Appended: Associated Press report: 
"Drones pushing humans out of cockpits: 
pilotless aircraft technology reduces risk of losing 
personnel on missions." 
(11/23)

CloudRider's comment [Dick Farley, Washington, DC USA]:

UFO buffs, "Be Alert!" (The world needs more lerts! ;-) 
Note: It was CIA which developed the armed Predator. Now, perhaps this is 
one of the primary reasons the Pentagon was among the "clueless" about some 
"UFOs" of the UAV or RPV (remotely piloted vehicle) variety, stealth aerial 
weapons platforms that some UFOs are? It isn't as sexy or heroic, nor nearly 
as expensive, if air power is projected by robots or a video-game interface 
connected via satellite, perhaps interfaced also with a human brain in the 
head of a terrestrial operator who is not a "fighter jock." 

As John Lennon and Yoko might say, "Imagine." A CIA operator hones in on a 
real terrorist using real-time "recon" satellite guided Predator drone or a 
big Global Hawk (jetliner sized) UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), then fires a 
Hellfire missile and takes out the target. No medals, no hero! Just a kid 
good with videogames who grew up to be an effective "console jockey" for CIA?  
Now, wouldn't YOU keep that a secret if you were in Pentagon procurement?  
(Anybody see the film "The Last Starfighter?")

So, who might the "prime suspects" be for whatever's still secret out at 
"Area 51?" And why might "ET-loving peaceniks" of the globalist stripe 
(painted yellow) want to drag such secrets "out of their hangars" and 
subordinate them to UN "treaties" or broker them into uselessness by 
compelling us to share our technologies with our "friends" among the 
European weenies craving a world safe for industrial oligarchs? We're not 
making this up. See the AP story below. Now, do reconsider UFO ETs?

That's not to say there aren't any "high strangeness" episodes illustrating 
where our science has many as yet unanswered or even ill-defined questions 
yet to study. But across the board, shaving the issue with Ockham's Razor, 
think of all the options. It may well be that Earth and humanity have been 
and are "under the influences" of a range of interdimensional or 
intradimensional "intelligence complexes" having varied worldviews or 
intentions about humankind and/or our planetary habitat. If so, we'll have 
to learn how to deal with that, just as we figured out germ theory and coped.

 http://www.headlinebooks.com/chapters/mental.html

We told you so, didn't we? But no, you didn't want to hear it. "New 
Religions" are so much more fun to espouse. But this planet does not need 
any more "gurus" or ET prophets and prophecies, "revealed truths" or 
competing elites driving new religions.

Drop back to the "Star Wars" era of the mid-1980s, when the competing 
factions of space weaponization and "global peace" were warring about "Star 
Wars" with Carl Sagan's & John Mack's campaign to promote fear of "nuclear 
winter" Armageddon. That they and their acolytes segued into "UFO ET" 
advocacy was not coincidental.

Follow the money. Watch the skies for lies. Believe only what YOU see 
personally, and even then, don't jump to conclusions beyond our scientific 
and political reality.

Dick Farley 
Washington, DC USA
- - - - +


Fighter Pilots Days May Be Numbered

By JIM KRANE
.c The Associated Press

  
NEW YORK (AP) - The dashing fighter pilot, with his white silk scarf and 
burnished leather jacket, is among the most celebrated icons of American 
military lore. Slowly, however, technology is pushing the fighter pilot out 
of the cockpit. ``I think his days are numbered," said Glenn Buchan, a RAND 
defense air power analyst. 

In the not too distant future, trained fighter pilots may find themselves 
sitting at a computer on the ground, controlling an unmanned aircraft - or 
as many as a half-dozen of them - that may be flying over another continent. 

The transformation is already under way. 

In Afghanistan, the United States has used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, long a 
tool of reconnaissance, in an attack role for the first time. In a few 
instances, a Predator UAV controlled remotely by CIA personnel on the 
ground, fired Hellfire missiles as part of air strikes on al-Qaida and 
Taliban targets. The strikes killed dozens, including al-Qaida military 
chief Mohammed Atef, U.S. intelligence officials said on condition of 
anonymity. 

