Next gen affirmative 1ac advantage-Econ
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- Fortunately next gen implementation is key to UAV effectiveness-many reasons AIAA 2012
- Next gen will be quickly integrated into existing UAS systems providing massive UAV efficiency boosts Joint Planning and Development Office 2011
- There are two impact scenarios— First Nuclear Terrorism
- An unmonitored border makes future acts of terrorism within the U.S. inevitable-multiple reasons Krikorian 2008
- And, this will facilitate the transfer and use of nuclear weapons Allison 2004
- Americas Swiss-cheese borders.
- That escalates to global nuclear war and extinction Speice 2006
- Fortunately boosted UAV patrolling solves Seper 2012
- Second is Pyroterrorism: Pyroterror attacks are inevitable in the squo Deshpande 2009
- That collapses the economy US Fire Administration 2005
- Nuclear war
- ; the two World Wars; the cold war
1AC Advantage-UAVStatus quo UAS integration is terrible-next gen integration is key to avert a catastrophic failure Toner 4/18 (Dr. Karlin Toner, Director of the Joint Production and Development Office, “Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in a NextGen Environment” http://www.jpdo.gov/library/2012_0409_Dayton_UAS_Speech_v5.pdf ) This is a new frontier for aviation—uncharted territory. There are new flight paradigms for small, medium, and large UAS of varying performance. Pilot and controller roles for this widely mixed fleet of remotely piloted and autonomous vehicles must be defined. Can UAS operate efficiently in the National Airspace System under the existing airspace policies? NextGen must be scalable and flexible to account for the projected growth in UAS operations. While public agencies support the principles of “safety first,” many are also very anxious to routinely operate UAS missions: hurricane tracking, military operations, border patrol, wildlife monitoring, and more. It sounds to me like a lot of different operations, with flight plans that don’t look like direct city-pairs, and remote pilots who need certification. Indeed, forecasts project significant numbers of UAS operations. The current National Airspace System was developed to accommodate the capabilities of manned aircraft. While many procedures and principles used for manned aircraft apply to UAS, there are significant differences in technological maturity, perception and acceptance, and operational experience that remain. NextGen must deal with these differences now so that the Air Traffic Management system has the technologies, policies, standards, and procedures it needs. Fortunately next gen implementation is key to UAV effectiveness-many reasons AIAA 2012 Information Paper (No Author 2012 "Developing a Robust Next Generation Air Transportation System" )PHS In 2012, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, P.L. 112-95, the “FAA Reauthorization Act of 2012.” In the conference report, Congress again stated that the modernization of the ATM system should ensure “that NextGen implementation activities are planned in such a manner as to require that system architecture is designed to allow for the incorporation of novel and currently unknown technologies into NextGen in the future and that current decisions do not bias future decisions unfairly in favor of existing technology at the expense of innovation.” Section 332 of P.L. 112-95 specifically addresses the need to incorporate unmanned aerial systems (UAS) into the NAS. UAS represent a very high-profile classification of new aircraft platforms that do not currently have normalized access into the spectrum. Unmanned systems have a long track record of success in military missions, as well as serving in natural disasters such as providing damage assessment data along the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. However, due to restrictions on access to the airspace system, UAS remain underutilized. With modernization of the system, UAS could provide several domestic civil capabilities such as enhanced border security, disaster assessment, polar monitoring, marine fisheries monitoring, and fire and weather monitoring, as well as providing a unique data set for tropical weather forecasting, all of which meet another recommendation from the Walker Commission of “(p)ropagating defense technology into the commercial sector, particularly in communication, navigation and surveillance.” Next gen will be quickly integrated into existing UAS systems providing massive UAV efficiency boosts Joint Planning and Development Office 2011, January 4,2011 http://www.jpdo.gov/newsarticle.asp?id=146 The integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS) is an integral part of the planning and implementation of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), the multi-disciplinary effort that will offer a host of air transportation operational, technical, economic, and environmental advantages. Ultimately, NextGen will help the US achieve gains in efficiency and capacity for all users of the NAS. UAS is generally defined as a system whose components include the necessary equipment, communication links, and personnel to control and employ an unmanned aircraft. The UAS is composed of six elements: the UA element, communications element, control element, support element, human