In a recent article by CBS News, the United States Military is looking to equip its drones with GPS to avoid collisions. It seems the US military already has plans to implement this, and one of the tests is already in the works and will be released soon. The report states, “In the future, the GPS will be added as a standard bit of equipment on every drone. When the Navy ships these [drone} uncrewed aerial vehicles into the future, they’ll have them equipped with a navigation system that will allow them to find their way back to wherever they came from.” So it’s only logical that the military will be adding this to all its drones once they get them in the field.
This GPS would most likely be attached to the autopilot system of the drone. It will give the operator real-time information on the drone’s location – where it is and how long it will be down for repairs or further surveillance. It makes sense for the military to be prepared in whatever situation it finds itself in. And as our country gets closer to war, the need for more advanced and effective military tools is more important now than ever. A drone strike may turn into a dog fight between our armed forces and terrorists, and if we don’t have the right tools, we may lose that battle.
So the GPS will give our military more maneuverability when operating a drone strike. It also allows them to easily re-orbit and comes back to earth. It will allow the military to move as quickly as they wish without worrying about how they will get their target back into position. We all know that drones have the ability to move at amazing speeds, which makes the dog fight much more difficult. But the GPS will give our military planners a real-time solution to that problem.
One thing to keep in mind is that the United States has been cautious not to use its new drone technologies for bad purposes. They created the software and the hardware, and it’s strictly regulated, so it won’t be used to kill American citizens. Still, you can expect that we will see more strikes on American citizens by our enemies in the future. If they feel they can win a dog fight in a remote area using UAVs, they will continue to do so.
But the other possibility is that we may see strikes against targets within the United States. If we take the Pakistani approach of targeting known terrorist organization members, rather than trying to hunt down random civilians, then we may find that the United States is treating al Qaeda and Taliban members differently. They would definitely consider strikes against American citizens as legitimate self-defense measures. While we are engaged in a bitter war with Pakistan right now, any strikes they engage in inside the United States would surely draw fire from the American public.
In fact, many believe that the new drone technology is such a state-of-the-art tool that it could well be replacing fighter jets one day. Imagine if we had a tool that was cheap, affordable, reusable, and extremely accurate. Well, now we have that in the form of the UAV or remotely piloted aerial vehicle. When we use this new tool, we can literally shoot from the sky and hit a target anywhere inside Pakistan, Afghanistan, or the Indian Ocean. Hopefully, the United States will continue to utilize these tools and stop killing innocent people in foreign conflicts.
