Drone advance

I believe in general human progress, but it is saw-toothed like many graphs: there are phases when it goes backward, and we are in one of them.  Here is a part of the unpleasant trend.

Turkey wanted killer drones with which to crush the Kurds of its south-eastern region, who want autonomy.  So it tried to buy Predator drones from the US, but Congress had to approve the export, and refused.  So Turkey got into drone manufacture, but needed a sophisticated part, the missile rack that sends the missiles to their targets.  A large American arms manufacturer, called L3 Harris, had a division, called EDO MBM, located at Brighton in England, thus avoiding the US export ban.  Acquiring, “somewhere around 2015,” this “intelligent” Hornet missile rack, Turkey was able to learn how to make it, and since then has not only used drones copiously to terrorize its own Kurds and those in Iraq and Syria, but has become a leading manufacturer, selling drones to other countries such as the United Arab Emirates.  One side in the Yemen civil war – probably the world’s most devastating at present – is using UAE drones, and both sides in the civil war in Libya are being supplied with drones, one side by Turkey and the other by the UAE.  “The field is awash with new manufacturers.”

I feel the names of the corporations involved say something about a perhaps less important depersonalizing trend in our times.  L3 Harris.  EDO MBM.

The photo shows Turkish President Erdogan proudly signing his name on a new drone, perhaps destined to buzz  a Kurdish village.

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