Personally I don’t think the CIA should be messing around with armed drones but as the article says they are an excellent way of tracking the bad guys.

As for the legalities of drone use, I place that under “a grey area”. The drones are unmanned but they also have a man in the loop the drone itself being a very expensive radio controlled plane. Man in the loop makes them no different to a manned jet or helicopter when it comes to effect.

Now this is really what makes my bloodboil and shows how these guys work to twist events to their designs, taken from their website:

MOD ANNOUNCES RAF WADDINGTON VIEWING ENCLOSURE TO BE CLOSED ON 3RD SEPTEMBER ON ACCOUNT OF THREATENED VIOLENT DISORDER BY PLANE SPOTTERS.
August 28, 2011
By admin

Plane spotters, through the website http://www.fightercontrol.co.uk, who use RAF Waddington’s public viewing area known as the WAVE have been publicly threatening the use of violence and intimidation to people protesting the use of armed unmanned drones at RAF Waddington, or UAVs .

Despite pleas to his customers for calm and sensible behaviour by the owner of The Sentry Post snack bar and shop in the viewing area the threats have led to an announcement by the MOD that the WAVE will be closed on Saturday 3rd September.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson announced the closure at the Direct Action Station website, where many of the threats to protesters have been made.

Protesters have commented that following recent public disorder in the UK, some who were seen as inciting violence and public disorder in the UK have been jailed for 4 years. They expect the police will ignore similar behaviour by ‘aviation enthusiasts’ as the police are not known for applying the law with any consistency, more usually applying it selectively according to their political instructions

So somebody makes a silly ill-concieved comment about burning tents obviously with no real intent and its twisted into “Plane spotters,…publicly threatening the use of violence and intimidation”.

Remember these guys are media savvy and would like nothing more to spoil the hobby of military aviation enthusiasts due to their hate of anything military.

Yeah that’s what I find bemusing after all the noble talk of Gandhi like peaceful protest yet they have all that stuff about direct action including training videos. Actually those training videos were a hoot with all the mucking about with bamboo tripods.

Whilst everybody is guilty of building an opinion then trying to fit what they see to that these guys take it to a new level. In the end as far as they are concerned “War is bad”, actually a statement I agree with but with the caveat that often it is unavoidable. They see the defence industry as utterly evil and to be battled against at all costs, add to that their odd view point of view that the defence industry is BAE Systems. They clearly have a very narrow view of drones unfortunately not helped by accidental killing of civilians, problem regardless if it is a pilot in a fighter jet dropping the bomb or somebody at Creech weddings in that part of the world do look like a minor battle. Drones have also saved many lives military and civilian alike but alas that tends to be missed by these guys, they are NAZI death machines to them and that’s it. Not that I don’t think there are quite a few problems with drones especially in respect of the decision make loop and how they would fair against a peer rival.

What worries me is the moth to the flame scenario, spotters and locals alike have had a quiet time at Waddo will now have a whole load of increasingly bloody minded oiks turning up making a mischief.