Why Is The Air Force Suddenly Removing Drone Strike Data

Something has gone missing … WHY?

As the debate over the federal government’s drone strike program is climaxing in Washington, the Air Force has quietly erased previously published drone strike data from its website. Additionally, the Air Force has now changed its policy of publishing statistics of drone strikes in Afghanistan each month.

Air Force Central Command (AFCENT) had been publishing monthly updates on drone strikes, or “weapons releases from remotely piloted aircraft (RPA),” since October. However, data published in February suddenly “contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously been,” the Air Force Times reports.

Upon further investigation, Air Force Times reporters Brian Everstine and Aaron Mehta discovered additional statistics from previous months were missing as well.

More from the Air Force Times on suspicious timing of the changes:

The data removal coincided with increased scrutiny on RPA policy caused by President Barack Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Brennan faced opposition in the Senate over the use of RPAs and his defense of their legality in his role as Obama’s deputy national security adviser.

On Feb. 20, two days before the metadata indicates the scrubbed files were created, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., sent a letter to Brennan saying that he would filibuster the nomination over concerns about using RPA strikes inside the U.S., a threat he carried out for over 12 hours on March 6 (Brennan was confirmed the next day).

That same day, Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., told a crowd in South Carolina that strikes by American RPAs have killed 4,700 people.

A Defense Department spokesman told the Air Force Times that the department had nothing to do with the data scrub. AFCENT did not respond to inquires from the Air Force Times.

Actor Tweets: ‘Where Are The Democrats?’

Actor tweets: ‘Where are the Democrats?’

John Cusack: Where are the Democrats to stand up to ‘regressive corporate warlord’ Obama?

Actor John Cusack has been a consistent critic of unmanned drones no matter who occupies the Oval Office, and while thousands are tweeting today that they #StandWithRand as the senator demands answers on the Obama administration’s drone policy, Cusack is wondering where the progressive Democrats are standing.

It’s your Constitutional too …

AMNESTY Part 98, Or Are We Already AT Part100

Will do, might do. Does anybody remember the shoulda, coulda, woulda guy our lawless boy preezy. Doesn’t anybody listen to real people?

Increasingly we are becoming a nation monitored and watched at every level and in every place, from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam …

(from the new AMNESTY Framework announced today):

Additionally, our legislation will increase the number of unmanned aerial vehicles and surveillance equipment, improve radio interoperability and increase the number of agents at and between ports of entry. The purpose is to substantially lower the number of successful illegal border crossings while continuing to facilitate commerce.

* * *

Our legislation will require the completion of an entry-exit system that tracks whether all persons entering the United States on temporary visas via airports and seaports have left the country as required by law.

* * *

Our proposal will create an effective employment verification system which prevents identity theft and ends the hiring of future unauthorized workers. We believe requiring prospective workers to demonstrate both legal status and identity, through non-forgeable electronic means prior to obtaining employment, is essential to an employee verification system; and,

The employee verification system in our proposal will be crafted with procedural safeguards to protect American workers, prevent identity theft, and provide due process protections.

I think I’ve seen this movie before.

So something as hard as securing the border FIRST was too hard for the Senate blockheads. And how do we deal with a proven lawless president who doesn’t seem to care what law says about anything? I await with bated breath, your answers, esteemed wise stooges in the Senate.

AMNESTY again. New same as old defeated AMNESTY. All they have done is throw the same crap back at us, with some new faces.

Drones And Their New Cameras

The ARGUS array is made up of several cameras and other types of imaging systems. The output of the imaging system is used to create extremely large, 1.8GP high-resolution mosaic images and video.

The U.S. Army, along with Boeing, has developed and is preparing to deploy a new unmanned aircraft called the “Hummingbird.” It’s is a VTOL-UAS (vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial system). Three of them are being deployed to Afghanistan for a full year to survey and spy on Afghanistan from an altitude of 20,000 feet with the ability to scan 25 square miles of ground surface.

This camera, like those from cellphones, is what help ARGUS achieve its high level of detail. (Image: YouTube screenshot)

On this helicopter is the pod where ARGUS is mounted. (Photo: DARPA)

Drones Over Everything

May want to check your Constitution. Where does it say you and your property can be surveiled by the federal governmnet? Anytime it wants.

