The Drones are coming to Aus?

something i caught wind of on the morning news, we have had a few fatal shark attacks in the last few weeks, probably a few more than usual (which isnt many considering 95% of the population live on the coast), and this morning i hear that the South Australian Government is considering the use of UAV's to patrol for sharks along the coastline, which on the surface is probably a good idea. We have helicoptors and patrol aircraft that keep lookout for large predators in many areas, and this naturally sems like a good idea to reduce the manpower cost and operational cost associated with running manned aircraft.

However, i believe this could set a dangerous precedent, we know that once something has been implemented in the western world at least, it becomes very flexible when new uses are found or regulations are relaxed around a new peice of equipment or service. Im not suggesting there is any alterior motive here to implement drones, but how long oce they are operational before there is some out of context crisis and someone says ''Hey, we've got drones lying around doing nothing'' and then they get used for whatever that purpose is, then its easy to imagine they could become standard practice, which it seems the US is already heading towards, spying on its own citizens. we are heading for George Orwells 1984 at lightspeed.

indaily.com.au...

Time will tell i guess, we are going to end up with them all anyway sooner or later, its inevitable i believe

reply to post by BeReasonable


What do you think they will end up using the toy rc drones for?

Do you think they might work out how to stick rockets on them? mini guns? Lazors??

And why wait.. just get millions of kids to fly them.. precedent set. Just have to work out how to make them something that people are scared of.

Oh yeah, easy!!

Confuse them with military drones that are NOTHING LIKE THE DAMN THINGS....

reply to post by winofiend

i dont think your paying attaention at all to what i had to say, do you have anything to add to the conversation or did you just want to be snarky for the sake of it because your bored?

reply to post by BeReasonable

They aren't coming down under, they are already here and have been for years.

The United States flew highly classified Global Hawk spy drone missions from the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh in South Australia from late 2001 until at least 2006.

abc.net.au

And that's just the ones we know about.

Good catch, didn't realize they were talking about using drones. How effective you think a few drones patrolling our 35,000 km of coastline will be?

South Australia has 3500 km of coastline, 5000 if you count islands.

BeReasonable
reply to post by winofiend

 

i dont think your paying attaention at all to what i had to say, do you have anything to add to the conversation or did you just want to be snarky for the sake of it because your bored?

War on Terrorism. Drones.

What is it that I missed?

Who is bored?

reply to post by Thecakeisalie


Are you saying that they will use those things to patrol the waters for sharks?

Hmm.

Could be. What would I know.

Maybe they use these to catch tuna?



It's a boat, right?

I like the idea of using drones to spot sharks especially as I've read countless of articles over the last few months of shark attacks. To be honest I see it's a good idea.

But then we will have people saying, "they are spying on me while i surf" or "drones are spying while I lay topless on a beach"

What I do like to laugh at is the people who jump the gun and say they will soon arm them to take us out. Yeah ok, because governments are going to start shooting off random hellfire missiles at people. A hell fire is roughly around 68,000 US dollars a piece.

Or the machine gun comment. Yeah try firing a machine gun accurately at a target from a long distance away .. Most of your bullets will bit around your target
A aaah I love the smell of drone paranoia in the morning .. Or afternoon

reply to post by BeReasonable


I second that m8

Australia has been a testing ground for UAVs and other weapons systems for years. It's the perfect location because it has such a huge wide open area, with no people around to see the weapons. They've tested several systems that have gone black.