By Dan Gettinger, @GettDan On September 9th, the Japanese Air Self-Defence Force scrambled an F-15 fighter jet in response to an aircraft that had intruded into Japanese airspace . The offending vehicle: a Chinese military drone. The surveillance drone was spotted flying over the Senkaku Islands-known in China as the Diaoyu …
By Arthur Holland Michel, @WriteArthur and Dan Gettinger, @GettDan Aerial drones are media superstars; they tend to hog the spotlight. In their shadows, a whole ecosystem of ground based drones is evolving at an equally fervid pace, with equally significant implications for both the military and civilian spheres. The lowly Unmanned …
By Arthur Holland Michel In just over a week, no fewer than four lengthy reports about drone strikes have been released to the public. Christof Heyns, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings and Ben Emmerson, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental …
By Dan Gettinger A solitary drone flies over a far away mountain valley in Afghanistan operated by a pilot thousands of miles away on a distant base in the Mojave desert. The drone is the icon of remote-controlled warfare. In Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban …
In September, Bard Classics professor Thomas Bartscherer delivered a lecture about drones and Plato’s Republic. Here are the notes. I. Background reading 1) Virgil, Aeneid, Book III (excerpt) 2) Apollonius Rhodius’s Argonautica, Book II (excerpt) 3) http://livingunderdrones.org/victim-stories/ 4) Conor Friedersdorf on the “Living Under Drones” report: 5) Joshua Foust …
On September 12, Bard and West Point students, cadets and faculty engaged in a public debate at Bard College. The resolution was: drones do more good than harm. The affirmative and negative sides were comprised of a mix of Bard and West Point participants. The debate was made possible by …
By Dan Gettinger On Thursday, the United States and Japan signed a new security agreement that broadened the cooperation between the militaries of the two nations. As part of the agreement, the United States will establish a drone base at an undisclosed location in Japan. Up to four Northrop Grumman …
By Arthur Holland Michel At the Center for the Study of the Drone, the first question we asked when we received news of the U.S. government shutdown was, “How will the shutdown affect U.S. government drone use, both abroad and domestically?” Cyril Almeida, a Pakistani journalist, speaking for the Northern …
By Arthur Holland Michel On September 24, Bloomberg News reported that in the past year the defence contractor Northrop Grumman has greatly increased its lobbying spending to fight proposed cuts to the military’s Global Hawk drones, which Grumman makes. Grumman has focused its lobbying efforts, which amount to over $9million …
By Arthur Holland Michel In the public imagination, military drones shoot at things. But in fact, throughout their history, drones have much more often served to be shot at. This week, Boeing released a video of its latest drone project: an old F-16 fighter jet that had been turned into …
By Dan Gettinger At the 1964 World Fair in New York City, enormous modernist pavilions displayed the latest technological creations. It was a time of great advances in science. Amidst the monuments to the achievements of the Atomic and Space Age, computers were first unveiled to the public. At Maker …
By Dan Gettinger At an election rally on Sunday in Dresden, a drone crash landed in front of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. After flying above the crowd, the drone was forced to the ground when police found and arrested the operator, a 23-year-old who claimed he was trying to …
