Skynet Update

It's like we're on a 20 or 25-year cycle.

1960: JFK says "missile gap"

1984: Reagan says "defense gap"

2003: W Bush says "intel gap"

Like the man said: History does not repeat itself - but it can rhyme like a motherfucker

Gotta wonder what happens if we figure out how not to be convinced of the need to worry about "falling behind" in our ability to blow shit up with fun new gadgets, and got back to working on getting people to resist the urge to bash each other over the head with sticks and rocks in the first fuckin' place.

Mutually Automated Destruction: The Escalating Global A.I. Arms Race

China, the U.S., Russia and others have ramped up their contest over artificial-intelligence-backed weapons and military systems. The buildup has been compared to the dawn of the nuclear weapons age.

At a military parade in Beijing in September, President Xi Jinping and his special guests, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, watched as Chinese forces showed off several models of drones that could autonomously fly alongside fighter jets into battle.

The demonstration of technological might immediately set off alarm bells in the United States. Pentagon officials concluded that America’s program for unmanned combat drones was lagging China’s, according to three U.S. defense and intelligence officials. Russia, too, was thought to be ahead in building facilities that could produce advanced drones, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on military capabilities.

U.S. officials pushed domestic defense companies to step up. Last month, Anduril, a defense technology start-up in California, began manufacturing A.I.-backed, self-flying drones that appeared similar to the ones shown in China. Production at a factory outside Columbus, Ohio, started three months ahead of schedule, part of an effort to close the gap with China, one defense official said.

China’s military display and the U.S. countermove were part of an escalating global arms race over A.I.-backed autonomous weapons and defense systems. Designed to operate by themselves using A.I., the technology reduces the need for human intervention in decisions like when to hit a moving target or defend against an attack.

In recent years, many nations have quietly engaged in a contest of one-upmanship over these arsenals, including drones that identify and strike targets without human command, self-flying fighter jets that coordinate attacks at speeds and altitudes that few human pilots can reach, and central systems run by A.I. that analyze intelligence to recommend airstrike targets quickly.

The United States and China, the world’s largest military powers, are at the center of the competition. But the race has widened. Russia and Ukraine, now in their fifth year of war, are looking for every technological advantage. India, Israel, Iran and others are investing in military A.I., while France, Germany, Britain and Poland are rearming amid doubts about the Trump administration’s commitment to NATO.

Each nation is aiming to amass the most advanced technological stockpile in case they need to fight drone against drone and algorithm against algorithm in ways that people cannot match, defense and intelligence officials said.

Russia, China and the United States are all building A.I. arms as a deterrent and for “mutually assured destruction,” Palmer Luckey, Anduril’s founder, said in an interview in February.

The buildup has been compared to the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1940s, when the atomic bomb’s destructive power forced rival nations into an uneasy standoff, leading to more than four decades of nuclear weapons brinkmanship.

But while the implications of nuclear weapons are well understood, A.I.’s military capabilities are just beginning to be known. The technology — which does not need to pause, eat, drink or sleep — is set to upend warfare by making battles faster and more unpredictable, officials said.

Exactly which nation is furthest ahead is unclear. Many programs are in a research and development phase, and budgets are classified. Operatives from China, the United States and Russia watch one another’s factory lines, military displays and weapons deals to deduce what the other is doing, intelligence officials said.

China and Russia are experimenting with letting A.I. make battlefield decisions on its own, two U.S. officials said. China is developing systems for dozens of autonomous drones to coordinate attacks without human input, while Russia is building Lancet drones that can circle in the sky and autonomously pick targets, they said.

Even as the specifics of the technologies remain veiled, the intentions are clear. In 2017, Mr. Putin declared that whoever leads in A.I. “will become the ruler of the world.” Mr. Xi said in 2024 that technology would be the “main battleground” of geopolitical competition. In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed all branches of the U.S. military to adopt A.I., saying they needed to “accelerate like hell.”

Billions of dollars are being poured into the efforts. The Pentagon requested more than $13 billion for autonomous systems in its latest budget, and has spent billions more over the past decade, though the total is difficult to track because A.I. funding has been spread across many programs.

