Here is a column I wrote, under the pen-name of Desiderius Erasmus an old Dutch philosopher, for a monthly Illinois newsletter on the Second Amendment. Old Desiderius’ motto was In the Land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King, which meant that you didn’t have to be perfect in your skillset, just better than your opponent. In Latin, the phrase is “in regione caecorum rex est luscus.”
In regione caecorum rex est luscus
In the Land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King
By “Desiderius Erasmus,” a GSL member
Dilbert the Drone
Hi! I’m Dilbert the Drone. Recently members of my family have been getting too much publicity, and we need to nip that in the bud, because us Drones really don’t like to be on the front page of the news. We have changed industries with our versatility, efficiency, and advanced technology. We are revolutionizing the military and war now, because we can do things that people cannot do.
Drone is sort of a nickname; our birth certificate says Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The patron of the family was old Kettering Bug, an unmanned flying bomb developed at the end of World War I for the US Army Air Corps, by a bunch of smart guys including – now get this – Orville Wright. THAT Orville Wright.
Like humans, we come in all sizes. My biggest brother is Stratolaunch Roc, a platform for launching rockets and satellites into space. He has dual fuselages, a payload capacity over 550,000 pounds, and a wingspan of 383 feet, because he launches these heavy loads at high altitudes. But, that wasn’t him over New Jersey.
One of the smallest guys in my family is the Black Hornet, only 6.6 inches in length and weighing under 33 ounces. I’m told Special Forces might have these because the Black Hornet has a nearly undetectable visual and audio signature for discreet operations. He has optical and thermal cameras, can relay video at distances up to a mile and a quarter, and has a flight endurance of almost half an hour. That wasn’t him over New Jersey either.
So who has drones? Well, almost everyone. You can buy one. Dozens of entities in the US operate drones, from delivering goods to checking farm fields; most operate during the day. The Israelis, Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Germans, British have them too, and the list goes on and on.
Some people believe that the scariest drones are ones that carry weapons, like the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper. This bad boy has a payload capacity of 3,747 pounds, 65-foot wingspan, 36-foot length, a 950-horsepower turboprop engine (which allows it to cruise for 27 hours), top speed of 300 miles per hour, and can operate at altitudes up to almost 50,000 feet. It is widely used for precision-strike and surveillance missions, with an endurance of 27 hours.
Most impressive, though, it can carry a variety of weapons, including missiles and laser-guided bombs – and maybe the baddest-ass of all, the AGM-114 R9X Hellfire, a guided missile with a kinetic warhead, equipped with six sharp, tilting blades that spring open before impact. It’s designed to cut a bad guy in two – maybe more – pieces and has the appropriate nicknames of “Ninja” and “Flying Ginsu”.
It’s “supposed” effectiveness? Ask al-Qaeda leaders Jamal Ahmad Mohammad al-Badawi, Abu Khayr al-Masri, and Ayman al-Zawahri. Oh, wait: they’re not available anymore for interviews. My guess is a MQ-9 Reaper wasn’t over New Jersey either.
In my opinion, though, the scariest drones don’t carry weapons, but sophisticated sensors that collect information. In the US, these types of operations and equipment are known as “Special Access Programs,” intentionally designed to keep even people with the highest security clearances – maybe above Top Secret – from ever knowing about them, because even those people do not have what is called a “need to know.”
Governors, Senators, Congressmen, most generals and admirals, and every reporter do NOT have a need to know. So they aren’t told about them. They don’t even know the names of these programs. They don’t know the funding streams. Who knows all those details? Maybe a dozen folks. Maybe a few hundred know some details, but what they are told is “compartmentalized,” and not the whole picture.
How high are the officials kept out “of the loop?” Well, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson told new President Harry Truman only that the US was developing a new weapon. Twelve days later, General Leslie Grove gave Truman the details on the Manhattan Project. Until then, the former Vice President had no knowledge of the effort. Because he had no “need to know.”
Fast forward to now. You want to know what the heck is going on. Let me make a few educated guesses. I believe not all the objects in the skies over New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut are drones. But some are. Of the countries with drones, all but Russia, China and Iran have no desire to piss off the US, because we could make life really difficult. But those last three are countries of interest.
Aliens are beyond the scope of this discussion. That leaves one or more US “Special Access Programs.” Maybe these drones have different types (high-definition, infrared or thermal) of cameras. Or maybe they have technology that “grabs” all the cellphone data in an area. Not your actual conversation with grandma, because that would be illegal without a valid warrant.
But just the signature of millions of cellphones, to test if that can be done. Would a small nuclear weapon, like a suitcase nuclear device, emit detectable radiation? Could sensors in drones pinpoint that? The lights? So they don’t get rammed by a commercial aircraft, because its night and maybe the drones are difficult to “see” on radar.
How would we ever know what’s up or who’s flying them? Maybe the key is who the drones “talked” to; what is the “length” of the information sent by the drone? Did a drone share data with another drone? If so, we would know that the two were in the same drone “network.” From where did they take off and land? But I don’t have a “need to know.” So I’m just guessin’. And so is everyone else.