Pakistanis Angered and Fascinated By Drones

[RiazHaq]

http://www.riazhaq.com/2013/12/armed-drones-outrage-and-inspire.html

Drone is now a household word in Pakistan. It outrages many Pakistanis when used by Americans to hunt militants and launch missiles FATA. At the same time, it inspires a young generation of students to study artificial intelligence at 60 engineering colleges and universities in Pakistan. It has given rise to robotics competitions at engineering universities like National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and my alma mater NED Engineering University. Continuing reports of new civilian uses of drone technology are adding to the growing interest of Pakistanis in robotics.

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[TD="class: tr-caption, align: center"]Pakistani UAV Shahpar at IDS 2012 Show[/TD]
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Last week, two indigenously built drones, named Burraq and Shahpar, were inducted into Pakistan Army and Air Force to deal with both internal and external threats. A press release by the military's Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR) announced that Pakistan had inducted its first fleet of indigenously developed Strategic Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), namely Burraq and Shahpar UAV Systems for the Army and the Air Force. While the press release provided no other information, an photograph released by ISPR showed a model of a canard pusher UAV that appeared to be armed with two under-wing missiles.

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[TD="class: tr-caption, align: center"]Photo Released by ISPR[/TD]
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Shahpar is a tactical UAV is capable of carrying 50 Kg payload and stay aloft for 8 hours. Burraq has the capacity for 100 Kg payload with 12 hours endurance, according toDefense News. Initially, both will serve as reconnaissance platforms to gather and transmit real-time operational intelligence. In future, Burraq will likely be deployed as an armed UAV to carry and launch laser-guided missiles.

Here's an excerpt of Defense News report on Pakistani UAVs:

Burraq, based on CH-3 specs, would carry around a 100-kilogram payload and 12 hours endurance, he (analyst Usman Shabbir of the Pakistan Military Consortium think tank) said. The given payload of the (Chinese) CH-3 is a pair of AR-1 (laser-guided) missiles, or a pair of FT-5 small diameter bombs. The ability of Pakistan to field an armed UAV has great benefits when faced with time-sensitive targets, he said. It is important in a sense that it greatly cuts the gap from detection to shoot, he said. Adding, Earlier, once you detected something and wanted it taken out you had to pass on the imagery to higher ups, who had to approve and allocate resources like aircraft and by the time the aircraft got there the bad guys were long gone. Now detect, make decision, shoot and go home all in same loop. He does not believe there is any real significance in the systems being named for use with both the Army and the Air Force, however, as both have been operating their own UAV squadrons for a while now. The Army has been using German EMT Luna X-2000 and the British [Meggitt] Banshee UAVs, while PAF as we know has a lot of faith in the Italian [Selex] Falco, he added. The Luna was also ordered by the Pakistan Navy in June 2012.

The new drones represent a significant advance in Pakistani military's counter-insurgency capacity and battle-readiness for any major conflict in the region.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2013/12/armed-drones-outrage-and-inspire.html

 

[Mr Justice]

Good for them, but yet shooting down American drones are a far reach to PAF and Pak Army.......

 

[RiazHaq]

Good for them, but yet shooting down American drones are a far reach to PAF and Pak Army.......

Pakistani military can shoot down US drones. It's easy. But there are consequences of such an action which aid-dependent Pakistan seeking IMF bail-out can not deal with.

 

[Mr Justice]

Pakistani military can shoot down US drones. It's easy. But there are consequences of such an action which aid-dependent Pakistan seeking IMF bail-out can not deal with.

Thanks, Totally understand the tech as I fly myself. I refer to, not the technology itself, but the whole system altogether, which needs a serious re-visit, or- perhaps reinvention of the wheel.......unfortunately, Pakistan lacks sincere leadership, and thus we are in a spin dive..........and every spin dive has a limit, before it over-fatigues and collapses..............May Allah (swt) helps the nation to choose the honest people to lead them..........

 

[RiazHaq]

Thanks, Totally understand the tech as I fly myself. I refer to, not the technology itself, but the whole system altogether, which needs a serious re-visit, or- perhaps reinvention of the wheel.......unfortunately, Pakistan lacks sincere leadership, and thus we are in a spin dive..........and every spin dive has a limit, before it over-fatigues and collapses..............May Allah (swt) helps the nation to choose the honest people to lead them..........

I agree that Pakistani politicians are inept and corrupt. But seeking confrontation with US is unwise. It'll not solve Pakistan's problems.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2010/01/incompetence-worse-than-graft-in.html

 

[Mr Justice]

I agree that Pakistani politicians are inept and corrupt. But seeking confrontation with US is unwise. It'll not solve Pakistan's problems.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2010/01/incompetence-worse-than-graft-in.html

I agree with what you say. Confrontation is no way an option. There are ways to restore the national pride, and if one is sincere, then there are ways. Unfortunately, the current leaders have to choose between their looted wealth or- the nation..........and they surely prefer to choose former than the latter........

By the way, thanks for your blog........I'll read it through............

 

[RiazHaq]

Here's an excerpt of Maureen Dowd's NY Times column on drones:

If you aren’t nervous enough reading about 3-D printers spitting out handguns or Google robots with Android phones, imagine the skies thick with crisscrossing tiny drones.

“I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,” Jeff Bezos told Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes” Sunday, unveiling his octocopter drones.

The Amazon founder is optimistic that the fleet of miniature robot helicopters clutching plastic containers will be ready to follow GPS coordinates within a radius of 10 miles and zip around the country providing half-hour delivery of packages of up to 5 pounds — 86 percent of Amazon’s stock — just as soon as the F.A.A. approves.

“Wow!” Rose said, absorbing the wackiness of it all.

The futuristic Pony Express to deliver pony-print coats and other Amazon goodies will be “fun,” Bezos said, and won’t start until they have “all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood.’ ”

So if they can’t land on my head, why do they make my head hurt? Maybe because they are redolent of President Obama’s unhealthy attachment to lethal drones, which are killing too many innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and our spy agencies’ unhealthy attachment to indiscriminate surveillance.

Or maybe they recall that eerie “Twilight Zone” episode where a Brobdingnagian Agnes Moorehead fends off tiny spaceships with a big wooden stirrer — even though these flying machines would be dropping off the housewares.

Or maybe it’s because after “60 Minutes,” “Homeland” featured a story line about a drone both faulty and morally agnostic. The White House chief of staff, wanting to cover up a bolloxed-up covert operation on the Iraq-Iran border, suggested directing the drone to finish off its own agent, Brody.

“I will not order a strike on our own men,” the acting C.I.A. chief, played by Mandy Patinkin, replied sternly. “Hang it up.”
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Journalists, police and paparazzi jumped on the drone trend. One photographer dispatched a drone over Tina Turner’s Lake Zurich estate to snap shots of her wedding last summer — before police ordered it grounded.

According to USA Today on Tuesday, all sorts of American businesses are eluding drone restrictions: real estate representatives are getting video of luxury properties; photographers are collecting footage of Hawaiian surfers; Western farmers are monitoring their land; Sonoma vintners are checking on how their grapes are faring. As Rem Rieder wryly noted in that paper, Bezos may eventually let his drones help with home delivery of The Washington Post, “but it’s bad news for kids on bikes.”

Law enforcement agencies are eager to get drones patrolling the beat. And The Wrap reported that in the upcoming Sony remake of “RoboCop,” Samuel L. Jackson’s character, a spokesman for a multinational conglomerate that has to manufacture a special RoboCop with a conscience for America (still traumatized by “The Terminator,” no doubt) scolds Americans for being “robophobic.”

Of course, for the robophopic, there is already a way to get goods almost immediately: Go to the store.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/opinion/dowd-mommy-the-drones-here.html