Pictured above, an unmanned drone taken from the military blog Armybase.us.
Washington’s unmanned drone airplanes will not just be Washington’s anymore. Robert Gates, the U.S. Defense Secretary announced plans to start selling and giving them to other countries, including Pakistan. In the past they had been sold only to Italy and Great Britain.
South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Canada, and Spain have also shown interest, as well as a whole host of other countries to whom nobody would ever sell them. Never mind The Missile Control Regime pact from 1987, which makes the sale of autonomous fliers like this illegal and was ironically signed by most of the countries who are now lining up to buy them.
So far this does not include proliferation of the self-directed death machines that shoot missiles, merely the self-directed airplanes that can see what you are doing inside your house from three miles in the sky and send the video back to the aforementioned foreign governments, or possibly Youtube. Pakistan is pushing for the missile-outfitted ones though, and if the seriousness with which everyone is taking the previous treaty is any indication, they’ll be getting them soon enough.
VIA: Reuters
