Free Republic

The search for nearly 300 missing Nigerian schoolgirls has taken on an international dimension with the arrival of American and British experts on the ground to help track down the teens. There are military personnel, development experts, law-enforcement and intelligence agents. And then there’s the possibility of calling in the drones. Reuters reported Thursday that the U.S. was considering a request by Nigeria to provide surveillance aircraft and intelligence. "We are considering it," Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. assistant-secretary of State for African Affairs, said in an interview. While surveillance drones have been used for humanitarian purposes from the Fukushima radiation disaster...

Last year, Barack Obama picked former Acting Assistant Attorney General David Barron as his choice for a vacant seat on the First Circuit Court of Appeals. His brief time at the Justice Department, however, has opened Barron – and the Obama administration – up to some widespread, bipartisan criticism. According to reports, Barron drafted a memo defending the deadly drone strike against American terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaki. As a result, his nomination is now being held up amid demands for the release of the memo, which has reportedly been cited as justification for the assassination of other American citizens. The...

Virtually every country on Earth will be able to build or acquire drones capable of firing missiles within the next ten years. Armed aerial drones will be used for targeted killings, terrorism and the government suppression of civil unrest. What’s worse, say experts, it’s too late for the United States to do anything about it. After the past decade’s explosive growth, it may seem that the U.S. is the only country with missile-carrying drones. In fact, the U.S. is losing interest in further developing armed drone technology. The military plans to spend $2.4 billion on unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs,...

Sen. Rand Paul has warned Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that he will place a hold on one of President Obama’s appellate court nominees because of his role in crafting the legal basis for Obama’s drone policy. Paul, the junior Republican senator from Kentucky, has informed Reid he will object to David Barron’s nomination to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, unless the Justice Department makes public the memos he authored justifying the killing of an American citizen in Yemen. -SNIP- The ACLU has sided with Paul, who has a handful of Democratic allies. “No senator should be voting...

The National Park Service is warning potential amateur pilots that drone aircraft are "prohibited within park boundaries" of Yosemite National Park. The park service is referring to small "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles," like the DJI Phantom. Officials say, in recent years, the park has experienced an increase in visitors using drones inside the park to film climbers and views above the treetops in the national park. An uptick in this kind activity isn't surprising. Recently, the price and accessibility of small, "personal" drone aircraft has come way down. Amateurs and hobbyists can outfit the devices with small cameras, such as GoPros,...

The Air Force recently acknowledged that due to a “stigma” surrounding its drone program, many pilots at the controls of the deadly weapons are “less skilled” and officers overseeing them are “less competent” than their manned aircraft brethren, as alleged by the Government Accountability Office. “Let’s be honest, when people dream about flying… People in this generation didn’t grow up and say, ‘I want to fly an RPA [remotely piloted aircraft],’” Air Force spokesperson Jennifer Cassidy told ABC News last week. “They were the ones that watched re-runs of ‘Top Gun’ and said, ‘I want to be a fighter pilot.’…...

Additive manufacturing startup MarkForged aims to make it happen and is already marketing systems. Additive manufacturing (AM) is one of the hottest areas in parts fabrication. Interest is high, research dollars are being spent and company stocks are attracting investor attention. Why? First, because AM has moved beyond its initial role as a prototyping tool to a process that can build finished parts. AM technologies — stereolithography, fused deposition modeling (FDM), laser sintering (LS), material extrusion, direct metal deposition and more (see "The rise of rapid manufacturing," under “Editor's Picks,” at top right) — were able from their beginnings to...

The U.S. Senate on Monday killed a measure that would have forced the Obama administration to provide the public with information each year on the number of persons killed or injured overseas in targeted strikes.Congress’ decision to abandon the measure, which would have been included in a larger intelligence bill, marks the latest in the federal government’s longstanding tradition of keeping information regarding targeted strikes, which are typically carried out by unmanned drones, from the public eye. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in a letter to the Senate warned that the measure would compromise U.S. intelligence operations overseas, the...

Earlier this month, CIA-operated drones killed as many as 55 people in Yemen in several separate strikes. Although it was claimed that those killed were “militants,” according to press reports at least three civilians were killed and at least five others wounded. That makes at least 92 U.S. drone attacks against Yemen during the Obama administration, which have killed nearly 1,000 people including many civilians. The latest strikes seem to contradict President Obama’s revised guidelines for targeted killings, which he announced last May. At the time he claimed that drones would only be used against those who posed a “continuing...

