Some Say It's Already Happening

Osama bin Laden, meet Buck Rogers. Agence France Presse suggests unmanned aerial vehicles might soon make suicide bombers and those who would turn airliners into guided missiles things of the past.

Instead, the head of the Canadian secret services, Michel Gauthier, suggests that UAVs -- with a wingspan of less than 16 feet, and capable of carrying more than 100 pounds of explosives -- can fly almost anywhere with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to GPS... and do so virtually undetected by radar.

Gauthier, speaking at a recent conference in Calgary, said terrorist groups are becoming more and more interested in UAVs and ultralights as delivery systems for their special brand of mayhem and destruction.

Military technology specialist David Hambling agrees.

"While billions have been spent on ballistic missile defense, little attention has been given to the more imminent threat posed by unmanned air vehicles in the hands of terrorists or rogue states," wrote Hambling in a recent article on the Defense Tech website.

According to AFP, that's already happening. In August 2002, the Colombian army found nine remote-controlled aircraft at a base captured from anti-government guerillas. And last year... the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hezbollah flew a drone over Israeli military positions along the border.

Then there's the engineer from New Zealand, who built a miniature cruise missile in his garage. That project was eventually shut down... though Bruce Simpson had already completed the missile.

And, as Aero-News has reported, Yamaha is already marketing a 12-foot long drone helicopter virtually impossible to spot on radar.

Great. Something else to worry about...

FMI: www.defensetech.org