A drone affair

Drones or small airplanes, remotely controlled from a source that could be someone standing on ground below or sitting in front of a computer console, hundreds of miles away, first came into lime light during Afghanistan imbroglio, when US secret service CIA used an unmanned Predator drone in a targeted killing. The strike was in Paktia province in Afghanistan, near the city of Khost. The intended target was Osama bin Laden, or at least someone in the CIA had thought that target to be him. It was a terrible goof up as within days of the strike, journalists on the ground found out from local Afghans that the dead men were civilians gathering scrap metal. The media started asking questions and yet it was clear that a new means of warfare; using armed drones to attack enemy positions deep inside their territory had began.

Flying drones or unmanned remotely controlled aerial craft is not exactly a new idea and is probably a century old one. An English consulting engineer, Archibald Montgomery Low ( 1888- 1956) was, the first person, who thought of remotely controlling a pilotless aircraft. Using his ideas, the first pilotless, remote controlled aircraft were built during and shortly after World War I. The development continued and eventually during world war II, a company known as “Radioplane Company" manufactured and delivered nearly fifteen thousand drones, known as Radioplane OQ-2, to the US army during World War II.

Even with these developments, the pilotless airplanes, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), were still considered as unreliable and expensive toys. This view changed dramatically after developments by Israel in this field. Israeli Air Force used UAV as electronic decoys, electronic jammers and for real time video reconnaissance. In 1982 war with Syrian Air Force Israel managed to quickly destroy dozens of Syrian aircraft with minimal losses. US today, is the largest user of UAVs, having used them besides battlefields to domestic surveillance, as a search and rescue tool, disaster relief, border surveillance and wildfire fighting.

Realising the tremendous potential of drones, many commercial undertakings have been experimenting with drones to find out if they could be used for delivery of products and materials. Amazon Inc, a US company, unveiled in 2013 a project aimed at delivering packages to customer's doorstep by using "octocopter" mini-drones with a mere 30-minute delivery time. Coming nearer home, a Mumbai based pizza outlet, Francesco's Pizzeria, known for its thin-crust pizzas made with fresh herbs and a "secret" BBQ lime sauce, used for the first time in India an unmanned drone to execute a delivery by taking the aerial route on May 11, 2014.

No one perhaps would doubt the potential of use of drones in military and commercial matters, but can you believe that a drone could be used even in case of affairs that are closer to our hearts? Well! A Chinese rock singer and composer, Wang Feng recently showed how it can be used even in such delicate matters.

A famous Chinese actress internationally acclaimed for her role in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Ziyi, was celebrating her upcoming 36^th on the weekend with her boyfriend Wang Feng and other friends. During this party, a white drone flew toward her. Wang feng quickly retrieved an engagement ring from inside the drone and then got down on one knee and popped the question to Zhang, whether she would marry him? Mighty excited, Zhang said “yes” before welling up, and the newly engaged couple kissed and embraced. To complete the show the night sky lit up with pre-arranged fireworks.

This probably is just a glimpse of what future holds as far as drones are concerned. Delivering an engagement ring might have been an idyllic use for a romantic occasion but there could be practical uses like delivering documents, medicines, food at a very low cost and utmost speed. The future for drones seems exceptionally bright.

13^th February 2015

Drone has delivered the sugar, Dear!

Imagine that you have invited few of your friends along with their spouses for a little get together in the evening. At 5 PM your wife suddenly tells you that she has run out of sugar or something else. This means that you need to get dressed up, take the car out of the garage and head for the nearest super market for a Kilogram of Sugar. Pick up sugar, stand in the line next to a cashier and finally return home after spending at least an hour, depending how far away you stay from the super market. While going through this unavoidable exercise, I am sure that many of us might daydream or imagine, how great would it be to have an angel appear in the sky above and deliver that Kilogram of sugar to us, while we are leisurely standing in our yard or on the house terrace, sipping beer from a can.

Rest assured that your imaginary daydream has just now come into the realm of possibility, but with a small correction, if Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon Corp. in USA , has his way. He wants to use drones instead of Angels from our daydreams.

Drones have now become a dread or particularly ill famous, for the terror minded individuals from certain countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, because they appear suddenly in the sky and unleash deadly Hellfire missile attacks , bringing about complete destruction. For the Americans, it is a wonderful way off totally destroying their enemy with no possibility of any loss on their side. This fact was empatheticaly proved last month when a drone killed the Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who was sitting in his SUV parked opposite his own residential compound gate.

American news channel CBS recently broadcast a prime time interview of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who recently acquired the newspaper 'Washington Post' for a song. During this interview Mr. Bezos came up with an unexpected announcement that his company was working on getting products to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Wow! If Mr. Bezos's dream comes true, how would the scenario, I described above change? Suppose again, that your wife tells you about running out of sugar at 5 PM, just few hours before the party. All you need to do is to punch your order to Amazon on your smart phone, go to yard with that can of beer and relax. Within 30 minutes, a drone holding a yellow coloured plastic box underneath, would appear in the sky and straight way head for you. It would land on your lawn or the terrace as the case may be. It would just release the yellow plastic box on the floor and buzz off to complete the next order. You just pick up the box and give it to your wife. Bingo! As simple as that. All you need to do is to give a shout to your wire: “Drone has delivered the sugar, Dear!”

Mr. Bezos, who prefers to call his drones as “Octocopters” says that they would pick up customers’ boxed orders from a “fulfilment centre” of Amazon and then use GPS coordinates to carry it to the customer’s address and drop it in the front yard of the house. No doubt that this “Prime Air” drone project is still in the research and development phase and it may take years to advance the needed technology and needed federal Aviation Administration rules and regulations to be created. The present Octocopters the company is working on currently, are capable of carrying packages weighing up to 10 kg, and according to Mr. Bezos, this accounts for about 86 per cent of the items Amazon delivers. The company is testing Octocopters with a range of about 10 miles and they could cover a significant portion of the population in urban areas in USA.

Though Mr. Bezos's idea is quite revolutionary and sounds like wonderful music to the ears of the consumer, there appear to be many a logistical and legal difficulties before any such concept comes in practice. How the drone would find a package’s intended recipient after flying to a particular GPS address, How the transfer of the package would be effected? Or How theft or other disruptions, including the possibility that the drone may be shot down, would be avoided.

Use of drones of such large-scale commercial purposes is currently not possible under U.S. Law. The regulator in this field, the Federal Aviation Administration is working for a solution according to some reports. If these rules materialise, commercial drones might become legally viable and workable.

Amazon's new concept may or may not materialise, but it's stock rose by 1% last week in pre-market trading after thanksgiving weekend.

5^th December 2013