element, and payload element. UAS already play a unique role in the safety and security of many US military and civil missions, such as border surveillance, monitoring oil pipelines, and local law enforcement. They have evolved from simple drones and basic models to large sophisticated aircraft. In 2010, UAS access to the NAS, especially for commercial operations, remains restricted due to a lack of appropriate operational procedures, standards, and policies, because the NAS is tailored to accommodate manned aircraft. UAS operate solely under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and in segregated airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allows UAS operations on a case-by-case basis. They are treated as aircraft and are required to comply with current Part 91 aircraft operating rules. Due to the diverse utility that UAS offer, their use will increase exponentially in a variety of key military and civil areas. Industry projections for 2018 forecast more than 15,000 UAS in service in the U.S., with a total of almost 30,000 deployed worldwide [World Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems, Market Profile and Forecast 2009-2010; The Teal Group]. From an operational, infrastructure, and safety perspective, this presents a number of challenges, the solutions to which will involve and impact all NAS constituencies, but ultimately enable a seamless integration of UAS into the NAS. In designing NextGen and planning for a substantial increase in the use of UAS, the FAA considers the most important technical challenge to be developing a safe and efficient way that they can operate in the same airspace as crewed aircraft without creating a hazard either to other aircraft or other objects on the ground. UAS also may not have the ability to respond to Air Traffic Control (ATC)-issued instructions as quickly as manned aircraft. In addition to communications latency, there is the possibility of a total loss of communications. Although current FAA plans for the mid-term dictate that UAS will operate under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) in Class A, B, and E airspace, plans for the long-term -- beyond 2018 -- specify that they will operate in the NAS using "electronic" IFR. Role of the JPDO In 2003, Congress established the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) under the VISION 100 – Century of Aviation Reauthorization Act (Public Law 108-176) to plan and develop NextGen in collaboration with its government partners, which include the Departments of Transportation, Defense, Homeland Security, and Commerce, as well as the FAA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and industry. Research and Development Workshop As part of this initiative, and because UAS will continue to play an increasingly significant role in the future NAS, the JPDO and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) recently sponsored a UAS research and development (R&D) workshop in Dayton, Ohio. The workshop brought together government subject matter experts and executives to focus on critical and cross-cutting long-term research and development issues. These include air vehicle technologies, human factors, ground-control stations, communications, and sense and avoid—all associated with UAS flying with manned aircraft in a future NextGen trajectory-based operations (TBO) airspace. The workshop explored the potential of the UAS mission, together with the R&D capabilities and plans of the organizations involved in NextGen. In addition, the JPDO Director Dr. Karlin Toner in her keynote address stated that the JPDO remains committed to developing the requisite strategy for joint coordination, collaboration, and execution of the long-term R&D activities in support of UAS integration into the NAS as part of NextGen, based on current and future opportunities. JPDO and AFRL established three objectives for the workshop. The first was to identify the set of technical issues that must be resolved in order to ensure safe and consistent UAS operations in NextGen airspace. The second objective was to catalog current R&D activities by each represented government agency and identify gaps not currently being addressed. The third objective was to identify areas where joint demonstrations can advance progress toward UAS integration more effectively than single-agency efforts. The workshop was divided into three technical tracks: Air Vehicles; Sense and Avoid and Communications; and Human Factors and Ground Control Station. The track teams focused their efforts on supporting R&D requirements for 2018 and beyond in order to achieve UAS integration and operations into NextGen airspace. Air Vehicles The Air Vehicles track focused on developing the on-board technology R&D needed to enable semi-autonomous UAS to operate safely in controlled airspace and populated areas. The Air Vehicles participants identified several long-term priorities: UAS Self-Situational Awareness. The ability to self-determine key aspects of guidance, navigation, control, external hazards, environmental effects, and health for automated UAS, especially in consideration of communications and/or Global Positioning System (GPS) loss or denial. UAS Design and Certification. The ability to affordably design, verify, validate, and certify