China, which some researchers said was spending amounts comparable to those of the United States, has used financial incentives to spur private industry to build A.I. capabilities. Russia has invested in drone and autonomy-related programs, analysts said, using the war in Ukraine to test and refine them on the battlefield.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said China had proposed international frameworks for governing military A.I. and called for “a prudent and responsible attitude” toward its development.

The Pentagon and Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.

The dynamics may resemble the Cold War, but experts cautioned that the A.I. era was different. Start-ups and investors now play a role in the military and are as critical as universities and governments. A.I. technology is becoming widely available, opening the door for countries from Turkey to Pakistan to develop new capabilities. What’s emerging is a grinding innovation race without any obvious endpoint.

Ethical questions about ceding life-or-death choices to machines are being overtaken by the rush to build. The only major accord on A.I. weaponry between China and the United States was reached in 2024, a nonbinding pledge to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons. Other countries, like Russia, have made no commitments.

Some argued that A.I.’s impact would be bigger than any arms race.

“A.I. is a general-purpose technology like electricity. And we don’t talk about an electricity arms race,” said Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official involved in autonomous weapons development. “To the extent A.I. is transforming our military, it’s the way that electricity or computers or the airplane did.”

The Buildup Begins

In 2016 at an air show in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, a Chinese supplier flew 67 drones in unison. An animated film separately showed the drones destroying a missile launcher, a demonstration of their capabilities.

Russia, too, was building its drone arsenal. In 2014, its military planners set a goal of making 30 percent of its combat power autonomous by 2025. By 2018, the Russian military was testing an unmanned armed vehicle in Syria. While the tank failed, losing its signal and missing targets, it underscored Moscow’s ambitions.

In Washington, Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who had previously worked in intelligence at the Defense Department, was assessing whether A.I. could solve a more immediate problem. The U.S. military was collecting so much data — drone footage, satellite imagery, intercepted signals — that nobody could make sense of it all.

“There was nothing in any of the research labs in the military that were capable of generating results in less than a couple of years,” General Shanahan said. “We had a problem we could not solve without A.I.”

In 2017, General Shanahan helped create Project Maven, a Defense Department effort for the military to incorporate A.I. into its systems. One aim was to work with Silicon Valley to build software to swiftly process images like drone footage for intelligence purposes. Google was tapped to help.

But the project quickly ran into hurdles. The Pentagon’s procurement system, built around legacy contractors and long timelines, slowed things down.

Project Maven, now a Palantir platform, was designed as part of a Defense Department effort for the military to incorporate A.I. into its systems. It has played a role in the Iran war. Palantir
When word spread inside Google about Project Maven, employees also protested, saying a company that had once pledged “Don’t be evil” should not help identify targets for drone strikes. Google eventually backed away from the project.

In 2019, Palantir, a data analytics company co-founded by the tech investor Peter Thiel, took over Maven. New defense tech start-ups like Anduril also emerged, supplying the federal government with A.I.-backed sensor towers along the southern U.S. border.

In China, Beijing pushed commercial tech companies toward defense partnerships in a strategy called “civil-military fusion.” Private firms were drawn into military procurement, joint research and other work with defense institutions. Companies working on drones and unmanned boats found growing military demand for their technologies.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 turned theory into reality.

Outgunned, outspent and outnumbered, Ukraine held off Russia with an improvised arsenal of cheap technology. Hobbyist racing drones were used to attack Russian positions on the front lines, eventually becoming more lethal than artillery and, in some cases, gaining autonomous capabilities. Remote-controlled boats kept Russia’s Black Sea fleet pinned down.

Russia adapted as well. Its Lancet drone, which was initially piloted by humans, has incorporated autonomous targeting features.

“The four years of brutality on the battlefield in Ukraine has served as a laboratory for the world,” said Mr. Horowitz, the former Pentagon official.

In recent months, Ukraine began sharing its troves of battlefield data with Palantir and other firms so A.I. systems can better learn to fight wars.

Across Europe, where governments are aiming to diminish their reliance on the American military, the lessons from Ukraine resounded. In February, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Poland said they would develop a joint air defense system to guard against drones.

China also advanced. At the 2024 Zhuhai Airshow, Norinco, one of the country’s main defense manufacturers, revealed multiple weapons with A.I. capabilities. One of its systems showed an entire brigade, including armored vehicles and drones, which were controlled and operated by A.I.