In a world in which the NSA has access to everything, including – soon – one’s bank accounts, because “the government is there to protect you“, it was only a matter of time before the logical extension of abdicating all privacy was enforced in the city that never sleeps, and which ended up with 24/7 vigilant “alarm clocks” in the form of unmanned aerial vehicles, aka drones, “for the sake of security.“

From RT: “The head of the New York City Police Department announced this week that the largest local law enforcement agency in the United States might soon rely on spy drones for conducting surveillance. During an open conversation held Thursday between Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, the chief of police confirmed that New York’s boys in blue aren’t entirely opposed to acquiring an unmanned aerial vehicle for the sake of security. “We’re looking into it,” Kelly reportedly told an audience at the 92nd Street Y Thursday evening. “Anything that helps us.”

More:

Jill Colvin, a producer for the website DNAinfo, says Kelly told his crowd that adding an UAV to their arsenal of surveillance tools could come in handy during future mass protests in the Big Apple. For starters, she reports, Kelly said cops could begin with using basic civilian models that are available for purchase online and in stores.

“You can go to Brookstone and buy a drone,” Kelly told the crowd.

“The only thing we would do is maybe use the cheap $250 ones to take a look and see the size of the demonstration or something along those lines,” Colvin quotes him as saying.

…

Should New York City secure a drone of their own, there is little one could do that isn’t already possible in NYC. As of last year, the NYPD had access to around 2,000 surveillance cameras on just the island of Manhattan.

And maybe attach a few missiles (not sold at Brookstone just yet) to said drone, just in case a little additional militarized firepower was necessary in addition to looking and “seeing the size or something.”And why not: it’s not like there is a law in the US preventing the government for going all Ezekiel 25:17 on any US citizen just because the pilot at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, didn’t like the angle of attack on some guy’s mustache.

Because, remember, “they hate us for our freedoms.”

Do you think it’s taime to put the brakes on government deployment of drones, before they start shooting the citenzry? Hey it’s just one step away …

DHS Wants To Use Spy Drones Domestically For ‘public safety’, How — They Did Not Know

Do you understand how spy drones affect public safety? In ways we would not understand, or is it just more made-up stuff from the Obama regime. To scare the sheep?

Drones are for public safety, not intimidating illegal border crossers. Nope we wouldn’t do that. We only try and intimidate people of our own country, says Obama’s DHS fat lady.

More liberal word-play.

Here she is in full regalia ..

Who knew. Do you wonder how military spy drones improve public safety?

The United States already uses surveillance drones on its borders, but Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said during a hearing on Wednesday that flying unmanned aircraft inside the US could be the next step to ensuring “public safety.”

Sec. Napolitano weighed in on the topic of unmanned aerial vehicles during this week’s Committee on Homeland Security and suggested that implementing UAVs for domestic surveillance could the next step in the United States’ amazingly accelerating drone program.

The Federal Aviation Administration is currently considering ground rules that will outline how the FAA can govern domestic drone use, and by 2020 they expect to see 30,000 UAVs soaring through US airspace. Speaking before a House panel on Wednesday, though, Sec. Napolitano suggested that deploying UAVs proactively to put an extra set over locales nowhere near America’s border may in fact be the next move.

“With respect to Science and Technology, that directorate, we do have a funded project,” she said. “I think it’s in California, looking at drones that could be utilized to give us situational awareness in a large public safety [matter] or disaster, such as a forest fire, and how they could give us better information.”

In a transcript of the secretary’s testimony made available after her address, Napolitano admits that the US has expanded their use or surveillance drones on America’s border with Canadain recent years, now letting UAVs monitor 950 miles of Washington State’s boundary line.

I have no idea what the spy drones flying over your property are doing. Maybe we should ask the Supreme Court to decide. Why yes that is a tax. They are still in outer soace, protecting our Constitution. Didn’t you know? And they wonder why no one approves of what they are doing.

“DHS believes these airborne images are essential for homeland defense missions, such as planning for National Special Security Events (Super Bowls or a national political conventions come to mind); enhancing border, port and airport security; as well as performing critical infrastructure inventories and assessments,” reports Government Security News.

Uh huh, sure it is. When does someone start giving rewards for shoot-downs?

X-47Bs Strolling Around WDC Cause Uproar as UFOs

People in the D.C. area are buzzing after pictures began popping up online showing what many believed to be a ‘UFO’ in transport along the Capitol Beltway.

Here is a couple on the ground, the ones causing the stir were being hauled on a flatbed truck, on it’s way to Pax River air station for testing.

X-47B

The spotting took place around 11:00 p.m. Wednesday when drivers first saw the craft being hauled on a flatbed truck on I-270, then on I-495.

Maryland State Police confirmed that the strange craft was actually a drone aircraft made by Northrup Grumman that was being transported from West Virginia to Patuxent Naval Air Station in Maryland.

