Droning on

It was inevitable, if you think about it.

The moment that video-gaming and the world of super-technology came together and took the concept of recreational flying toy aircraft – a refuge of anoraks the world over for the best part of 75 years – beyond all norms and to the logical extreme of developing what we now call drones was a world game-changer.

After all, if from some master-control in an RAF establishment just north of London successive shifts of “Top Gun” pilots can sit at computer desks and can fly squadrons of military drones to Afghanistan to bomb the hell out of Taliban and other terrorist ‘baddies’ with virtual impunity and no risk of the loss of billion-dollar-costing US aircraft hardware or human pilots, it was only going to be a matter of time before the burgeoning backwater hobby of amateur enthusiasts was going to get very serious indeed.

When world-threatening weaponry comes down in price to a entry level at which almost any tin-pot Ruritania can suddenly avail itself of enough power to destabalise a fellow nation, the world of geopolitics suddenly moves to a different place with a heightened degree of risk.

See here for a comment piece by Martin Chulov that appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN