Nuke drones

~ susie

People are such worrywarts! What could possibly go wrong?

American scientists have drawn up plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones capable of flying over remote regions of the world for months on end without refuelling.

The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the US government’s principal nuclear research and development agency – and defence contractor Northrop Grumman, were designed to increase flying time “from days to months” while making more power available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia.

“It’s pretty terrifying prospect,” said Chris Coles of Drone Wars UK, which campaigns against the increasing use of drones for both military and civilian purposes. “Drones are much less safe than other aircraft and tend to crash a lot. There is a major push by this industry to increase the use of drones and both the public and government are struggling to keep up with the implications.”

Published by susie

5 thoughts on “Nuke drones”

  2. And, guess what? It’s not just random crashes into civilian areas or, oh, water reservoirs….

    The research team found that the nuclear drones were able to provide far more surveillance time and intelligence information per mission compared to other technologies, and also to reduce the considerable costs of support systems – eliminating the need, for example, for forward bases and fuel supplies in remote and possibly hostile areas.

    A halt has been called to the work for now, due to worries that public opinion will not accept the idea of such a potentially hazardous technology, with the inherent dangers of either a crash – in effect turning the drone into a so-called dirty bomb – or of its nuclear propulsion system falling into the hands of terrorists or unfriendly powers.

  3. The first Secretary of Defense was James Forrestal in 1947. The last Secretary of War was Henry Stinson in 1946. From 1789 until 1947 we had a War Department and it was run by the Secretary of War. The War Departments budget was always quite small. Then came the name change to the the Defense Department. At that point the Pentagon’s budget exploded and the Department of Defense became a Communist make work program. Perhaps it’s time to have another name change? Maybe to the Department of Peace. It could be that the Pentagon’s mission in the world might change if we called it the Peace Department?

  5. I forgot blockquote doesn’t work here since the re-do of the blog design — Oooops.

    The last two paragraphs of my post are direct quotes from the article.

    Susie — do you know why blockquote HTML tags aren’t working?

    Which tags are set up for comments now? Thnx much!

    (BTW, commenters, are the tags working for any of you?)

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