It wasn’t the first time aircraft being transported had been mistaken for ‘UFOs’. Last year, residents of Cowley County, Kansas mistook a similar flying machine.

DefenseTech.org reported last year that engineers practice aircraft carrier take-offs and landings with the drone on a strip of runway at Patuxent that’s painted to resemble a carrier’s flight deck.

Video here:

More Drones Than They Know What To Do With

Maybe the southern border could use a few??? Operational ones only, with pilots please.

Just spend the money, we will figure out what to do with what we buy. It’s good for economy don’t you know.

The Homeland Security Department ordered so many drones it can’t keep them all flying and doesn’t have a good plan for how to use them, according to a new audit that the department’s  department’s inspector general released Monday.

In a blunt assessment, investigators said Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine has a fleet of nine “unmanned aircraft systems” and is awaiting a 10th — though it doesn’t have enough ground support and doesn’t have a good plan for prioritizing missions.

“CBP procured unmanned aircraft before implementing adequate plans,” the investigators said.

The Defense Department uses armed drones overseas in the war on terrorism, but American law enforcement agencies are increasingly turning to them for use in detecting or preventing crimes at home. At the same time, they are butting heads with civil libertarians who worry about intrusion into innocent citizens’ private lives.

The inspector general said given the number of aircraft, CBP should have been able to fly more than 10,000 hours of missions per year, but in the year under review the agency flew less than 4,000 hours.

Underscoring the ad hoc approach, the agency doesn’t have a dedicated budget for running drones, and has had to siphon money from other areas to keep the program afloat. Investigators said the budget woes mean future missions may have to be scrapped — yet the underfunded fleet continues to grow.

Buy until there is no more to buy …

“Despite the current underutilization of unmanned aircraft, CBP received two additional aircraft in late 2011 and was awaiting delivery of a tenth aircraft in 2012,” the inspector general said.

Feds Clearing Way For Drones Over Your House

The federal government is moving quickly to open the skies over America to drones – both for commercial and government purposes – and respected Washington Post and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer is forecasting “rifles aimed at the sky all across America.”

So you want everybody to be able to spy on you, anywhere anytime? Just use a drone. Apparently police helicopters weren’t enough, now the police need unmanned aerial vehicles with cameras and infrared sensors on board.

It’s curious that this is the same federal government which cannot secure our southern border. Might I suggest I have a way that can be done, with drones.

Apparently the federal government doesn’t care about that, only what it’s citizens are doing. Hmmm see a problem with that?

These comments from Krauthammer, were on “Special Report” with Bret Baier. Krauthammer said:

“I would predict, I’m not encouraging, but I predict the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that’s been hovering over his house is going to be a folk hero in this country,”

Video:

Fox‘s Krauthammer Goes ’Hard Left’ on Domestic Drones: ‘I Want a Ban’

Domestic Drones are bad … Hpw long before government takes the precaution to arm these things? And use them against the American people? You think Obama wouldn’t authorize it?

With recent exposure of who is authorized to own and fly drones in the United States and a bill passed earlier this year opening up the sky more for military, commercial and private drone use, the Federal Aviation Administration has begun rolling out rules for how local law enforcement can use unmanned aerial vehicles. This has continued debate over what is considered an infringement on privacy.

And now Fox commentator Charles Krauthammer is weighing in, and his position might surprise you.

The FAA states on its website that its main concern is to “[streamline] the process for public agencies to safely fly UAS in the nation’s airspace.” Some of the recent progress the FAA says it has made includes developing a method to expedite the process for interested parties to obtain a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA) to fly the drones; changing the length of authorization from 12 months to 24 months; and allowing law enforcement to fly a drone up to 25 pounds (the rule used to be 4.4 pounds) in controlled airspace within the operators line of sight.

(Related: Directive: Air Force can evaluate information about you collected by drones — if it‘s ’incidental’)

Fox News describes some of these actions as “taking a tool that has become synonymous with U.S. counterterror warfare in countries like Pakistan and Yemen — and putting it in the hands of U.S. law enforcement.” Although, it notes that drones flying over U.S. soil would not be equipped with weapons and would be used for surveillance only. Charles Krauthammer on Special Report earlier this week said he wants a resounding ban on domestic drone use.

No weapons, for how long. Be very afraid of this technology.

“I’m going to go hard left on you here. I’m going to go ACLU,” Krauthammer said in the show. “I don’t want regulations. I don’t want restrictions. I want a ban on this.”

Krauthammer explains that he considers drones “instruments of war” and cites the Founder’s aversion to such instruments maintaining a presence inside the United States. He compares a drone to a high-tech version of an old army and a musket.