USAF Taps ESPN To Compile Drone "Highlight" Video 114
mbstone writes "The Air Force has a problem: Its drones generate thousands of hours of video (I almost said 'footage.') And most of it is miles of endless desert. USAF needs to distill the highlights, if you will, and nobody does it better than ESPN, the TV sports network. Air Force officials have asked ESPN for help in analyzing the 327,384 hours collected just this year. What we really need in times like these is sportscaster Warner Wolf. 'Let's go to the videotape, pick it up right here, Taliban in the home black.'"
This is good news (Score:2, Funny)
The ESPN guys will carefully add the yellow first down markers so us home viewers will be able to make sense of each operation as it unfolds.
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Authoritarian America, brought to you by the Adam-Lanza-in-Chief, president and leader of the New GOP (aka, Obama).
And yeah, some of you may be offended, but do note
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Thank you. A sensible post on /., at last.
Mod this guy up please (Score:2)
Ran out of points myself.
His post says it all.
My tinfoil is picking up a convergence... (Score:3)
Marco Rubio vs: Hilary Clinton 2016, sponsored by the same interested parties, with the same unsavory results.
One of them gets elected.
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For a start, Obama could start not behaving like GWB. I thought GWB was an ass because of the things he did. Turns out Obama is a worse ass.
There's a whole lot of greybeard inertia based on the idea that Democrats are liberals. Obama's first four years proved that the Democrats aren't who they were in 1974, and I wish people would wake up. Evil is evil. It is evil when the GOP does it. And it DOES NOT become ponies just because the Democrats do it.
get madden to do the commentary (Score:3)
get madden to do the commentary
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Apparently, like with with Orwell's work, some people seem to be confusing a warning with an instruction manual.
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get madden to do the commentary
Oh god. That would be even worse than the commentary from retards on YouTube.
"See folks that's a missile. A missile is a thing that flies through the sky and goes boom. The sky is normally kinda blue, not actually gray like you see here. It's kinda like it's faking you out. But either way you don't want to be under a missile because it's not a good thing to be underneath."
It's time for our plays of the week! (Score:3, Funny)
Reaper connects to Assam deep across the middle... Bam!
Beast of Kandahar throws down the over the horizon hell fire jam... in your face Azim!
Head drone in the red zone. Easy over the middle dump-off to Al Queda, called back by the UN for innocent bystander. Damn replacment observers.
In the not top ten we have a village of children catching a bomb as the clock runs out. Poor situational awareness there Steve.
Captcha: hammered
YouTube it! (Score:2)
Like, kinda sorta crowd outsource it to armchair analysts. Just like ESPN does to armchair quarterbacks.
Who would watch hours on end of boring drone video? The same folks who watch the rest of the junk on YouTube. They can like or dislike the important or filler bits.
And let the terrorist squeal with glee, "Hey, I'm on YouTube!"
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Somehow, I doubt that the "terrorists" who have been captured on a video, which was taken by a drone, which has been sent to kill "terrorists", will have even a slight chance of sqealing anything, with glee or in any other manner.
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"Somehow, I doubt that the "terrorists" who have been captured on a video, which was taken by a drone, which has been sent to kill "terrorists", will have even a slight chance of sqealing anything, with glee or in any other manner."
If they keep waiting until the end of the year to analyze the video, a lot of the things the drones see probably won't be there by the time any action is taken.
Your tax dollars at work.
No magic in ESPN (Score:2)
Someone watches all of those gamed. Every uninteresting baseball inning, every boring back and forth soccer kick, even days long cricket matches.
ESPN has thousands of eyes, most of then not paid by them.
They put up a camera or tap into one used for local consumption, look at the score sheet and cherry pick the highlights off their DVR.
You could scan your twitter feed to know what sections to watch. You can listen to the crowd at the game and know when to hit rewind.
There is no shortcut magic that ESPN has.
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exactly. they may even only watch one play from one camera angle, but then once the play has been deemed good enough go back to other angles to pick it out.
If you have 330,000 hours of video then you need to have a group of people watching that video live, and tagging sections for others to watch, who tag the best of those sections for someone else to watch and then compile it all into short clips.
The Drones (Score:3)
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I think you miss his point.
A 250lb JDAM dropped from a MQ-9 is treated completely differently (in the press) than the exact same 250lb JDAM dropped from an F-16.