Another craft, unveiled by the state-run Aviation Industry Corporation of China, was a 16-ton jet-powered drone designed to serve as a flying aircraft carrier that could deploy dozens of smaller drones midflight.

"Left click, right click"

A week after American and Israeli forces struck Iran in February, a senior Pentagon official gave a glimpse into what computerized warfare now looks like at a conference livestreamed by Palantir.

A satellite feed showed a warehouse. With the click of a mouse, an officer selected a row of white trucks parked outside to target in real time. In seconds, the A.I. software suggested a weapon, calculated fuel and ammunition needs, weighed the cost and generated a strike plan.

It was the present-day version of Project Maven, which General Shanahan had started and was now run by Palantir and powered by commercial A.I. The system analyzed intelligence from various sources, generated target lists ranked by priority and recommended weapons, all but eliminating the lag between identifying a target and destroying it.

Embedded with a military version of Claude, the chatbot made by the A.I. firm Anthropic, Maven helped generate thousands of targets in the opening weeks of the Iran campaign, a pace that Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, attributed in part to “advanced A.I. tools.”

Cameron Stanley, the Defense Department’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, who spoke at Palantir’s conference, said that what Maven was doing was “revolutionary.” Human involvement amounted to “left click, right click, left click,” he said.

The claims about Maven’s abilities might be overstated and much of the American advantage came from the scale of data flowing in and the skills of the people using it, said Emelia Probasco, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

“It’s not rocket science,” she said. “I suspect that China already has something like it.”

In a recent report analyzing thousands of People’s Liberation Army procurement documents, Ms. Probasco found that China was building systems that mirrored American ones. In one case, China was trying to replicate the Joint Fires Network, an American program set up to link sensors and weapons globally so a drone on one side of the world could cue a strike from the other.

In some areas, China clearly leads. Its manufacturing dominance means it can produce autonomous weapons at a scale the Pentagon cannot match.

Inside the Trump administration, the push for A.I. weapons has taken on an almost evangelical fervor. Last month, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a security risk, partly because the company wanted to limit its technology’s use for automated weapons.

“We will win the A.I. race,” Jacob Helberg, the under secretary of state for economic affairs, said last month at the Hill & Valley Forum, an annual conference in Washington, which he co-founded to bridge Silicon Valley and the government.

At the conference, tech executives, investors and government officials cheered speakers who called for tech companies to give the military unfettered access to A.I.

Anduril’s Mr. Luckey argued that the A.I. arms buildup might prevent major wars. The logic mirrored the Cold War: If both sides knew what the machines could do, neither would risk finding out.

“Conflicts between superpowers will similarly deteriorate if you can build the things that deter warfare effectively enough,” he said.

Yet deterrence assumes rationality, while A.I. weapons are designed to move faster than human reason. In exercises dating to 2020, researchers explored how autonomous systems could accelerate escalation and erode human control — with some alarming results.

In one scenario, a system operated by the United States and Japan responded to a missile launch from North Korea by autonomously firing an unexpected counterattack.

“The speed of autonomous systems led to inadvertent escalation,” said the report by analysts at RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization that works with the military.

General Shanahan, who retired from the military in 2020 and is now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, said the race he had helped start kept him up at night. Governments must set clear boundaries before the technology outruns their control, he said.

“There is a risk of an escalatory spiral where we’re in danger of fielding untested, unsafe and unproven systems if we’re not careful, because we each feel like the other side is hiding something from us,” he said.

Today's AI Thing

A new technology starts to come of age, and as usual, some jagoff sees its usefulness as a way to fuck with people.

BTW:

(pay wall)

Drones

Here's one scary-as-fuck video from Simon Whistler.

And don't get too comfortable, thinking we're OK because we're such good buddies with those Ukrainian fellers - people are already marrying drones with AI, and tech does not stay in one place for long, so we can expect plenty of trouble from the assholes who will surely be jumping all over that shit for nefarious purposes.

Nerds Can Be Dangerous Too

Grable, the only nuclear artillery shell ever fired by the U.S. (sound on)
byu/splityoassintwo ininterestingasfuck

A Change Has Come

Elliot Ackerman - Vanity Fair:

A Whole Age of Warfare Sank With the Moskva

A fierce debate is raging within the U.S. Marine Corps about what comes next.