UAS platforms and certification as a complete system. UAS Integrity and Fault Tolerance. The ability to maintain safety and be tolerant to component failures without applying manned systems levels of redundancy. Cross-cutting Priorities: Trust in UAS and Systems-of-Systems. A definition of trust needs to be established that not only includes traditional aspects of reliability and availability, but also confidence as viewed by humans. The group asked the question, "How will systems-of-systems be assessed for trust?" Additional discussions produced priorities to better identify which agency is working which problem and where there may be gaps in R&D. These included self-situational awareness and environmental effects; UAS design, certification and incremental certification; and integrity and fault tolerance, including realtime re-planning.The Air Vehicles track identified potential collaboration opportunities for certain areas, such as vehicle health (status condition, reporting, and operational capability) and certification of avionics and control (predictive systems). Sense and Avoid Communications The essential focus of the Sense and Avoid/Communications track was the requirement to construct a framework that can bridge the current practice of see and avoid to NextGen-appropriate paradigms that reflect and leverage the operational differences between a manned and a remotely operated aircraft. Some of the key gaps identified include the sense and avoid safety case—the need for flight-test data, airspace encounter modeling and simulation, and a definition of the criteria for safety—ATC command and control (C2) communications, and NextGen data communications. Human Factors and Ground Control Station The Human Factors and Ground Control Station track concentrated on developing pilot qualifications, levels of automation, communication latency, contingency management, ground control station information display, navigation system compatibility, and the fact that the pilot is spatially separated from the UAS. All of these will need to be enhanced for improved safety and affordability. Specific issues identified included: Levels of automation, such as mode awareness, transparency, bias, and trust; Human awareness and interaction with sense and avoid; Traffic—knowledge of equipage—weather and airspace information in the Ground Control System; Assured predictable behavior; Lack of standards for interface design by category, class and type of display and automation; Contingency management for loss-link; Crew and ATC skills, training, and certification; Human-automation interface; Recognition of new system faults and proper response in NextGen; Accident and incident analysis followed by risk-mitigation analysis, including proactive recording requirements; Compatibility of the navigation system, specifically latitude and longitude as opposed to airways and navigation aids; Multi-UAS control by a single control station with the role of the UAS pilot moving toward that of a controller; Enabling and monitoring Ground Control System NextGen TBO; Communications and situational awareness. Cross-cutting Long Term Issues Each of the groups identified long-term R&D priorities—key questions that need to be answered—for effective UAS integration into the NAS. What are some alternatives that can safely mitigate the lack of see and avoid? What are the appropriate standardized procedures for loss-link and other flight contingencies and how can their safety effectiveness be demonstrated? What are the implications for ATM procedures? How should procedures for UAS loss-link differ from a loss of ATC communications? What are the requirements—range, integrity, availability, latency, and security—of the C2 link? What are the airspace security implications of the UAS? Are there new technologies to enhance the situational awareness of controllers and other pilots as to the intent of the UAS? Participants in the workshop also raised the issue of FAA UAS certification standards. The primary customer for UAS in the U.S. is currently the Department of Defense (DOD), which does not require FAA certification prior to deployment of a UAS. There are presently two acceptable means of operating UAS in the NAS outside of restricted airspace: a Special Airworthiness Certificate – Experimental Category, or a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA). However, as more UAS applications are established, certification standards will need to be more fully developed. Developing and implementing new UAS standards and guidance is a necessary effort for getting the UAS certified to operate in the NAS. An additional challenge was the need to create sufficient situational awareness so that the UAS, pilots, other aircraft, and ATC know where UAS are at all times. The FAA has already established air traffic procedures for UAS operations in the airspace surrounding the southern U.S. border, under control of the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC). As UAS are granted increased access to the NAS, these procedures will continue to evolve. Conclusion Full integration of UAS into NextGen where "file and fly"— the ability to fly in four- dimensional trajectory-based airspace and predict the aircraft’s flight path in terms of spatial position and times along points in its path—remains