NEWSHOUR SHARES - Watching Humpback Whales

"Drones are revolutionizing how we study humpback whales" PBS NewsHour 7/3/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In our NewsHour Shares video of the day, this high-flying technology offers brand new insights into humpback whales and ocean science.

DRONES - Film "Eye in the Sky"

"‘Eye in the Sky’ film puts the use of drones in the spotlight" PBS NewsHour 3/18/2016

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SUMMARY:  One of the most controversial elements of President Obama’s national security policy is the use of drones to kill terrorists.  The newly released movie "Eye in the Sky" provides a front-row seat to the debate taking place among national security officials.  Jeffrey Brown reports on the movie and the implications of the use of drones.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A movie thriller being released nationally today delves into the practical, legal and moral issues surrounding drone warfare.

Jeffrey Brown is back with that.

ACTOR:  What’s the plan, Captain?

HELEN MIRREN, Actress:  We need to put a Hellfire through that roof right now.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It’s a new kind of warfare, advanced technology that tracks, identifies, and has the power to destroy enemies by remote control from thousands of miles away.

HELEN MIRREN:  We have two suicide vests with explosives inside that house.

JEFFREY BROWN:  But as the film “Eye in the Sky” asks, should it be used?  If so, when, especially if innocent lives may also be taken?

HELEN MIRREN:  Harold, this is a very time-sensitive target.  Do I have authority to strike?

ACTOR:  The rules of engagement you’re operating under only allow for a low collateral damage estimate.

ACTRESS:  Yes.  Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The film follows British military commanders, including Helen Mirren as Colonel Katherine Powell, as they debate with Cabinet officers and politicians over a strike against Al-Shabaab terrorists in Nairobi, Kenya, who appear to be on the verge of a suicide bombing.

ACTOR:  I told you, they came to witness a capture, not a kill.  Give me a capture option.

HELEN MIRREN:  We no longer have a capture option.  Any action on the ground will lead to an armed confrontation, which we will not be able to contain.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Director Gavin Hood, who joined us recently at the E Street Cinema in Washington, has the action play out in real time.

Official Trailer:

DRONE TECHNOLOGY - Studying Insects

"How studying insects may lead to smarter drones" PBS NewsHour 7/17/2015

(aka Nature Does Better)

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SUMMARY:  When you watch an insect fly in slow motion, you get a whole new perspective on the complexity of movement and engineering.  A new collaborative research project, funded by the U.S. Air Force, is devoted to studying how insects and animals fly so that humans can build smarter, more efficient aircraft.  Hari Sreenivasan reports.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Have you ever watched a bee fly?  Really watched them closely?  Or studied a butterfly or dragonfly darting around your garden?

With the naked eye, it’s often hard to see how they are flying, with tiny wings that can flap hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of times a minute.  But when you watch in slow motion with the help of a high-speed camera, you get a whole new perspective on the mysterious, and incredibly complex world, of insect flight.

So how does a bee with such a giant body and such tiny wings actually fly?

TOM DANIEL, University of Washington:  It beats its wings really fast, and you can’t even see that.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Tom Daniel is a biology professor at the University of Washington who has long studied bees and all sorts of flying insects.  He says there’s a lot scientists have learned about bees over hundreds of years of study, but there is much more to learn about how exactly they fly.

TOM DANIEL:  The sensory information coming off the wing is probably providing gyroscopic data.  The interesting thing is the wings are moving so fast, they are probably exquisitely sensitive to the rotations.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Whether bees and other insects have built-in gyroscopes in their wings is one of the questions Tom Daniel is now trying to answer…

TECHNOLOGY - Domestic UAS, Crowed Skies? (revisited)

"How will thousands of drones impact already crowded skies?" PBS Newshour 12/14/2013

UAS "Unmanned Aerial System" aka UAV

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SUMMARY:  Drone aircraft might be delivering Amazon orders to your door soon says Jeff Bezos.  But first states and the federal government are wrestling with the implications of many new, pilotless aircraft -- how they might affect civil liberties -- and how to keep them out of the way of manned aircraft in skies that are already crowded.

RICK KARR (Newshour):  The future of aviation could be an aircraft light enough to be carried by a grad student, rugged enough to take off from a grassy field, and flexible enough to do just about anything in the air.  Not firing missiles -- this one’s designed to chase storms in Tornado Alley.  But it could just as easily search for someone who’s missing ... relay communications in an emergency ... monitor a pipeline for leaks ... maybe even deliver packages.