On March 9, 1862, the Union warship Monitor met its Confederate counterpart, Virginia. After a four-hour exchange of fire, the two fought to a draw. It was the first battle of ironclads. In one day, every wooden ship of the line of every naval power became immediately obsolete.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. If the battle of the ironclads settled once and for all the wood-versus-iron debate, Japanese carrier-based aircraft settled the battleship-versus-carrier debate by sinking the cream of America’s battleship fleet in a single morning.

On April 14, 2022, the Ukrainians sank the Russian cruiser Moskva with a pair of Neptune anti-ship missiles. And that success posed an urgent question to the world’s major militaries: Has another age of warfare just begun? After 20 years spent fighting the post-9/11 wars, the United States military’s attention is again focused on a peer-level adversary. The Pentagon hasn’t been thinking this way since the Cold War, and it is attempting a profound transformation. Today, fierce debate attends this transformation, and nowhere more acutely than in the Marine Corps.

In March 2020, the Marine commandant, General David Berger, published “Force Design 2030.” This controversial paper announced a significant restructuring based on the belief that “the Marine Corps is not organized, trained, equipped or postured to meet the demands of the rapidly evolving future operating environment.” That “future operating environment” is an imagined war with China in the South Pacific—but in many ways, that hypothetical conflict resembles the real war in Ukraine.

The military we have—an army built around tanks, a navy built around ships, and an air force built around planes, all of which are technologically advanced and astronomically expensive—is platform-centric. So far, in Ukraine, the signature land weapon hasn’t been a tank but an anti-tank missile: the Javelin. The signature air weapon hasn’t been an aircraft, but an anti-air missile: the Stinger. And as the sinking of the Moskva showed, the signature maritime weapon hasn’t been a ship but an anti-ship missile: the Neptune.

Berger believes a new age of war is upon us. In “Force Design 2030,” he puts the following sentence in bold: “We must acknowledge the impacts of proliferated precision long-range fires, mines, and other smart weapons, and seek innovative ways to overcome these threat capabilities.” The weapons General Berger refers to include the same family of anti-platform weapons Ukrainians are using to incinerate Russian tanks, shoot down Russian helicopters, and sink Russian warships. The successes against a platform-centric Russian Goliath by an anti-platform-centric Ukrainian David have elicited cheers in the West, but what we are witnessing in Ukraine may well be a prelude to the besting of our own American Goliath.

Like its Russian counterpart, the American military has long been built around platforms. To pivot away from a platform-centric view of warfare is both a cultural challenge—what does it mean to be a fighter pilot without a jet, a tanker without a tank, or a sailor without a ship?—and a resource challenge. It asks the U.S. military, as well as the U.S. defense industry, to divest itself of legacy capabilities like, for example, a $13 billion Ford-class aircraft carrier, in order to invest in new, potentially less profitable technologies like, say, $6,000 Switchblade drones that can kill tanks.

Divestment is central to Berger’s strategic vision. Several months ago, he announced that the Marine Corps would reduce its size. Several of its infantry battalions, aircraft squadrons, artillery batteries, and every last one of its tanks would go. According to Berger, the Marine Corps is “operating under the assumption that we will not receive additional resources” and “must divest certain existing capabilities to free resources for essential new capabilities.”

As divest to invest has become the new Marine Corps catchphrase, a bevy of retired generals has spoken out publicly against Berger in an unprecedented display of disunity among senior commanders. One of the dissenters is a former commandant, retired General Charles Krulak. “You’re divesting yourself of huge capability to buy capability that’s still on the drawing boards,” Krulak told me. “We’re being painted as a bunch of old farts who want the Marine Corps to remain as it was and don’t understand the impact of technology on warfare. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

To discount Krulak’s views would be a mistake. His tenure as commandant ushered in significant innovations for the Corps. He laid the intellectual groundwork that allowed the Corps to fight in the post-9/11 world. He also acquired the V-22 for the Marine Corps, a first-of-its-kind tilt-rotor aircraft that is both a plane and a helicopter. Berger’s strategic vision is also the first of its kind; in the event of a war with China, it imagines a 21st-century island-hopping campaign in which bands of 60 to 70 highly trained, lethally equipped Marines would infiltrate onto islands in the South Pacific to target the Chinese navy with advanced missile systems and other long-range weapons. The war at sea, in Berger’s vision, would be decided by a slew of Moskva-like engagements.

