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from Photographers Blog:
A front row seat to aviation history
The Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Virginia
By Jason Reed
Any news photographer that has been in the business for a decent length of time may say to you that he or she has “seen it all and done it all” or that “there is nothing new that hasn’t been shot already.” Until this week, you could also paint me with that same brush.
But for a moment in time on May 14, 2013, I was a wide-eyed kid again, thankful that my job as a photographer afforded me access to witness a world-first. The U.S. Navy made aviation history by catapulting an unmanned jet off an aircraft carrier for the first time, testing a long-range, stealthy, bat-winged plane that represents a jump forward in drone technology.
Gathering at sunrise in Norfolk, a handful of press ranging from military industry reporters to network TV crews received a safety briefing that detailed, among other things, how to exit our crashed helicopter in the event of a water landing (a little unnerving) to wearing double ear protection, helmets and goggles at all times during our 45 minute flight out onto the deck of the U.S.S. George H. W. Bush, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class supercarrier in the Atlantic Ocean. Upon first sight, that 103,600 ton ship was just a small dot on the horizon, the full reality of its might only realized when we touched down on the deck over three football fields in length.
That experience alone was worth the 5am alarm, but the real reason was sitting there right on the deck -- the X-47B, an object so obscure and futuristic, you’d think you just stepped onto the film set of Battlestar Galactica. The folded wings brought flashbacks of a seven-year old seeing that first Star Wars movie when Luke Skywalker’s X-wing fighter attacked the Death Star. This bat-winged, tailless unmanned combat aerial vehicle, developed by the military hardware supplier Northrop Grumman is designed to take off and land on aircraft carriers.
from The Great Debate:
The case for sea-based drones
An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator is towed into the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), May 13, 2013. CREDIT: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Walter
If all goes according to plan, sometime on Tuesday the military balance of power in the Pacific Ocean could tilt to America's advantage. The U.S. Navy's main warships, whose firepower now cannot match the range of Chinese missiles, could gain a new weapon that more than levels the playing field.
from The Great Debate:
Drone coalition: Key to U.S. security
The Pentagon’s biggest, most high-tech spy drone aircraft — one of the hottest items on the international arms market — is the key to a burgeoning robotic alliance among the United States, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
The RQ-4 Global Hawk, a $215 million, airliner-size Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) built by Northrop Grumman, could help this four-nation coalition monitor both China, as it increasingly flexes its military muscles, and North Korea, as it develops ever more sophisticated nuclear weapons.
from Stories I’d like to see:
Hagel’s ignorance, Big Oil in the rain forest and a drone story
The Hagel fiasco:
I can’t get Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel’s awful Jan. 31 Senate confirmation testimony out of my head. I went back last week and watched most of it again. It was stunning, by far the worst performance by a high-level appointee I’ve ever seen or heard about. I’m not referring to Hagel’s gaffes, though there were some. I’m talking about pretty much everything he said after he read his opening statement. He seemed – is there a nice way to say this? – stupid.
Yet from what I’ve read, those who know him say he is far from stupid. I spent an hour interviewing him about 10 years ago and he seemed pretty sharp ‑ though it was for a profile of a friend of his, so the questions were hardly challenging.
from The Great Debate:
The secrecy veiling Obama’s drone war
It’s rare for a judge to express regret over her own ruling. But that’s what happened Wednesday, when Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York reluctantly ruled that the Obama administration does not need to provide public justification for its deadly drone war.
The memos requested by two New York Times reporters and the American Civil Liberties Union, McMahon wrote, “implicate serious issues about the limits on the power of the Executive Branch under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and about whether we are indeed a nation of laws, not of men.” Still, the Freedom of Information Act allows the executive branch to keep many things secret.
from The Great Debate:
A battleground for weapons of the future
More than a week after a U.S.-Egyptian brokered ceasefire brought a fragile peace to Gaza, military analysts are busily assessing the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Their goal: Apply lessons from the eight-day battle to weaponry still in development.
Israel's frequent conflicts with its Arab neighbors have historically been proving grounds for the latest in battlefield technology. Arab-Israeli wars inspired the first operational aerial drones, radar-evading stealth warplanes and projectile-defeating armor. All are now staples of the world's leading militaries.
from Afghan Journal:
Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?
Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America's rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don't see it that way.
They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighbourhood than a military conflict.
from Afghan Journal:
U.S. drones fall silent in Pakistan; only a brief respite?
For more than three weeks now, there has been no U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's northwest, triggering speculation that the pause may be related to the tensions between the two countries over the arrest of an American embassy employee for murder. Washington is seeking the release of Raymond Davis, a former Special Forces soldier who killed two Pakistanis on Jan 27 during what he said was an attempted robbery in a Lahore street, arguing he is covered under diplomatic immunity.
Pakistanis, deeply resentful of the heavy U.S. involvement in the country, are refusing to hand over Davis, saying he should face trial in Pakistan as he didn't have immunity.
from Afghan Journal:
America expanding its undeclared war in Pakistan?
(The car packed with explosives at Times Square)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned Pakistan of 'severe consequences" if a future attack on the U.S. homeland is traced back to Pakistani militant groups.
It's the kind of language that harks back to the Bush administration when they threatened to "bomb Pakistan to the Stone Age" if it didn't cooperate in the war against al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks. Pakistan fell in line, turning on militant groups, some of whom with close ties to the security establishment.
from Global News Journal:
Security: Never safer, or close to the civil liberties abyss?
As an air crash survivor I know how long jitters about safety can last. Eighteen years ago I crashed in an old Dakota in a remote corner of Africa, where such tragedies are sadly still not that rare.
The worst moment was when I was trapped for 20 seconds in the burning fuselage before being rescued by a fellow journalist. My physical injuries cleared up within months and I resumed flying, but mentally it was difficult. It took me about four years to recover my composure on planes.
