“Dear Amnesty International, Do You Even Know How Drones Work?” By David Axe
An interesting article from War is Boring, one of my current favorite milblogs. Drone strikes have been a very controversial subject in the media, especially considering the touted collateral damage and civilian casualties that come along with these strikes.
Organizations such as Amnesty International, opponents of drone strikes, get their information (later compiled into reports) directly from the residents of towns and small villages that are the targets of these strikes (Intelligence reports indicate that these towns harbor and support members of terror organizations, so these attacks aren’t unwarranted at all).
However, these villagers and townspeople are largely unaware and uneducated as to what drones are. As the author of the article puts it, they automatically assume that anything whirring in the sky or anything that goes boom in the night is a result of a US drone attack. Therefore, it seems that in their haste to make a point, Amnesty International has either fallen victim misinformation or intentionally reported skewed facts.
The link is up above in bold. Check out the article, shouldn’t take more than 6 minutes or so, and let us know what you think.
““People are mentally disturbed as a result of the drone flights,” the Esso Khel villager told Amnesty. “We can’t sleep because of the planes’ loud sound.”
Problem is, Predators and Reapers spend most of their time at altitudes where they are generally inaudible. It’s for that reason that the U.S. Army used Predators in Iraq to orbit over insurgents’ meetings, striking them only after all the fighters had gathered together.
“Predator flies at about 10,000 feet,” Army Gen. Raymond Odierno told 60 Minutes. “It’s so high up [the insurgents] have trouble hearing it.””
The Tactical Air Network 