Berger’s critics don’t buy it. “The assumption that Marines can get on contested islands without being detected and conduct resupply missions is unrealistic,” Krulak said. “Plus, you’re underestimating the capability of the Chinese. The belief that these forces will shoot and scoot counts on Marines moving faster than a Chinese missile flies. You’re going to lose Marines and be unable to evacuate our wounded and dead. The Navy won’t sail in to get our wounded.”

Admiral James Stavridis, who spent much of his 40-plus-year Navy career in the South China Sea, is a believer in Berger’s vision. “The Army of tomorrow will look like the Marine Corps of today,” Stavridis told me. “What General Berger is doing is critical.” A truism among Marines is that the Corps must be at its most ready when America is at its least. In the 1930s, the Marine Corps pioneered the amphibious doctrine that would pave the way not only for the island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific but also the amphibious landings that allowed the Army to liberate Europe. Innovation, according to Stavridis, remains a core Marine mission.

The debate in the Marine Corps is more profound than the internecine politics of one service branch; it’s a debate about which form of warfare will dominate in the next decades of the 21st century, a platform-centric one or an anti-platform-centric one. Historical precedent abounds for these types of debates. Before the First World War, in the opening years of the 20th century, many militaries adhered to the cult of the offense, a then-stale belief that well-trained, determined troops would always carry the day over a defending force. In the Napoleonic Wars 100 years before, this had often proved true. But up against the 20th century’s breech-loading rifles and machine guns, the offense had become the weaker form of warfare. Tragically, it took the Marne, the Somme, and countless other bayonet charges into the teeth of chattering machine guns for the generals of that era to accept that their understanding of warfare was dated.

Representative Seth Moulton, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, believes that today’s dissenting generals are failing to comprehend how much technology is changing the battlefield and how quickly the services must adapt. “When you look at what weapons are on top of the Ukrainians’ wish list,” Moulton told me, “it isn’t towed howitzers. Top of their list are armed drones, anti-tank missiles, and anti-ship missiles.”

But what if Berger is wrong? What if his “divest to invest” strategy winds up over-investing the Marine Corps in a highly specific vision of warfare that never comes to pass? According to Moulton, much of this comes down to the role the Marine Corps has traditionally played as an incubator for new ideas as the smallest, nimblest of the services. “Our country can afford to have the Marine Corps over-invested in a new type of warfare that never comes to pass,” Moulton explained. “What our country cannot afford is to have the Marine Corps under-invested in a new type of warfare that does come to pass.”

Phillips Payson O’Brien: Why Ukraine is winning

Events in Ukraine seem to validate Berger’s anti-platform-centric view of warfare, in much the same way that World War I validated those who had argued that defense had become stronger than offense. Of course, no form of warfare maintains primacy forever. Krulak made this point as we finished our conversation. “We need to be careful we don’t learn the wrong lessons from Ukraine. You have a great measure. The next thing you know they come up with a countermeasure. So you come up with a counter-countermeasure.”

One of the most famous countermeasures developed after the end of the First World War was France’s Maginot Line, a physical shrine to the primacy of defense. What the French failed to account for was that in two short decades, certain developments—more advanced tanks, aircraft, and combined-arms doctrine—had once again swung the balance, allowing offense to reassume its role as the dominant form of warfare. The result was a German blitzkrieg in June 1940 that simply maneuvered around the Maginot Line.

The wager that Berger and the Marine Corps are making is that anti-platform systems won’t be an American Maginot Line, but the best way to save a generation of Americans from their own Somme or Moskva.

But what really chaps my balls is that we seem to be assuming ( if not outright insisting) that war is inevitable, even as everybody - and I mean every-fucking-body - is always lamenting the tragedy of war.

Fuck that shit. Wage peace instead. Make love, not war. It's cheaper and a helluva lot more fun.

The Rise Of The Machines

Ever wonder why the "Don't Tread On Me" gang seem to ignore the fact that the big bad gubmint has weapons that are about to make AR-15s look like pop guns?

