UAV - Film på NRK

Bildet viser en Predator B.

 

Dersom du ikke fikk den med deg, er den tilgjenglig på adressen under til 1. mars.

http://tv.nrk.no/program/koid21009513/den-hemmelige-dronekrigen

Jeg kjørte forbi Creech AFB på vei fra Death Valley til Kingman, øst for Las Vegas i 2011. Kona og jeg spiste lunch i Indian Springs hvor basen ligger. Det var en lørdag og helt dødt.

Det benyttes flere betegnelser for ubemannede fly. Det mest brukte er droner. Det er etter min oppfatning en gal betegnelse. Droner er fly som skytes ned i treningsøymed. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ble brukt i mange år, men er nå overtatt av Remotely Piloted Aerial System. Det er også etter min mening feil fordi noen systemer er ikke Remotely Piloted. De er preprogrammerte og gjør en jobb på egenhånd slik som K-MAX, helikopteret som jubber for US Marines i Afghanistan.
Jg holder meg derfor til gamle, gode UAV.

Fra BBC klipper jeg følgende:
Apparently the contemporary use of the word can be traced back over 75 years to the development of a plane called the Queen Bee.

The UK government wanted an inexpensive, expendable, radio-controlled target for anti-aircraft gunnery practice.

According the October 1935 edition of the US journal Popular Mechanics, the Queen Bee operated perfectly under remote control within a radius of 10 miles from the aerodrome.

And so it went. Starting with the remote-controlled Queen Bee and perhaps influenced by the constant sound of the engine - you end up with a drone.

Queen Bee med kontrollboks

But the word also has connotations related to male worker bees - drones are generally considered rather mindless creatures - which takes us to the possible implication that the weapons systems are mindless. And not just mindless, of course, but mindless killers.

Which is presumably why the leading manufacturer of drones, the California-based company General Atomics, recently complained to the UK's Defence Select Committee that the word drone has pejorative connotations. (The company, however, was probably not best placed to make the complaint - after all, it calls its two main models the Predator and the Reaper.)

But what is the alternative? Well there is unmanned aerial vehicle - UAV. But some military officers say that does not fully capture the amount of personnel and systems involved in the operations and decision-making process.

So they switched to Unmanned Aerial System. But again that does not show that humans were involved in the process of directing the weapons.

And so they came up with the currently favoured Remotely Piloted Aircraft, RPA.

Drone manufactures, their customers and like-minded individuals are now quite dogged in not using the word "drone". But just this week they faced a significant setback.

President Obama in his State of the Union address said he was keen to limit the use of... drones. And if the commander-in-chief calls them "drones" then it is quite difficult for his subordinates and suppliers to say he is wrong.