Generic drone fleet architecture

Wired: War With Friends: Pentagon Eyes a Drone App Store

Inside the Pentagon’s Acquisition, Technology and Logistics directorate, a team is working on ways to operate different types of drones with a single controller. It’s a big technical challenge — one that’s failed in the past — since the different manufacturers of different drones each have proprietary control software. But the official in charge of the effort envisions a new drone software architecture that’s agnostic about what kind of drone it controls; and allows human controllers to think in terms of drone fleets rather than individual robots, including fleets comprising different kinds of drones. That would enable a dramatic expansion of the possibilities of drone warfare.

64 drone bases on US soil

Slashdot: 64 drone bases now in US soil.

Hydrogen-powered drone

Boeing’s Phantom Eye unmanned airborne system (UAS) completed its first autonomous flight June 1 at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Drones make oppression much more cost-effective

John Robb writes: Drones are changing the dynamics of warfare in very scary ways. They make oppression much easier (and cost-effective).

To recap: Drones are extremely cost effective vs. ground/air assets (particularly in that with drones, operators aren't put at risk). They also enable extremely centralized command and control (as in: operations can be micro-manged in DC, down to the decision to kill). In sum, a small number of people in Washington CD can control/operate a vast 24x7 killing field for very few $$.

Botnets in the skies

MIT Technology Review: The Next Wave of Botnets Could Descend from the Skies. In two separate presentations last month, researchers showed off remote-controlled aerial vehicles loaded with technology designed to automatically detect and compromise wireless networks. The projects demonstrated that such drones could be used to create an airborne botnet controller for a few hundred dollars.

CIA focuses on killing targets

Washington Post: CIA shifts focus to killing targets

Delivering drugs by UAV

cnet: Matternet delivers drugs by robocopter

Economist: UAVs will be smaller, lighter, cheaper

The Economist: Joining the drone club: The future of air power is likely to be unmanned. It may also be surprisingly small. Reapers and Predators grab the headlines, but these big, high-profile drones are already outnumbered by small and cheap but capable craft.

Drones, and the future of war

Link: The DIY Terminator: Private Robot Armies And The Algorithm-Run Future Of War

[...] as the tech becomes more democratized and more deadly, what happens when anyone can assemble an army of killing machines?

Pentagon looks to double drone air force

Via Wired Magazine: Pentagon Looks to Double Its Unmanned Air Force

Tunisia: the first Wikileaks revolution?

Posted over at my other blog: Tunisia: the first Wikileaks revolution?

Chavez given decree powers

Reuters: Venezuela assembly gives Chavez decree powers

Venezuela's parliament gave President Hugo Chavez decree powers for 18 months on Friday, outraging opposition parties that accused him of turning South America's biggest oil producer into a dictatorship.

FT: A new global balance

FT columnist Philip Stephens writes:

We are living through one of history’s swerves. A multipolar world has been long predicted, but has always seemed to be perched safely on the horizon. Now it has rushed quite suddenly into the present. Two centuries of western hegemony are coming to a close rather earlier than many had imagined.

US embassy cables: China 'would accept' Korean reunification

Guardian reposts a wikileaked cable.

[Vice Foreign Minister Chun Yung-woo] commented that China had far less influence on North Korea "than most people believe." Beijing had "no will" to use its economic leverage to force a change in Pyongyang's policies and the DPRK leadership "knows it." Chun acknowledged that the Chinese genuinely wanted a denuclearized North Korea, but the PRC was also content with the status quo. Unless China pushed North Korea to the "brink of collapse," the DPRK would likely continue to refuse to take meaningful steps on denuclearization. [...]

[...] Chun claimed XXXXXXXXXX believed Korea should be unified under ROK control.XXXXXXXXXXXX, Chun said, were ready to "face the new reality" that the DPRK now had little value to China as a buffer state -- a view that since North Korea's 2006 nuclear test had reportedly gained traction among senior PRC leaders.

Read the whole thing.

Planning for North Korean collapse

strategypage writes: U.S. military planners have discovered that China's current arsenal of non-nuclear ballistic and cruise missiles could probably knock out five of six major American air bases in Japanese and South Korea. Oops. To make matters worse, this has become an issue as North Korea stumbles towards political collapse, and China indicates that it will assume control in the north if that happens. South Korea believes it should move north to deal with a collapse, and this plan is becoming a contentious issue with China.

Bush: Mubarak wanted me to invade Iraq

From Foreign Policy's blog: Bush writes [in his new book] that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt "told Tommy Franks that Iraq had biological weapons and was certain to use them on [American] troops," a VOA article highlights. Bush goes on to say that Mubarak "refused to make the allegation in public for fear of inciting the Arab street."

WPR: Arabs arming for war with Iran

World Politics Review reports: While Western diplomats and sanctions-enforcers ply their trade to pressure Iran into stopping its uranium enrichment, much of the Middle East is already preparing for war. Headlines might focus on United Nations resolutions initiated by Western powers, or on fiery speeches delivered by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But just a few hundred miles from Tehran, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf have launched a race to arm themselves with an urgency and intensity reminiscent of America's defense build-up prior to its entry into World War II.

Germany makes final reparation payment

Foreign Policy reports: Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country's defeat. The German government will pay the last instalment of interest on foreign bonds it issued in 1924 and 1930 to raise cash to fulfil the enormous reparations demands the victorious Allies made after World War I. The reparations bankrupted Germany in the 1920s and the fledgling Nazi party seized on the resulting public resentment against the terms of the Versailles Treaty.[...]

Turkey changing its constitution?

BBC News: Turkish voters have given strong backing to a package of constitutional changes. With nearly all votes in the referendum counted, about 58% had voted "Yes" to amending the constitution.

Israel, Iran and The Bomb

The Atlantic hosts a debate in support of their current cover story, contemplating whether Israel will attack Iran once Iran activates nuclear reactors.