Watching the skies ... then and now

 Used to be, one of the nicest things you could see in the sky was a hawk circling over a grassy field, looking for his meal.
That sky watching became searching for dangerous aircraft during war and in 1943, the English Homeguard needed to identify planes over the English countryside, so the Observer issued pamphlets like this. The Spitfire was a thrill in its beauty and purpose but most will never see one again, (unless you are watching Foyle's War on British TV.) And there was no point in identifying a V2 and calling someone because it would already be there before the call went through. Of course there's really nothing romantic about war and that was then, this is now .....

Dutch designer Ruben Pater came up with this modern chart of attack and surveillance drones.

Our ancestors could spot natural predators like hawks from afar by their silhouettes. We may need to be also aware of the present day predators. Spies looking for more than a meal. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicts that within 20 years there could be 30,000 drones flying over U.S. soil alone. As robotic birds will become commonplace in the near future, we should be prepared to identify them.
Aside from the practicality of using drones in distant wars where the pilot sits in a comfortable facility in his home country, oblivious to any danger,  while his Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) hunts down and kills those who are perceived to have a threat to our society, there are now hundreds more uses for UAVs. 

From peaceful uses like mapping terrain. Checking out building sites too dangerous for a man. A local police force observing a robbery in progress, to privacy infringing uses where a tiny silent drone looking like a dragon-fly hovers near your bedroom window to peek at you, to the use of a Reaper Drone or a Global Hawk to attack the Pentagon, observed by 214 surveillance cameras but only 10 frames released to the public.

Grim Reaper?

Is there a subliminal threat to society looms in the skies with those drones? Recently a Colorado company, who makes drones approved by the US Government, was assisting in surveying flood damage, a useful operation. They were ordered by FEMA, to ground their UAVs and anyone flying one would be arrested! No one has explained why.
Well anyone in the know is already aware that something sinister is going on in Colorado that someone doesn't want you to see. And that's just the beginning.

The future is now, keep watching your skies, just don't shoot down a real hawk, they're just looking for a meal.


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