And actually, it makes me wonder if they've already picked the wrong side.

Here it comes, kids.

Business Insider:

A rogue killer drone 'hunted down' a human target without being instructed to, UN report says

A "lethal" weaponized drone "hunted down a human target" without being told to, likely for the first time, according to a UN report seen by the New Scientist.

In the March 2020 incident, a Kargu-2 quadcopter autonomously attacked a person during a conflict between Libyan government forces and a breakaway military faction, led by the Libyan National Army's Khalifa Haftar, the Daily Star reported.

The Turkish-built Kargu-2, a deadly attack drone designed for asymmetric warfare and anti-terrorist operations, targeted one of Haftar's soldiers while he tried to retreat, according to the paper.

The drone, which can be directed to detonate on impact, was operating in a "'highly effective' autonomous mode that required no human controller," the New York Post reported.

"The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability," the report from the UN Security Council's panel of experts on Libya said.

This is likely the first time drones have attacked humans without instructions to do so, Zak Kallenborn, a national-security consultant who specializes in unmanned systems and drones, confirmed in the report.

Kallenborn has concerns about the future of autonomous drones. "How brittle is the object recognition system?" he said in the report. "How often does it misidentify targets?"

Jack Watling, a researcher on land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, told the New Scientist that the incident demonstrates the "urgent and important" need to discuss the potential regulation of autonomous weapons.

Human Rights Watch has called for an end to so-called "killer robots" and is campaigning for a "preemptive ban on the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons," according to a report by the nonprofit.

Acceleration

It took us longer to go from bronze weapons to iron weapons than it did to go from iron weapons to thermonuclear weapons.

Kaboom

Speaking of shit - which I kinda do in the next post down from this one - I've had this one in mind for a good long while.

This is a screen shot from Google Maps of an area to the northwest of Las Vegas and to the southwest of Papoose Lake in Nevada:

Every little round-ish feature (they look like barnacles to me) on the above pic is where the US detonated a nuclear bomb of some kind, to test it out; to make sure it worked as advertised.

And this is just Nevada.

It's Pretty Sad, Really

In general, I can get with anybody who has the smarts and the ingenuity to make stuff work.  I just wish we could move the culture forward enough to convince these Gun Geniuses to turn their talents towards Distributed Power Generation or Bio-Mechanics or Robotic Waste Recovery or or or.

The New Navy

From Addicting Info:

Since its launch 18 months ago, the USS Independence has come down with a severe case of corrosion. You see, the hull construction is a composite structure with some components utilizing steel, and other components using aluminum. If you expose an item made up of both steel and aluminum to an environment containing an electrolyte, such as seawater, it produces galvanic corrosion...

So the US Navy will be able to continue America's totally righteous domination of the world - anywhere, any time - except in places where they have oceans.

A Step At A Time

Just inching our way closer to Robocop II.



What could possibly go wrong?

War Tech

(hat tip = JG)
From Wired Magazine:

The U.S. military has been after self-guided bullets for years. Now, government researchers have finally made it happen: a bullet that can navigate itself a full mile before successfully nailing its target.

Got me to thinking - sometimes dangerous, always obsessive - and just a few quick Googlies later:

Hacked By Iran

So here's something I hope somebody on our side's been working on really hard.

From Empty Wheel:

I’ve been saying for some time that America’s hubris about drones will end as soon as one of our antagonists figures out how to hack them.

Which is why it’s interesting that Iran has updated its claims to have “shot down” an American drone to suggest they had “brought it down.” (Note, I found this statement on the Mehr website, but not the Fars one.)

And won't it be interesting in a few years (maybe a lot sooner) when we start to hear about the need to build a defensive shield capable of shooting down enemy drones which could be launched from any seemingly innocuous vessel from a few miles off the shores of Virginia or New York or or or.

I've been worried that "our enemies" would develop a way to deliver an EMP device into the general vicinity of over-flying American aircraft, which would disable the avionics (for even a short time), which would result in our planes falling from the sky in large numbers.
Now I see we have a fuckload more to worry about.  Ain't that just won-fuckin'-derful?

It's the dawning of a New Golden Age of Paranoid Isolation in America.

(hat tip = The Agonist)