The onl
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But it is still a human pilot hitting the pickle button.
pickle button?
is that some kind of vlassic humor or something?
Re:Droning On About Drones (Score:5, Informative)
is that some kind of vlassic humor or something?
No, that's the (long term) military slang for the button on the stick that releases the bomb. Generally, it is a red button.
Re:Droning On About Drones (Score:5, Informative)
pickle button?
Developed in the mid-1930s, the Norden bomb-sight was advertised as being so accurate that the operator could put a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet.
It was an accurate sight, but complex to use and required skill. But "Pickling those bombs" stuck long after the sight had been retired.
Re:Droning On About Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not so sure about that. Yes, the percentages are increasing drove v manned aircraft (flight hours and bombing missions). But the majority of actual bombing missions? I could be wrong, but gonna have to ask for a citation for that one.
They are the main ones we hear about, though.
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the drones are included in the opening argument because as of now they are the main mains of delivery currently employed Not so sure about that. Yes, the percentages are increasing drove v manned aircraft (flight hours and bombing missions). But the majority of actual bombing missions? I could be wrong, but gonna have to ask for a citation for that one. They are the main ones we hear about, though.
...Mmmmm, you may have something there, but I cant come up with statistics with quick googling and pretty much the only US aerial attacks I've read about for pretty long while have concerned drone strikes, especially in Pakistan operated by the CIA I have made the assumption there are no conventional planes doing regular patrols/bombing runs. Still, my main issue is with all the dead collateral labeled as enemy combatants and dogs, even when theyre clearly civilian casualties.
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Agreed. Civilian casualties, accidental, intentional or misidentified, has been an issue forever.
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Let's be honest: is the outcry due to collateral damage (which nearly universally occurs in any war) or the fact that it's not a manned pilot exposing his or hersself life, but rather what people perceive to be a robot (enter skynet fears here).
I think the real outrage (in the US anyway) comes not from the strikes themselves, but rather that the average idiot (read: the general populace) believes that these drones truly operate autonomously. They don't realize there's a human telling that drone what to do.
Re:Droning On About Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the real outrage (in the US anyway) comes not from the strikes themselves, but rather that the average idiot (read: the general populace) believes that these drones truly operate autonomously.
I can see you have trouble placing yourselves in the position of the victims here; theyre going along with their business in their country that as far as they no have no active wars with anyone and suddenly out of the clear blue sky a hellfire missile strikes and kills 4/5ths of the clan during whatever social gathering they were there for; the survivors wont give a fuck what fired the missile and on top of that all the aggressors label all people killed in the strike as enemy combatants regardless of age or actual stance against the US and call it a day.
Why in Pete's name is this modded funny? (Score:2)
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How did this get modded *4, Funny*?
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And of course, in classic terrorist tradition, we go for a double tap, targeting the rescuers acting on natural human instinct to help those in need, or funeral attendees wishing to say goodbye to their loved ones.
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Not sure what you mean by people going about their business, and the country not having active wars. Afghanistan and regions of Pakistan are in states of war, whether it meets the definition of a "conventional" war is irrelevant. We're talking about places that harbor terrorists, experience bombings (performed by locals) every few days, and produce jihad videos recruiting soldiers. I don't know what you're imagining that you would think it's a country at peace.
Also I wonder how you're getting your informati
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Seriously, do you actually believe that? Fucking Air Farce can't tell the difference between a wedding party and a terrorist training camp, and you actually think they are able to follow someone for weeks without being detected? Yeesh.
By the way, I've got a bridge you might want to buy, it's got a great view of the water . . .
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clearly civilian casualties.
You mean the insurgents not dressed in the official insurgents uniforms and helmets..?
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People going about their daily business in a foreign country not at war with us, who would probably never earn enough in their lifetime just to get the planefare to the US together, are "insurgents"? What fucked up warped kind of asshole are you?
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People going about their daily business in a foreign country not at war with us, who would probably never earn enough in their lifetime just to get the planefare to the US together, are "insurgents"?
Yeah. Like this guy:
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1188027.1354977866!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/libya19e-1-web.jpg [nydailynews.com]
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/fbi-questions-suspect-benghazi-attack-hours-article-1.1226081 [nydailynews.com]
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It's not just that -- the term "enemy combatant" has been redefined to mean any male more than 12 or 13 years old. It's pretty hard to miss a combatant when you basically target any non-infant male.
