Completely autonomous drones that can decide who or what to strike are still many years away from becoming a reality, but the military has already developed various unmanned aircraft that it's been using primarily for gathering intelligence (rather than for attacking targets). Here are a few more examples of some of the high-tech flying weapons that exist today.

• The $1.8 billion prototype Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator was recently launched into the air from a catapult. This marked the first-ever catapult launch of a drone from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. [url]
• The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, the most advanced stealth fighter jet in history, seems to have a problem with suffocating its pilots during normal flight. Since 2008, pilots would frequently and inexplicably suffer from what appeared to hypoxia -- in one case, a pilot hit a tree while landing and didn't even realize it. The cause of the problem was only recently identified as being due to a faulty valve on the pilots' life-support vest. You'd think that after spending almost $80 billion on these planes, it wouldn't have taken them almost five years to figure this out. [url]
• After 16 years and billions of dollars, the "Airborne Laser" project -- a 747 jumbo-jet equipped with a powerful laser that can shoot missiles out of the sky -- has finally been scrapped. Cost prohibitive and impractical, the Airborne Laser would likely have cost $92,000/hour to fly if it had worked. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Military technology is improving in a lot of ways. Armies all of over the world are constructing better robots and bombs. Considering the pace of progress for these weapons, we might need another pass at international treaties for using them. Here are a few links discussing some newer weapons of warfare.

• The ethics of using robots for military operations is getting some attention. Usually, military robots have been assigned to dull, dirty or dangerous jobs -- but now they're being assigned to dispassionate tasks... (aka Terminator-like killing) [url]
• A hypersonic vehicle could hit a target anywhere on the planet in under an hour. The aerodynamics of hypersonic flight is being studied with real rockets flying through the atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour. [url]
• US Air Force pilots who control drones are burning out at a concerning rate. Almost 30% of these pilots are showing signs of "clinical distress" as drone patrols increased from 10-15 missions at any given time in 2007 to over 60 now. [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Human pilots get tired and need sleep -- and some airline pilots get some rest at "crash pads" when they're off duty. Knowing that might not be too comforting to many passengers, but who's willing to let a robot fly a few hundred people around? Autonomous planes are getting more advanced all the time, though mostly for unmanned missions with aircraft that couldn't possibly carry people on board. Maybe someday we'll have autonomous Jetson-cars... in the meantime, here are a few links to some interesting UAVs and flight automation.

• Northrop Grumman's X-47B is an autonomous combat aircraft that aims to be launching from and landing on aircraft carriers in a few years. Another trick will be aerial refueling, eliminating the limitation of onboard fuel capacity. [url]
• Would you believe the CIA developed a dragonfly robot in the 1970s as a super-secret intelligence gathering tool? Would you believe they also developed mobile phones hidden in shoes? Robotic fish? Cone of silence? [url]
• Last year, a solar-powered plane broke all the non-stop endurance records by flying for a week -- and it could have stayed up indefinitely. Cheap solar planes to replace telecommunication satellites would be a nice next step. [url]
• The safety of flight automation is being studied -- finding out that both human error and automation errors can cause serious problems. Nobody's perfect. [url]
• To discover more cool sites about aviation, check out what's currently flying around StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

We recently had the story of a pilot who ran into some trouble after refusing to go through one of the "naked" backscatter scanners at the airport, and then refusing to go through a much more invasive "pat down" search as payment for skipping the scanner. Over the last few weeks, airports in the US have stepped up the use of both (though, it should be noted, I'm writing this particular post on an airplane and did not have to go through either such "search" in order to do so). It appears that the pilot in question was not the only one miffed at the rules. Apparently the head of the Allied Pilots Association (which represents American Airlines pilots among others), Dave Bates, has sent out a note to the members complaining about these new security procedures, suggesting that pilots refuse the new scanners, and insist that any additional pat down must be done in private, rather than out in the open. It does seem rather silly to give pilots this kind of treatment since they already pilot the damn plane. If they wanted to do something bad to the plane, they already have the ability to do so.

There's been a lot of talk lately about the new body scanners at airports, which create a "virtually naked" image of you -- bringing up all sorts of privacy concerns, especially as reports are coming out about how the machines can record images. Many people, concerned about how these machines operate, have asked not to use them, and there are usually other options. Boing Boing points us to the story of a working, uniformed pilot (working for ExpressJet) who refused to go through the backscatter scanner. After being directed to a normal metal detector, and declared an "opt-out," he was told he needed to be patted down by security. He refused, noting that it was intrusive and that he had made it through the normal metal detector without a problem (the same security review he'd been given for many years as a pilot -- even in that same airport).

At that point, the TSA got upset, and a bunch of other folks got involved, including the airport police. He was detained, asked all sorts of questions (some he refused to answer), and not allowed to leave when he asked. At one point he was told he was free to leave, but then was stopped again and told he was not allowed to go until he spoke to one more person. The pilot, Michael Roberts, noted during his explanation of what happened that he's actually taught the TSA-mandated security training program at ExpressJet. The whole story is yet another example of security theater in action -- people just doing things because it's on the checklist, not because it makes anyone more secure.

"What do you mean I 'should know better'? Are you scolding me? Have I done something wrong?"

"I'm not saying you've done something wrong. But you have to go through security screening if you want to enter the facility."

"Understood. I've been going through security screening right here in this line for five years and never blown up an airplane, broken any laws, made any threats, or had a government agent call my boss in Houston. And you guys have never tried to touch me or see me naked that whole time. But, if that's what it's come to now, I don't want to enter the facility that badly."