a long-term goal of the JPDO. However, the technologies, procedures, standards, and policies must be in place to ensure safe and consistent UAS operations throughout the NAS. There are two impact scenarios— First Nuclear Terrorism: UAV effectiveness is key to monitor transfer of people and goods at the US-Mexico border Miller and Engelhardt 2012 [Todd Miller, author and researcher on border wars, Tom Engelhardt, an author and Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. “Bringing the Battlefield to the Border The Wild World of Border Security and Boundary Building in Arizona”, June 7, 2012, http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/arizona-border-drones-technology-and-social-strategy] Drones are nothing new. The first of them took to America’s skies before the Wright Brothers plane lifted off at Kitty Hawk in 1903. In the years since, “unmanned air systems” (UAS) have played a relatively minor role in domestic aviation. All that, however, is about to change in a major way. “UAS have evolved from simple radio controlled model airplanes to sophisticated aircraft that today play a unique role in many public missions such as border surveillance, weather monitoring, military training, wildlife surveys and local law enforcement, and have the potential to do so for many civil missions as well.” So reads part of a research and development “roadmap” put out earlier this year by the U.S. Joint Planning and Development Office (a multiagency initiative that includes the Department of Transportation, Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy). “According to industry forecasts,” the report notes, “UAS operations will increase exponentially in a variety of key military and civil areas. About 50 U.S. companies, universities, and government organizations… are developing over 150 different unmanned aircraft designs. Projections for 2010 to 2019 predict more than 20,000 UAS produced in the U.S.” In the process, count on one thing: increasing numbers of those drones will be patrolling U.S. borders. It was only in the 1990s that the U.S. Border Patrol first began considering the use of remotely piloted aircraft. After the attacks of 9/11, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the funding bonanza that followed, the DHS’s Customs and Border Protection Office began experimenting with unmanned planes. In 2005, it settled on using General Atomics’ Reaper and today a fleet of nine of these drones patrol the northern and southern U.S. borders. Their brethren in America’s war zones have tended to crash at an alarming rate due to weather, mechanical failures, and computer glitches, have proven vulnerable compared to manned jets, and are susceptible to all manner of electronic attack. The domestic drones, too, have failed to impress. As a recent Los Angeles Times article noted: “The border drones require an hour of maintenance for every hour they fly, cost more to operate than anticipated, and are frequently grounded by rain or other bad weather, according to a draft audit of the program last month by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general.” But don’t expect such hard truths to have much impact. After all, as Todd Miller demonstrates in his inaugural TomDispatch post, border security is an arena for true believers. And despite every indication of their crash-and-burn future, expect ever more overhead, up north and down south and in-between, in the years ahead. Nick Turse Bringing the Battlefield to the Border The Wild World of Border Security and Boundary Building in Arizona By Todd Miller William “Drew” Dodds, the salesperson for StrongWatch, a Tucson-based company, is at the top of his game when he describes developments on the southern border of the United States in football terms. In his telling, that boundary is the line of scrimmage, and the technology his company is trying to sell -- a mobile surveillance system named Freedom-On-The-Move, a camera set atop a retractable mast outfitted in the bed of a truck and maneuvered with an Xbox controller -- acts like a “roving linebacker.” As Dodds describes it, unauthorized migrants and drug traffickers often cross the line of scrimmage undetected. At best, they are seldom caught until the “last mile,” far from the boundary line. His surveillance system, he claims, will cover a lot more of that ground in very little time and from multiple angles. It will become the border-enforcement equivalent of New York Giants’ linebacking great, Lawrence Taylor. To listen to Dodds, an ex-Marine -- Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001-2004 -- with the hulking physique of a linebacker himself, is to experience a new worldview being constructed on the run. Even a decade or so ago, it might have seemed like a mad dream from the American fringe. These days, his all-the-world’s-a-football-field vision seemed perfectly mainstream inside the brightly-lit convention hall in Phoenix, Arizona, where the seventh annual Border Security Expo took place this March. Dodds was just one of hundreds of salespeople peddling their border-enforcement products and national security wares, and StrongWatch but one of more than 100 companies scrambling for a profitable edge in an exploding market. Vivid as he is, Dodds is speaking a new corporate language embedded in