern) GER
2013-0501 Boston bombings show future use for police drones (Huffington) ENG
2014-0112 Why Commercial Drones Won’t Deliver Tacos Anytime Soon -
2014-0124 UAVS scarier than UFOs (Dakota Student) ENG
2014-0130 California bill would ban warrantless drone surveillance (RT/Russia) ENG
2014-0225 'Alien invasion' to launch in April - but 'UFOs' will be... (Yahoo News) ENG

LINKS
- Wiki:UnmannedAerialVehicle -