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CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

theregister.co.uk

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Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#21

Post by ryanwaggoner »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10
patio11 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great piece whose identifying information I'm blanking on that explained how we stumbled into drone warfare. Basically, we tried doing snatch & grabs with commando teams for a while, and that kept generating one negative externality we weren't willing to tolerate. Illegal acts? No. Media pressure? No. Collateral damage? No. Diplomatic reprecussions? No. Prisoners. Prisoners are a real handful. What are ou…

Interesting anecdote: up until WWII or so, American commanders had little problem dealing with enemy noncombatants on the battlefield. There was a brief trial followed by an execution. Over time, the whole trial and such got to be counter-productive for the military, all that publicity and such. Warfare became much more a PR game. So commanders started emphasizing killing over capturing. This trend has nothing to do…

American commanders had little problem dealing with enemy noncombatants on the battlefield.

Did you mean combatants? Typically noncombatants would refer to medical personnel, chaplains, etc. It'd be interesting to know if people like this were routinely tried and executed.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#22

Post by rhtml »

dschobel wrote: post #18
rdtsc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This whole conversation is way off-topic. I think not when software is used to kill people. I refuse to sanitize and rationalize that fact away and happily discuss UAV realtime software development patterns.

The story was about UAV software, your agenda is extraneous. Otherwise any story can be used as a jumping off point for politics and righteous indignation.

Good point. The only problem is the Netezza appliance is definitely not used by drones, for controlling drones, or anything directly related to their operations. The Register headline (and the many copies) are typically hyperbolic.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#24

Post by varjag »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #21
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting anecdote: up until WWII or so, American commanders had little problem dealing with enemy noncombatants on the battlefield. There was a brief trial followed by an execution. Over time, the whole trial and such got to be counter-productive for the military, all that publicity and such. Warfare became much more a PR game. So commanders started emphasizing killing over capturing. This trend has nothing to do…

American commanders had little problem dealing with enemy noncombatants on the battlefield. Did you mean combatants? Typically noncombatants would refer to medical personnel, chaplains, etc. It'd be interesting to know if people like this were routinely tried and executed.

Perhaps he meant irregular combatants.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#25

Post by gaius »

rdtsc wrote: post #3

> "They want to kill people with my software that doesn't work" Let's see, we assassinate people without any trial, in a country we are not even at war with, and the obvious problem is that the software is a little buggy. What is "buggy" here is the whole assassination system. When Bush wanted to dispatch special ops around the world to assassinate "terrorists", everyone was up and arms about it, When Obama does the…

Let's not forget that Clinton's favourite tactic was a cruise missile too. Remember Sudan?

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#26

Post by gaius »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #21
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting anecdote: up until WWII or so, American commanders had little problem dealing with enemy noncombatants on the battlefield. There was a brief trial followed by an execution. Over time, the whole trial and such got to be counter-productive for the military, all that publicity and such. Warfare became much more a PR game. So commanders started emphasizing killing over capturing. This trend has nothing to do…

American commanders had little problem dealing with enemy noncombatants on the battlefield. Did you mean combatants? Typically noncombatants would refer to medical personnel, chaplains, etc. It'd be interesting to know if people like this were routinely tried and executed.

No, a chaplain in a military uniform is a combatant as far as the Geneva Convention is concerned, and must be treated as a POW.

The term more recently used was "unlawful combatant".

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#27

Post by dekz »

Let me get this straight, the drone is inaccurate by the worst case 13m. So the drone itself is off by at most 13m, while being 26,000ft in the air. This hardly seems like a major issue to me, according to wikipedia the Predator drone is equipped with hellfire munition, which have their own laser guided trajectory. Depending on the type the hellfire munition has approximately 8000ft range, so something tells me the drone itself doesn't guide the hellfire to the ground.

But 13m? I'm no munitions/combat expert, but I assume 13m discrepancy, even if it does apply to the hellfire itself, won't make much of a difference. Something is going to get blown up anyway, even if it is off by 13meters the target will essentially no longer be there.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#28

Post by andreyf »

derefr wrote: post #19
dschobel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story was about UAV software, your agenda is extraneous. Otherwise any story can be used as a jumping off point for politics and righteous indignation.

Indeed. As someone who is: 1. Currently living neither in the US, nor the places it deploys these drones—and therefore unable to affect, or be affected by, the US's foreign policy re: drones; 2. and who rationally values their time; I can't see any benefit to investing said time in analyzing US drone deployment policy. The technology of drones, however, is fascinating.

There's always the possibility that (1) will one day change. For example, when, in some state of emergency, the US decides to back one political strength over another. I'm not military or historical expert, so I might be wrong, but I could easily see this happening in countries like Mexico.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#29

Post by c00ki3s »

mmaro wrote: post #11
rdtsc wrote: post #3

> "They want to kill people with my software that doesn't work" Let's see, we assassinate people without any trial, in a country we are not even at war with, and the obvious problem is that the software is a little buggy. What is "buggy" here is the whole assassination system. When Bush wanted to dispatch special ops around the world to assassinate "terrorists", everyone was up and arms about it, When Obama does the…

It's important to remember that neither Bush nor Obama are king of the U.S. government. Our newspapers, universities, and civil servants turned on Bush because of his entry to Iraq, acting out of step with the rest of the government (which includes a lot more than people think). Anything they said to reduce Bush's power was fair game. You, like me, probably fell for it. People in the government generally don't have a…

Could you elaborate on this? Normally I don't care about politics, but this does sound interesting.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#30

Post by sh4na »

rhtml wrote: post #22
dschobel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story was about UAV software, your agenda is extraneous. Otherwise any story can be used as a jumping off point for politics and righteous indignation.

Good point. The only problem is the Netezza appliance is definitely not used by drones, for controlling drones, or anything directly related to their operations. The Register headline (and the many copies) are typically hyperbolic.

The software is used to determine target locations,which are then fed to the drones for execution. I'd say it's pretty damm relevant when someone decides to hack something up real quick and says they don't mind using it knowing that it's giving erroneous data with several meter deviations. I bet you wouldn't find it hyperbolic if you were, let's say, 10 meters away from someone being located with that software.
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