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But there is always the immense satisfaction of giving thepilot a ticker tape parade when he returns.
What really irks me is how our language
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Well, it's not merely a lack of reprisal -- it's total celebration of murder. Democrats are the New GOP, and Old GOP is a parody of itself. That Democrats consider themselves liberals is absolute self-delusion. It has to be the most disgusting party ever, filled to the brim as it is with hypocrites who hated Bush (with good reason) but love Obama when he does the same shit and more.
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A 250lb JDAM dropped from a MQ-9 is treated completely differently (in the press) than the exact same 250lb JDAM dropped from an F-16.
Because the US president treats it differently too.
He doesn't consider using them an act of war requiring approval from Congress:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2011/06/koh_is_my_god_pilot.html [slate.com]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2012/12/10/the-threat-of-drones-ushering-in-invisible-wars/ [washingtonpost.com]
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I think you miss his point.
A 250lb JDAM dropped from a MQ-9 is treated completely differently (in the press) than the exact same 250lb JDAM dropped from an F-16.
The only real difference between the two aircraft is where the pilot is sitting. But it is still a human pilot hitting the pickle button.
There is one major difference you are missing: Pre drone, the CIA didn't have much of an air force, and what it did have was exotic recon gear. The conventional military also operates drones, of course, and there isn't much effort made to attribute any given attack to any specific operator; but one locus of dislike for the drone fleet is really a locus of dislike for the fact that the CIA is now in the business of running a rapidly expanding and not-even-nominally-accountable-to-anybody fleet of ground atta
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Civilian deaths should always be part of the decision making process when deciding who to target but it should not be the only criteria. The drone program has introduced fear and uncertainty in those planning or executing attacks and that is a good thing.
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The "human rights" activist tribe are just a bunch of pretentious and fickle opportunists. None of them complain about human drones who strap suicide vests onto children.
As far as I know, the US military isn't spending my tax dollars to strap suicide vests onto children.
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Shhh... pointing out that some of our enemies are real assholes is supposed to be a magical justification for absolutely anything we do, wish to do, or may have done, however tangentially related. How can you be so mean as to oppose this argument?
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A guy sitting in an observation balloon 100 years ago shooting at ground targets wasn't any different.
A guy in a balloon can see clearly what he is shooting at avoid firing at civilians. He has plenty of time to select military only targets.
A guy flying a drone has a map with an "X" on it, and when his little drone icon gets within a few kilometres he fires a missile and turns around. Obviously he can't do overflights and then study the footage carefully to make sure the X really is an enemy training camp and not a wedding party because that would give the bad guys a chance to get away.
The "human rights" activist tribe are just a bunch of pretentious and fickle opportunists. None of them complain about human drones who strap suicide vests onto children.
I do.
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What I don't get is why drones are considered to be some kind of "new evil" as compared to regular manned aircraft which have been doing the same thing since before WW1.
Because we are a step away from letting the machines decide whether or not to pull the trigger.
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Drones are not a new evil. However, they are a new way to convince yourself psychologically that you're not committing evil, however necessary that evil may be.
The guy in the balloon was deployed to a war zone. The drone pilot commutes to work.
The guy in the balloon was debriefed and demobbed. The drone pilot probably wasn't.
The guy in the balloon physically climbed into the aircraft and traveled the long distance to the targets. The drone pilot sat back in a chair waiting for the AI to move the drone to th
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One thing I cant understand about this whole thing; how is it possible they blanket label everyone on the receiving end of the hellfire missile as 'enemy combatant' or 'a dog', even if theyre just civilians and or children.
Note to Self: It's very dangerous to be around people associated with groups engaged in acts of violence against the US no matter how justified I feel they may or may not be. I should avoid them, especially at funerals.
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WW2, The Firebombing of Dresden. need i say more?
the US and British bombed Germany into defeat destroying cities and killing millions of civilians in the process
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War is hell. It always has been and always will be. It's impossible to conduct a war without killing non-combatants. Hell, a lot of the time friendly fire gets our own troops. People should understand that when you go to war it's going to be messy and expensive and it should always be a last case, no choice scenario when you do it. It's bad for everyone. I felt like something needed to be done about Saddam and really I am glad the bastard and his sons are dead but it ended up costing a fortune and I d
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Hard to imagine the Iraqi people would want Saddam back. Maybe I'm wrong but I think I'd rather be dead than to live under such tyranny.