On Friday, John Jacob Schmidt of Radio Free Redoubt said that according to Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers, Attorney General Eric Holder has approved drone strikes against the Bundy ranch to take place some time in the next 48 hours. According to Schmidt, the information came from a source Oath Keepers has within the Department of Defense. That source, according to the report, allegedly said Attorney General Eric Holder authorized what is known as a "hot drone strike" against the ranch. Such a strike, he added would effectively kill everyone at the ranch. Schmidt said that as far as...

INDIAN SPRINGS, Nev. — The peace walkers arrived sweaty and gross, feet blistered and knees creaking, and Phil was waiting for them. Phil had his signs up, his American flags out, his star-spangled cap on. He extended a tight-fisted thumbs up toward the cars exiting Creech Air Force Base. A couple hundred yards away, every couple of minutes, a drone glided earthward with a baleful elegance. Predator. Reaper. Reaper. Predator. Thanks for keeping us safe,” Phil said toward the driver of a white Ford F-150. If the driver had looked to the right, he or she would’ve seen Phil in...

When President Obama decided sometime during his first term that he wanted to be able to use unmanned aerial drones in foreign lands to kill people -- including Americans -- he instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to find a way to make it legal -- despite the absolute prohibition on governmental extra-judicial killing in federal and state laws and in the Constitution itself. "Judicial killing" connotes a lawful execution after an indictment, a jury trial, an appeal and all of the due process protections that the Constitution guarantees defendants. "Extra-judicial killing" is a targeted killing of a victim by someone...

'Terminator' coming alive as agency explores humanoids 'for Earth applications'While the federal government’s increased use and advocacy of drones over U.S. skies is widely known, its promotion of another technological advancement has received less attention: the accelerated deployment of “humanoid robots” into American society. WND has discovered that NASA is recruiting help from industry and academia to speed up the commercialization of such robotic humanoids “for Earth applications.” Among the applications is warfare, the agency said. NASA said technical hurdles remain before sending human-like machines into combat operations and other “hazardous and remote environments.” Among the obstacles are “object recognition/detection”...

Criminal gangs in the UK’s Shropshire county are using drones to locate marijuana farms, and then blackmailing the farms’ owners or straight up stealing their weed, ITProPortal reports. It’s a tactic that law enforcement authorities worldwide have been employing for years — using thermal imaging to detect possible locations of grow houses. Marijuana requires hot temperatures and hydroponic lamps to grow, meaning that grow houses generally emit a ton of heat, and show up on cops’ thermal cameras. Now, criminals are reportedly using the same technique, except they’re hooking the thermal cameras up to unmanned drones, and joining police in...

No doubt inspired in part by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who called supporters of the Bundy ranch "domestic terrorists," a number of liberals on Twitter expressed their desire to see the ranch and its supporters killed by drone strikes, Paul Joseph Watson reported at Infowars Monday. Such a raid would, of course, kill innocent children as well as men and women, but it seems that didn't matter to those demanding the deadly raid. "If ever there was a time for a drone strike, I'd say Bundy's self-appointed militia should've been turned into paste on the prairie," one person...

Last week, CNN reported that an al-Qaeda conference took place in Yemen, headed by the number-two man in the global structure, and that the US appeared to have missed it. If so, we may be making up for lost time. A series of drone attacks in Yemen has killed dozens of terrorists from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most dangerous of the constituent networks in the AQ umbrella:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO An operation targeting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is under way in Abyan and Shabwa, Yemen, a high-level Yemeni government official who is being...

SANA, Yemen — An airstrike killed 13 people suspected as Qaeda militants in the central Yemeni province of al-Bayda on Saturday, a security official and tribal representatives said. Three civilians in a nearby car were also killed, they said. “An airstrike targeted cars that suspected Al Qaeda militants were in and killed 13 of them in the Sawma’a area of al-Bayda,” a security official said.

A drone strike in Yemen killed at least 15 people on Saturday, including 12 suspected al Qaeda militants, three Yemeni Defense Ministry officials told CNN.

At The Hobby Center in Danbury, Karl LaLonde, the store's owner, holds the Proto X in the palm of his hand. It's the size of a fairly healthy tarantula. LaLonde has decorated it with an orange piece of plastic shaped like a bird's beak. Switched on, its four tiny propellers spin. Under LaLonde's control via a joystick, it lifts off the counter and scoots around the store's airspace. The Proto X costs $50. "You can get a camera to fit it," LaLonde said. It's the smallest of the many UAVs -- unmanned aerial vehicles -- LaLonde sells. Business is good....

DJI Phantom Vision Video drone presentation at Reaganite Republican...