an ever-more powerful universe in which the need to build up “boundary enforcement” is accepted, even celebrated, rather than debated. It’s a world where billions of dollars are potentially at stake, and one in which nothing is more important than creating, testing, and even flaunting increasingly sophisticated and expensive technologies meant for border patrol and social control, without serious thought as to what they might really portend. The War on Terror on the Border Phoenix was an especially appropriate place for Border Security Expo. After all, the Arizona-Mexico border region is Ground Zero for the development of an immigration enforcement apparatus which soon enough may travel from the southern border to a neighborhood near you. The sold-out convention hall was abuzz with energy befitting an industry whose time has come. Wandering its aisles, you could sense the excitement, the sound of money being spent, the cacophony of hundreds of voices boosting product, the synergy of a burgeoning marketplace of ideas and dreams. General Dynamics, FLIR thermal imaging, and Raytheon banners hung from the vast ceiling, competing for eyeballs with the latest in mini-surveillance blimps. NEANY Inc.’s unmanned aerial drones and their water-borne equivalents sat on a thick red carpet next to desert-camouflaged trailer headquarters. At various exhibits, mannequins dressed in camo and sporting guns with surveillance gizmos hanging off their helmets seemed as if they might walk right out of the exhibition hall and take over the sprawling city of Phoenix with brute force. Little imaginable for your futuristic fortressed border was missing from the hall. There were even ready-to-eat pocket sandwiches (with a three-year shelf life), and Brief Relief plastic urine bags. A stream of uniformed Border Patrol, military, and police officials moved from booth to booth alongside men in suits in what the sole protester outside the convention center called a “mall of death.” If there was anything that caught the control mania at the heart of this expo, it was a sign behind the DRS Technologies booth, which offered this promise: “You Draw the Line and We’ll Help You Secure It.” And what better place to express such a sentiment than Phoenix, the seat of Maricopa County, where “America’s toughest sheriff,” Joe Arpaio (now being sued by the Justice Department), regularly swept through neighborhoods on a search for poor people of color who looked like they might have just slipped across the line dividing the United States from Mexico. Dodds and I stood a little more than 100 miles from that border, which has seen a staggering enforcement build-up over the last 20 years. It’s distinctly a seller's market. StrongWatch is typical. The company, Dodds told me, was hoping for a fat contract for its border technology. After all, everyone knew that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was about to issue a new request for proposals to build its latest version of a “virtual wall” along that border -- not actual fencing, but a barrier made up of the latest in surveillance technology, including towers, cameras, sensors, and radar. In January 2011, DHS had cancelled its previous attempt, known as SBInet, and the multi-billion dollar contract to the Boeing Company that went with it. Complaints were that the costly and often-delayed technological barrier was not properly tailored to the rugged terrain of the borderlands, and that it had trouble distinguishing animals from humans. But the continued fortification of the border (and the profits that accompany it) caught only one aspect of the convention’s reality. After all, the Arizona portion of the U.S.-Mexican border has not only become Ground Zero for every experiment in immigration enforcement and drug interdiction, but also the incubator, testing site, showcase, and staging ground for ever newer versions of border-enforcement technology that, sooner or later, are sure to be applied globally. As that buzzing convention floor made clear, the anything-goes approach to immigration enforcement found in Arizona -- home to SB1070, the infamous anti-immigrant law now before the Supreme Court -- has generated interest from boundary-militarizers elsewhere in the country and the world. An urge for zero-tolerance-style Arizona borders is spreading fast, as evidenced by the convention’s clientele. In addition to U.S. Border Patrol types, attendees came from law enforcement outfits and agencies nationwide, and from 18 countries around the world, including Israel and Russia. In theory, the Expo had nothing to do with SB1070, but the organizers' choice of controversial Arizona governor Jan Brewer as keynote speaker could be seen as an endorsement of the laissez-faire climate in the state. It is, in other words, the perfect place to develop and even test future technology on real people. Brewer first assured convention-goers that the “immigration issue isn’t about hate or skin color… it’s about securing the border and keeping Americans safe.” That out of the way, she promptly launched into one of her usual tirades, blasting the federal government for not securing the border. "America's failure to understand this problem at a national level and to deal with it,” she insisted, “has haunted borders like mine for decades." In fact, as