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Human rights organizations estimate that Saddam is directly responsible for more than 800,000 dead. This does not include those killed in fighting the war against Iran. Tales of entire families tortured to death for crimes against Saddam abound. Living in terror of being tortured is hardly stability. Soviet Russia was heaven by comparison. They only tortured people who were an actual threat to the Communist Party. I don't doubt that Iraq still has problems and will for some time but they sure seemed h
Re:The Drones (Score:4, Informative)
"The death toll in Germany and Austria due to Allied strategic bombing was estimated at 500,000 by the West German government." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II [wikipedia.org]
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WW2, The Firebombing of Dresden. need i say more?
I think Hiroshima and Nagasaki beat the hell out of anything else for "collateral damage".
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"millions of civilians" is a bit of an exaggeration, since there were fewer than 1.5 million German civilian casualties of that war.
Or were you perhaps thinking of the 14+ milllion Soviet civilian deaths caused by the Germans?
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One thing I cant understand about this whole thing; how is it possible they blanket label everyone on the receiving end of the hellfire missile as 'enemy combatant'
So your theory is they fly these things around and shoot randomly at any thing that moves?
These targets are watched for days and weeks, and people are tracked across great distances.
There are eyes and ears on the ground that know who comes an goes. Occasionally the screw up
and hit some place where children are present. Doesn't mean there wasn't a legitimate target there.
Osama had his wives and kids and grandkids with him too.
Naivety. Cute in children. Tiresome in Juveniles. Just plain stupid in adults.
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What about blind trust in authority or systems? Denial of obvious potential possibilities simply because thinking about them would be inconvenient? Motivated reasoning?
I find all of those things deplorable in adults, but the adults keep displaying these traits.
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Dr. Julian Bashir, after expressing his disgust at the activities of Section 31, compared the Federation with a "24th Century Rome" in which laws were ignored out of a blind faith that "Caesar can do no wrong." (DS9: "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges")
Do I need to say more? [memory-alpha.org]
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Gee, it must be a wonderful skill to have a quote from tv show ready for every occasion.
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Re:The Drones (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't like our government very much right now... but you do not understand the history of war. In the past, even 30 years ago, most countries would have carpet bombed large sections of Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. The bloodshed would have been far far worse. Prior to Arial bombing, in the WW1 era they would have used mortars with chemical weapons. Prior to that, they would have just shelled major cities with artillery. Go back further to the civil war era and they'd have stormed the city with calvary and burnt it to the ground. During the middle ages they'd have taken the cities, raped the women, killed the men... then you have the roman era in which they'd do all of the above, and then also salt the fields of the enemy so their crops wouldn't grow for years. Prior to that, they'd again, do all of the above, and also enslave the populace.
War sucks. It sucks less now... but now it's all on video for you to see so it's more in your face.
Re:The Drones (Score:4, Funny)
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In the past, even 30 years ago, most countries would have carpet bombed large sections of Afghanistan to fight the Taliban.
In the past, even 30 years ago, the USA would have made the Taliban dangerous by training and arming them. Whoops, that's what we did! In the past, even 10 years ago, the USA would have given one billion dollars to the Taliban as part of the War on Drugs. Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that the War on Drugs is a moneymaking operation. Consequently, there is no reason to believe that giving a billion dollars to the Taliban is anything other than an investment in more moneymaking. And now, "po
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One thing I cant understand about this whole thing; how is it possible they blanket label everyone on the receiving end of the hellfire missile as 'enemy combatant' or 'a dog', even if theyre just civilians and or children.
The same way that any other terrorists do, by saying they're not really people.
IRA: Oh, they're Gardai, they're not really people
UDA: Oh, they're not really people, they're Catholics
IDF: Oh, they're not really people, they're Arabs
Sensationalized headline, once again (Score:5, Informative)
USAF Taps ESPN To Compile Drone "Highlight" Video
FTA:
Air Force officials have met with the sports cable network ESPN to discuss how it handles large amounts of video that stream in. The visit resulted in no technological breakthroughs, but helped in developing training and expertise, the Air Force said.
