Obama Is Decimating Our Air Superiority

America’s aging tactical Air Force — the jets that protect ground troops and strike hard-to-reach targets — is shrinking just as the Pentagon is cutting even more planes to achieve nearly a half-trillion dollars in spending cuts.

The trend has set off alarms among retired fighter pilots, some of whom wrote to Congress last month warning that U.S. “TacAir” is in trouble.

They fear the political pressure to drive down the deficit will mean there will never be enough money to replace 1970s jets with advanced aircraft to operate against rising militaries such as China‘s, which last year unveiled its own stealth fighter, the J-20.

“With the exception of our airlift fleet, we have a geriatric Air Force,” said retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, a former F-15 Eagle pilot and Operation Desert Storm war planner. “We’re flying fighters that are 30 years old. What people seem to miss is, a fighter is not like an airliner, where you take off from Point A and go to Point B. Our pilots put six to nine G[gravitational forces] on these things every day.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/5/fleets-fade-away-with-pentagon-budget-cuts/

 

I have some doubts that we should be investing hundreds of billions more in high tech fighters. Of course, the generals want them. What bureaucracy doesn't want to spend more on itself? But we can't really afford it.

If they were essential to our security, of course we'd have to find a way. But are they? Are we really planning on going to war with China? We can buy hundreds, maybe thousands of drones for the cost of one fighter, plus we don't have to train a pilot and agonize over what hapopens to them if they're captured.

We need to stay ahead of the curve and not waste a lot of money on 20th century weapons systems. We can have semi-submersible missile barges that are remotely piloted and which can launch hundreds of cruise missiles. Of course the Navy brasss prefer hugely expensive ships. After all, that's the way it was done in WW II.

 

I think if anything, we need to maintain air superiority over the rest of the world. With out that, we may find ourselves eventually challenged by a China or a Russia sooner rather than later. Without air superiority all of our military systems are vulnerable to attack and defeat.

 

obama is the "In Drones We Trust" president - he has set world records with his killing around the world using drones. Now the drones are coming to the US - just as they always planned - and all you "boot lickers" will accept that as your new norm.

 

Congress Welcomes Drones Into American Skies ASAP


February 5, 2012

The stage has already been set and played upon for divisions of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to patrol and strike undeclared war zones abroad.

Even though lip service has been paid to express minor outrage over villages bombed in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or someplace over there, there has been relatively little true outrage by countries heretofore unaffected by computer bombing raids upon their own Homeland countries like America.

Well, seeing is believing they say.

Americans are next in line to get their chance to see firsthand what has been happening overseas a close-up view of what takes place on computer screens in Tel Aviv or Las Vegas.

The Boomerang Effect has taken flight.

The treason of American Congress seems to know no bounds, as it has submitted an urgent official request to the Secretary of Transportation to invite potential remote-controlled war upon American soil by integrating Unmanned Aerial Systems into civilian airspace to be overseen by the FAA. (Source)

The drone program inside the United States has advanced at warp speed since 2007 when tests were first captured by the media. Since that time, we have witnessed local police departments such as Miami-Dade County, FL outfit their force with micro-drones. However, it wasn't until the first drone test-run for law enforcement was conducted in North Dakota, that even staunch naysayers to claims of militarization had to pay closer attention. Drones for cattle rustling? WTF?

Now, just a couple of months later, we can read the Conference Report on FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2012, which does nothing less than give approval to turn American skies into a virtual battlefield that threatens to mirror the declaration of the NDAA that America (indeed the entire planet) should be outfitted with the tactics and technology of the War on Terror. An open fly zone for drones has been declared, with Department of Defense authorization to maximize capabilities.

The report's opening paragraph ends with ominous foreshadowing after stating the normal bureaucratic political lingo about an effort to 'streamline programs' and 'create efficiencies.'

Mr. Mica submitted the following conference report and statement on the bill (H.R. 658) to amend title 49, United States Code, to authorize appropriations for the Federal Aviation Administration for fiscal years 2011 through 2014, to streamline programs, create efficiencies, reduce waste, and improve aviation safety and capacity, to provide stable funding for the national aviation system, and for other purposes:

'And for other purposes'

Please read the proposal in full, as it is nothing less than the openly stated plan for a future of total full-time surveillance, an increased number of testing sites similar to the secret facility recently uncovered in Nevada, and most likely brings with it a threat of future bombing raids in America and surrounding territories.Read the full 'Conference Report on HR 658 FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2012'

HERE - http://www.infowars.com/congress-welcomes-drones-into-american-skies-asap/

 

Empire of Drones: Spies in the Sky


Christopher Brauchli
Counterpunch
February 3, 2012

It’s all because of the little noticed annual report for 2010 from the United States Department of State Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS). The document was released March 2011. Some especially interesting language is found on page 26 in a section entitled “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.” It describes how the “Department of State coordinated with the U.S. Department of Defense and other government agencies to research using Tier 1 (low altitude, long endurance) unmanned aerial vehicles in high-threat locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This effort led to a successful test in Iraq in December. DS plans to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles to support U.S. Embassy Baghdad in 2011. The program will watch over State Department facilities and personnel and assist Regional Security Officers with high-threat mission planning and execution.” The “unmanned aerial vehicles” to which the document refers are popularly known as “drones” and have already proved their usefulness in killing, among others Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in Yemen. Now the United States would like to use them for spying. But first, Abdulrahman.