WEATHER - Watching the Birth of Hurricanes Using Drones

"NASA Drones Will Watch Hurricanes from Birth" by Becky Oskin, Live Science 7/24/2013

Starting next month, NASA will remotely pilot two high-flying aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean's hurricane nursery to track tropical cyclones from birth.

The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (H3) research mission, now in its second of five years, is part of an effort to reveal the environmental and internal factors that control storm growth, and thus improve hurricane prediction.  The twin Global Hawk drones will fly over and around tropical storms and hurricanes from the storms' source in the East Atlantic Ocean until the cyclones collapse weeks later in the western part of the basin.

Thanks to the drones, "we can get the storms we normally couldn't get," Scott Braun, the mission's principal investigator and a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said during a Google+ hangout today.

Hurricanes in this region arise from tropical storms that form in the tropical Atlantic Ocean.  Warm, moist air evaporating from the ocean creates a circular flow, sparking a rotating storm.

Until the Global Hawks were added to NASA's arsenal, research planes from the United States couldn't reach the Eastern Atlantic Ocean.  There, many hurricanes are born when disturbances move off the west coast of Africa and out over the ocean.  NASA's unmanned aircraft can fly for up to 30 hours, depending on how much weight they carry, and are piloted in shifts by controllers back on the ground.

Researchers are especially interested in how hot, dry and dusty Saharan air affects budding storms, Braun said.  Data collected by the drones last summer suggests the arid air may suppress storm formation, but other studies indicate the strong winds heading east from Africa may give swirling storms an extra kick.

"The dry air coming off Africa is a huge mystery," said Brian McNoldy, a weather researcher at the University of Miami, who is not involved in the mission.  "Being able to get wind fields from storms in the far Eastern Atlantic is something we've never been able to do," McNoldy said during the hangout.

The Global Hawk drones will join manned research planes flown by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force in monitoring hurricanes, Braun said.  "We plan to collaborate with them to fly together or fly in series, so we can maintain as continuous a coverage of a storm as we possibly can," he said.  In 2010, six planes from NASA, the NOAA and the Air Force flew together to track Hurricane Karl.

One of the upcoming remotely piloted planes will release dropsondes, disposable weather recording devices that send back real-time data for forecasting.  Another will carry a detector to look for gamma-ray bursts, the electrical discharges known as dark lightning.  Other instruments will track rainfall, wind speed, temperature, humidity and more.

MILITARY - Future of U.S. Drone Campaign

"What's Next for the U.S. Drone Campaign as Obama Tries to End a Decade of War?" PBS Newshour 5/24/2013

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SUMMARY:  According to reports, U.S. drone attacks on militants in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere are conducted by both the CIA and the U.S. military, but will eventually be handled solely by the Defense Department.  New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti talks to Jeffrey Brown about the CIA's shifting role in the fight against terrorists.

AMERICA - More Evidence That Orwellian 1984 is Already Here, Domestic Drones

So, those of us who are already worried about our privacy now have to add our neighbors to the mix of WHO is violating our privacy.

So are the 'new' Orwellian rules for domestic drones with cameras going to allow citizens to sue for them being used to spy on their back yards WITHOUT a warrant?  Better yet, make such spying a crime?

"Rise of Domestic Drones Draws Questions About Privacy, Limiting Use" PBS Newshour 4/18/2013

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RAY SUAREZ (Newshour):  And we turn now to the subject of drones.  Small unmanned aerial devices outfitted with surveillance equipment can be bought by virtually anyone and flown legally throughout the country.

As Hari Sreenivasan reports, the tiny aircraft are triggering a large debate over acceptable uses of domestic drones and privacy.

WOMAN:  Oh.

WOMAN:  Oh, my God.

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):  On a Sunday afternoon, an hour's drive outside the nation's capital, the skies were filled with drones, not the lethal military killing machines we have heard about overseas, but unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, of all shapes and sizes that are legal and flown in the U.S. today.

It was a fly-in by 40 members of the D.C. Area Drone User Group.  Washington resident Timothy Reuter is the group's founder.  It has nearly 300 members.

TIMOTHY REUTER, D.C. Area Drone User Group:  We have a lot of people who are interested in photography.  We have some longtime engineers, some who even work professionally on drone projects.  You have longtime R.C. flyers.

And then you have people like myself who have no engineering background, have never done this before, but are excited by this as a new technology and just want to get started and find a community of people to work with.