"There's no doubt we're going to do more and more of this as time unfolds," 
said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution. 
Military experts say advances in sensors, communications, imaging and 
artificial intelligence will soon allow pilot-less aircraft 
to do everything a manned aircraft can, at a fraction of the cost and 
without risking pilots' 
lives. 

The unmanned planes may take over ground attack, and perhaps even 
dogfighting roles currently performed by planes such as the F-15 and F-18.  
"We see no future fighters with humans in them," said Buchan, author of a 
recent RAND study on UAVs that was just classified by the 
Air Force. 

Although the Pentagon plans to purchase up to 3,000 of its next-generation 
fighter, Lockheed's Joint Strike Fighter, Buchan said RAND found "no 
compelling reason to have humans on board" certain military aircraft - and 
often good reason to replace a human with a machine. "It's not clear that 
the human's adding anything, and his biological shortcomings limit the 
capabilities of the aircraft," he said. 

The use of drones dates to the early 1960s, when the United States flew them 
to spy on China and drop leaflets over Vietnam. In the early 1970s, the U.S. 
military experimented with an armed drone called the Firebee, using it to 
drop bombs and fire missiles in tests. 

Israel may have been the first to use armed drones in a combat ground-attack 
role, according to research published by the U.S. Air Force. It used drones 
in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and also sent UAVs to scout Syrian air defenses 
in its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Until it was modified by the CIA, the 
U.S. Air Force's Predator, a $2.5 million UAV built for spying, wasn't 
intended to fire missiles. 

In January, the Air Force will test-fly the first U.S. drone designed for 
combat. The Boeing-built UCAV, or Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, is 
designed to handle one of the most dangerous missions, attacking enemy air 
defense sites like radar and surface-to-air missile batteries. 

The X-45 model UCAV is designed to fly a 650-mile round-trip mission, 
loitering perhaps a half-hour over a target, and drop 3,000 pounds of 
guided bombs, said Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher. If the UCAV's tests go 
well, some predict the drone will eventually put planes and pilots out of
work by stealing some ground attack duties from the forthcoming Joint 
Strike Fighter. 

At $10-$15 million apiece, the X-45 UCAV, without all the expensive human 
requirements for life-support systems and visual instruments, would cost 
about a third as much as the $45 million JSF. 

The bat-shaped X-45 will be much tougher to shoot down than the General 
Atomics Predator, a simple propeller-driven plane designed to fly at around 
100 mph and no higher than 25,000 feet. A third of the Air Force's 60 
Predators have already been lost, mostly downed over Iraq, the Balkans or 
Afghanistan. 

The X-45, by contrast, is jet-engine driven, flies six times as fast as the 
Predator, at altitudes of 30,000-40,000 feet. It is also stealth-capable, 
meaning it won't be easily tracked by radar. It carries an artificial 
intelligence-fueled computer that allows it to track, identify and bomb 
targets on its own - if humans permit, Blecher said. 

"At least initially, it would rely on a human in the loop," Blecher said. 
"But theoretically, you could do it either way. You could pre-program it to 
drop its weapon when it finds the target, using artificial intelligence." 

For Capt. Brad Smith, a proud F-15 fighter pilot who trains at Virginia's 
Langley Air Force Base, the idea of killing people with a flying robot is 
beyond the range of acceptable warfare. "I don't like the idea at all. You 
always want to have a human being involved in the decision to take another 
human being's life,"said Smith, 29, of Tulsa, Okla.  Smith doubts the UCAV 
is a viable replacement for a pilot, especially a fighter pilot who engages 
in air-to-air combat. 

"My own two eyeballs looking out of the cockpit is much different than the 
small field of vision you get from a camera on a computer screen someplace," 
he said. 

On the Net: Boeing X-45: http://www.boeing.com/phantom/ucav.html 

General Atomics Predator: http://www.ga.com/asi/aero.html