'Eternal planes' to watch over us (Unmanned Aerial Surveillance)

[Dover]

'Eternal planes' to watch over us
By Jo Twist
BBC News science and technology reporter


Unmanned surveillance vehicles are increasingly evident in a world that relies on knowing what people and places are doing.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) patrol innocuous-looking skies and silently report back streams of strategically important data, video, and images from locations around the world.

They are the ultimate Earth watchers.

It is believed that up to 800 remotely piloted aircraft are in operation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But observing Earth from afar is not just about battlefields and spy missions, the type usually done by expensive and heavy craft like the US's Predator drone. UAVs are increasingly being recruited to carry out more humanitarian missions, from the stratosphere....cont'd

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4721091.stm

[ironman202]

1. uh...we've had keyhole satellites since like 1985....

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. and uh huh, they turn them off over the US. R I G H T !

these give closer views and better angles, though, being much closer to the ground. Plus, with data compression that they can handle, their capacities are greater than the Keyhole SatIntel.

[mhr]

2. Many Governments

Have very high altitude UAVs that have been in operation for years - mid 80s.

Nothing new here.

[TomInTib]

4. I was talking to someone from Ohio

whose son's friend called from a Naval vessel in the Indian Ocean to ask why she had purchased a Dodge Ram pickup rather than their customary choice of Ford.
He had seen it on satellite shot.

[dchill]

5. Oh, come ON!

Are you SERIOUS? Really?

[TomInTib]

6. It gets better

She didn't believe him so he sent her a print. In color (truck is red).

[dchill]

7. Oh MAN!

What are they possibly going to do with all this data? It's the "Eye In The Sky."

[TomInTib]

8. I think it is funny as hell that

these guys are using gazillion-dollar, state of the art equipment to watch the folks back home skinny dip and such.

I could go on but I am miserably slow on the keyboard.

These guys watch football games and all kinds of crap.

[Desertrose]

9. you can give the guys "high tech" but ya can't change the low tech mindset

jeepers....hate to pay the tab for all that expensive "airtime"...oh wait...I probably do. don't we all?

[dchill]

14. Yeah, we're paying for it....

but at least we won't have to pay for the Iraq invasion - our grandkids will.

[dwckabal]

10. A friend of a friend of a friend

Uh huh. I'm not saying that we don't have that technology, but that story sure sounds apocryphal.

[TomInTib]

11. I saw the pic n/t

[dwckabal]

12. Well, you didn't say that before.

But, again, what does this prove. We all know the technology is there, so what?

[beam me up scottie]

13. What I want to know,

is where they attach the cannisters.