Abdulrahman was born in Denver Colorado but moved with his family to Yemen. As reported by Time magazine, on September 15 the 16-year old Abdulrahman left his home in Yemen looking for his father, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and radical cleric who was hiding in the southern province of Yemen called Shabwa. The United States had long targeted his father and during the time Abdulrahman was searching for him his father was killed by a CIA sponsored drone. Two weeks later another drone attack killed a senior al-Qaeda militant whom the United States had targeted. The luster of the raid was dimmed because Abdulrahman, one of his cousins and six other people were also killed. They were not targets but, as one U.S. official in a clever, if not particularly sensitive turn of phrase put it when referring to Abdulrahman’s death, he “was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” That was, of course, self-evident. Now we are privy to discussions about drones used for spying instead of killing.

For years it has been accepted that countries routinely place their intelligence agents under cover in other countries in an attempt to learn what is going on in those countries that may affect the spying country’s interests. Now, thanks to modern science, a country is not limited in its spying on another country to boots on the ground. Instead, it can use drones. There is, of course, one small problem with that. The country over which the drones fly may not react cordially to the idea that the United States can fly drones wherever it wants. Indeed, it is likely that the United States would not take kindly to learning that Russia was routinely flying drones in U.S. skies for purposes of gathering intelligence.

It has now been disclosed that the United States, which is responsible for the chaos that reigns in Iraq following the successful conclusion of the war it started, plans to fly drones in order to protect what is the biggest United States embassy in the world. Formally opened in 2009, the embassy will house more than 11,000 people and be protected by 5,000 private security contractors and an undisclosed number of drones. The embassy is as big as the Vatican and includes a 16,000 square foot ambassador’s residence and a 9000 square foot residence for the deputy ambassador. At the opening ceremony in 2009, U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker said the opening signaled a “new era for Iraq and United States relations.” He was probably not thinking of drones. The Iraqis now are and drones promise to become another nail in the coffin in which a “new era for Iraq and United States relations” lies.

The Iraqis are upset at the idea that the United States believes it has the right to fly its drones wherever it wants. They don’t think a foreign country, which the United States is now that its troops have gone home, should have the right to violate its air space. They think the United States should get permission to operate the drones in Iraqi airspace. Commenting on the proposal to use drones, several key advisors to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said they had not been consulted about the Americans’ plans and one of them who opposes the drone program said: “Our sky is our sky, not the U.S.A.’s sky.” That idea might shock the State Department. Another Iraqi, Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, an enginer from the northern city of Mosul said: “If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country.” Of course he probably wasn’t thinking of the fact that the embassy is practically brand new. The United States would be as reluctant to leave the new embassy as Saddam Hussein was to leave his assorted palaces for a prison cell.

Permitting the United States to fly drones wherever it wants is the price a country may have to pay for friendship with the United States. Some countries may think that price too high.

more - http://www.infowars.com/empire-of-drones-spies-in-the-sky/

 

Obama’s drones remarks put White House on the defensive


Karen DeYoung
Washington Post
February 1, 0212

White House spokesman Jay Carney rebuffed questions Tuesday about whether President Obama had violated intelligence restrictions on the secret U.S. drone program in Pakistan when he openly discussed the subject the day before.

Obama, speaking Monday at an online town hall sponsored by Google, twice uttered the word “drones” as he explained their precise and “judicious” use against al-Qaeda targets. Asked if the president had made a mistake, Carney said he was “not going to discuss . . . supposedly covert programs.”

… On Monday, Obama was responding to “Evan in Brooklyn,” who said that the president had “ordered more drone attacks in your first year than your predecessor did in his entire term.”

… In a lawsuit last year, the American Civil Liberties Union said that the CIA’s refusal to release information about drone killings was illegal. When the CIA argued that even the “fact of the existence or non-existence” of such a program was classified, the ACLU responded that then-CIA Director Leon E. Panetta had spoken openly of U.S. “hits” and “strikes” against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan.

http://www.infowars.com/obama’s-drones-remarks-put-white-house-on-the-defensive/

 

Micro-drones are a fascinating new dimension. An "insect" with a ricin-dipped stinger flies out of a van and into a building's open door or window. You better not be a <del>communist</del> terrorist!

 

Mvector, this thread has nothing to do with drones in America. Why don't you go start your own thread about drones?

 

do you really genius! what a dufus!

LOL