Brewer well knows, the very opposite is the case. Arizona’s rise to immigration importance has gone hand in hand with the creation of a border version of the very homeland security state she criticizes. In reality, federal resources and Department of Homeland Security dollars have been pouring into Arizona as part of a tripartite war on “illegals,” drugs, and terrorism. Her continual complaints about a “porous border,” enhanced by exaggerated tales of “decapitated bodies,” only ups the pressure for ever more building blocks to Fortress USA. Brewer’s are sweet words to the companies who hope to profit, including DRS Technologies, StrongWatch, and Boeing. The governor is hardly alone. Politicians from both parties are loath to acknowledge (as is the much of the mainstream media) how drastically the enforcement landscape along the U.S.-Mexican borderlands has been altered in recent years. As geographer and border scholar Joseph Nevins sums the matter up: “The very existence of lines of control over the movement of people is a very recent development in human history.” Al-Qaedizing Immigrants Anybody revisiting Nogales, El Paso, San Ysidro, or Brownsville today would quickly realize that they look nothing like they did two decades ago. In 1993, there were only 4,000 Border Patrol agents covering 6,000 miles of Canadian and Mexican boundarylands, and only flimsy chain-link fences along the most urbanized stretches of the southern border separated communities on either side. Now, 16-foot walls cut through these towns. An array of cameras peer over them into Mexico sending a constant flow of images to dark monitoring rooms in Border Patrol stations along the 2,000 mile southern border, where bored agents watch mostly pedestrian traffic. Stadium-style lighting rises over the walls and shines into Mexico, turning night into day as if we were indeed in salesman Dodds’s football game. For residents whose homes abut the border sleep is a challenge. Border Patrol forces, still growing, have more than doubled in the years since 9/11. As the new uniformed soldiers of the Department of Homeland Security, close to 20,000 Border Patrol agents now occupy the U.S. Southwest. Predator drones and mini-surveillance blimps regularly patrol the skies. Nevins says that it is a “highly significant development” that we have come to accept this version of “boundaries” and the institutions that enforce them without question. The Border Patrol became part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and was placed under the wing of Customs and Border Protection, now the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country with 60,000 employees. In the process, its “priority mission” became “keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S.” Since then the Border Patrol has not netted a single person affiliated with a terrorist organization nor a single weapon of mass destruction. It has, however, apprehended millions of Latin American migrants coming north, including a historic number of Mexicans who were essentially victims of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). No terrorists, they were often small farmers who could no longer compete with subsidized U.S. grain giants like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland for whom NAFTA proved a free pass into Mexico. U.S. officials were well aware that the trade agreement would lead to an increase in migration, and called for the enforcement build-up. In the post-9/11 world, under the rubric of “protecting” the country from terrorism, the DHS, with the help of state governments and local police, has enforced what is really a line of exclusion, guaranteeing eternal inequality between those who have and those who do not. These lines of division have not only undergone a rapid build-up, but have fast become the accepted norm. According to anthropologist Josiah Heyman, the muscling up of an ever more massive border enforcement, interdiction, and surveillance apparatus “has militarized border society, where more and more people either work for the watchers, or are watched by the state.” Heyman’s words may prove prophetic, and not just along our borders either. As any migrant, protester, or activist in the United States knows, the “watchers” and the “watched” are proliferating nationwide. Geographer Matthew Colemansays that the “most significant yet largely ignored fallout of the so-called war on terrorism... [is] the extension of interior immigration policing practices away from the southwest border.