Navy Grounds Drone Copters, Then Spends Quarter-Billion to Buy More | Danger Room | Wired.com.

This is really my test post for the WordPress ‘Press This’ tool which embeds in one’s browser and enables a blogger to upload and comment directly on a link as a blog post…so far so good…although to include the title picture, I still had to save it to HDD, GIMP it to a maximum dimension of 600 dpi and then import it manually out of the Press This session which only allows one to embed a linked image…I hate doing this because it is all too easy for the image to go offline and leave a gaping wound in the post…

An MQ-8B Fire Scout drone copter lands on the U.S.S. McInerney after helping a counternarcotics mission in 2010. Photo: U.S. Southern Command

Anyway…I thought that this article was a good example of the smoke and mirrors games that are being played (STILL!) in the UAS game. While Firescout might be all very clever technically, I do have to question what value it brings, other than as a technology demonstrator, to the missionspace that can no be accomplished equally as well and with more flexibility with a manned helicopter. Maybe if manned helicopters crashed/malfunctioned as often as rotary-wing UAS, one could make an argument based on safety and cost savings…to argue, as has already been done, that UAS like the Unmanned Cargo Aerial Vehicle save aircrew from boredom is pretty weak and fails ABSOLUTELY to take into account the eyes on the AO lost when employing a supply UAS and also the ability to retask the ‘aircraft’ for other missions as can be done with ANY manned helicopter capable of a supply tasking…

A decade into the modern UAS generation, we really need to, with some sense of urgency, shed all the myth and mystique surrounding UAS and focus simply on developing capability where it adds the most value – or even just where it adds value…while my design for a UAS toilet roll changer is a. quite unique, b. cutting edge and c. would clearly save millions from the drudgery of bathroom maintenance, I have long since given up on it being my ticket to fame and fortune…

My final thoughts on Press This are much the same…a solution for which there is not really a problem, except maybe for the very few too lazy or otherwise incapable of starting a new post, giving it a title and pasting in a link…I may use it from time to time but certainly it’s not making my blogging any easier…Much like my last post on the glory of dumbness, sometimes making this a little harder so thatw e have to work towards them actually results in a better, more thought out product and end result…?

The information militia like all such bodies can be either useful or not and that often depends upon the level of structure within…the less structure, the more akin to a mob it may be and, for me, Press This encourages the ‘information flash mob’…