C'mon guys. Just a little bit of a clue?
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im sure that they will get some kind of payment just in the "Keep Your Mouth Shut" part of the exercise. Plus holding a current Classified "ticket" is good for maybe being seen above the cloud of other candidates for a job.
Re:Sensationalized headline, once again (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot Taps WWN To Compile Article "Highlight" Stories
Slashdot has a problem: Its submitters send in hundreds of random links (I almost said "articles.") And most of it is dozens and dozens of sentences long, many with words of more than one syllable. Slashdot needs to distill something vaguely related to a few of those words that will generate page hits, and nobody does that better than Weekly World News, the "alien dingo Elvis impersonators ate my JFK love-child baby" organization. Slashdot officials have asked WWN for help in analyzing the 3,141,592 words collected just this year. What we really need in times like this is George Gilles de la Tourette. "Let's go to the story, pick up maybe three words out of it - USAF ESPN drone - and fill in the rest with whatever other random words come to mind."
"Taps" is a bullshit word (Score:2)
"Taps" has become a bogus oversensationalized headline, as if there is some great honor fought for by many that some lucky soul is blessed by God to be given the opportunity to perform.
But it's really just a dishonest synonym for "ask": "USAF asks ESPN to compile drone highlight video" or if money has changed hands: "USAF pays ESPN to compile highlight video."
Lets have some truth in language and get rid of these bullshit words.
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OP here.
Sensationalized? Yes. Inaccurate? No (except that ESPN isn't itself editing the video, they're just providing training and expertise). Unfair? No.
Used to be, it took a Joseph Heller [wikipedia.org] to satirize modern aerial warfare and to imbue it with black comedy. To compare war with sportscasting may be disrespectful both to the drone pilots and to those targeted, but USAF invited the comparison by contacting ESPN in the first place.
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Inaccurate? No (except that ESPN isn't itself editing the video, they're just providing training and expertise).
You made it sound like ESPN is going to review classified UAV full motion video, which you knew not to be case. That's a far cry from I would call accurate.
Taliban (Score:2)
And the Taliban is going deep, deep... and INTERCEPTION!... US just bombed the entire defensive line and stole the ball! 90, 80, 70... they're going all the way... wait... you're saying we just blew half the crowd away and a referee? 50! 40, 30...
Yeah. Well, I suppose it would be my country that would turn killing people into a sport. ;(
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Yeah. Well, I suppose it would be my country that would turn killing people into a sport. ;(
I think the Romans beat us to that quite a while ago.
Saw something on this (Score:2)
Video processing technology (Score:2)
There's webcam software that can perform motion detection, and do shape recognition. You also have image segmentation and texture classification.
Motion detection looks for changes between two frames. Image segmentation splits an image by looking for edges and creating silhouettes. Texture classification works on looking for different types of texture (walls, ground, trees, bushes, sand). Shape recognition works on trying to convert 2D images into 3D shapes and orientations. Image processing researchers usua
WARNER WOLF RULES! (Score:2)
holy moly, im happy to see him being referenced... he is a great sportsman, ..and funny to boot.
as for the air force needing ESPNs help?!
i bet he would say "COME ON!!!!"
seems silly to me, probably more a part of their recruiting efforts !
Waiting for Berman's highlight reel (Score:1)
I've got your highlight reel right here: (Score:1)
How many kids have we murdered with these drones?
OMG! the quarterback is toast!!! (Score:2)
Oh my god, the quarterback is toast!!!
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Obligatory tangential reference to football type quote:
Oh my god, the quarterback is toast!!!
I've always thought football was pretty stupid, but I do prefer their long bombs to the type that we drop on civilians.
ESPN commentary on drones... (Score:2)
Drone 6257 releases a missile! Its going... going... going... IT COULD GO ALL THE WAY!!! *BOOM!* TOUCHDOWN!
The material should be televised (Score:2)
So they don't actually have an automatic system for picking up the content of interest? That's hardly believable.
According to one drone operator [spiegel.de] they have at least a recording system which helps to label smaller than adult size human objects on two legs as four legged dogs.
War as a sport (Score:2)
Confused by highlights (Score:1)
why not adress (Score:1)