pjmedia.com By Scott Pinsker
In Tampa Bay, there’s a British gentleman named Peter J. He was formerly of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy and later served as a representative to NATO. Funny, charming guy. He told great stories about his time with the royal family — including how the Queen admonished her staff to stop watering down her drinks: “You’re drowning the gin!”
He liked me because I had two qualities he appreciated. First, I’m reasonably bright and well-educated, and second (much more importantly) he knew he was far brighter and way better educated. So he’d pick a topic at random — “Scott, my dear boy, tell me what you know about the Ottoman Empire?” — and then he’d figure out what I didn’t know, and bust my chops about it for a good hour or two.
(For the record, the Ottoman Empire was a pretty lousy empire. That’s why its name is synonymous with undersized furniture we put our feet on. But I digress.)
About ten years ago, he was selling military drones and wanted to use the property of a client for a demonstration. It sounded impressive: He said the drones could fly out of the back of a pickup truck, were whisper-quiet, and invisible to the naked eye at a relatively low level. It also had “emergency features” to either recall the drone if damaged or self-destruct.
I asked about its surveillance capabilities and/or offensive firepower, but Peter declined to divulge.
But then I had a Eureka moment: Why not create drones that look like birds? That way they could fly in squads of 10 or 12 without alerting the enemy. The “lead” bird could be equipped with an ultra-powerful camera; all the other “birds” could be armed to the gills with missiles! Isn’t that a great idea, Peter?
He looked at me like I botched a fact about the Ottoman Empire.
“Scott! There are only a few things that both fly and could be suitable camouflage! Don’t you think we’ve already thought of that?”
So I sighed and apologized for being a nitwit.
“We’ve been working on drone technology for a long time,” he continued tsk-tsking. “You really have no idea how advanced it is!”
With the recent sightings of drones around New York, New Jersey, and nearby military bases, I’ve been rethinking Peter’s comments: We really don’t know how advanced any of it is.
But we know that the technology is rapidly improving. And we know that both sides are using it in the Russia-Ukraine war: Russia has deployed over 200 at a time. Ukraine has sent over 80…
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