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is another 20,000-strong agency sheltered under the expansive roof of the Department of Homeland Security. It draws from a pool of 650,000 law enforcement officers across the country through deputization programs with innocuous names like 287(g) and Secure Communities. ICE effectively serves as a conduit bringing the borderlands and all they now imply into communities as distant as Utah, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. More than one million migrants have been deported from the country over the last 3½ years under the Obama administration, numbers that surpass those of the Bush years. This should be a reminder that a significant, if overlooked, part of this country’s post 9/11 security iron fist has been aimed not at al-Qaeda but at the undocumented migrant. Indeed, as writer Roberto Lovato points out, there has been an “al-Qaedization of immigrants and immigration policy.” And as in the Global War on Terror, military-industrial companies like Boeing and Halliburton are cashing in on this version of for-profit war. An unmonitored border makes future acts of terrorism within the U.S. inevitable-multiple reasons Krikorian 2008 (Mark, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, MA from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, “Immigration Policy and the Terrorist Threat”, p. 37-38, May 2008) The security challenges posed by immigration are usually viewed as discrete problems that can be addressed through better watch lists, for example, or through additional resources for consular staff who conduct visa interviews. But this is a mistake. Under modern conditions, mass immigration itself is incompatible with security. This is true for two reasons: first, immigration overwhelms our efforts to screen out security threats; and, second, it creates large immigrant communities that shield and incubate terrorists. In the past, references to the “home front” were metaphorical, intended to create among civilians at home a greater sense of solidarity with soldiers at war fronts. But advances in communications, transportation, and weapons technology mean that today-and in the indefinite future-that home front is no longer a metaphor, but is an actual war front. As President George W. Bush has said, “our country is a battlefield in the first war of the 21st century” (White House, 2003). The new context makes immigration a central issue-perhaps the central issue-in considerations of national security. The staff report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States on “terrorist travel” opens by stating, “it is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country” (Eldridgr et al., 2004). Enemy operatives not only need to enter the United States, or whatever they are targeting, but also often need to remain under the radar, as it were, for an extended period of time. This means that keeping foreign terrorists out-and keeping them on the run or arresting them if they do get in-is a security imperative. And, this will facilitate the transfer and use of nuclear weapons Allison 2004 (Graham, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Prof of Government at Harvard, former assistance Sec. Of Defense for policy, Nuclear Terrorism, p. 116) Drug trafficking is not the only trade exploiting the holes in America's Swiss-cheese borders. Sneaking illegal immigrants past the Border Patrol has also become a big business. Many migrants pay "coyotes"—professional human smugglers—thousands of dol lars to help them enter the country. As many as 500,000 people suc cessfully slip across the border—through tunnels, in the trunks of cars, or on foot overland across the southwestern deserts—and take up residence in the United States each year, despite the more than $9 billion that our government spends each year on border controls as part of the national homeland security effort. As one officer put it, "The best we can do is manage the border, not control it."39 Almost all the smuggling routes that are used in bringing illegal immigrants or drugs into the United States would be an equally effective way to transport a nuclear weapon across the border. After all, a nuclear weapon is smaller than a person, and the HEU or plu tonium for a bomb's core could weigh less than the hundred-pound loads of drugs that smugglers bring in backpacks. It is not uncom mon for migrants to get themselves deep into the United States without anyone noticing. Any sophisticated terrorist group can surely do better. That escalates to global nuclear war and extinction Speice 2006 – 06 JD Candidate @ College of William and Mary [Patrick F. Speice, Jr., “NEGLIGENCE AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION: ELIMINATING THE CURRENT LIABILITY BARRIER TO BILATERAL U.S.-RUSSIAN NONPROLIFERATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS,” William & Mary Law Review, February 2006, 47 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427 Accordingly, there is a significant and ever-present risk that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or fissile material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian economic decline and the end of stringent Soviet-era nuclear security measures. 39 Terrorist groups could acquire a nuclear weapon by a number of methods, including "steal[ing] one intact from the stockpile of a country possessing such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one by [*1438] such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another subnational group that had obtained it in one of these ways." 40 Equally threatening, however, is the risk that terrorists will steal or purchase fissile material and construct a nuclear device on their own. Very little material is necessary to construct a highly destructive nuclear weapon. 41 Although nuclear devices are extraordinarily complex, the technical barriers to constructing a workable weapon are not significant. 42 Moreover, the sheer number of methods that could be used to deliver a nuclear device into the United States makes it incredibly likely that terrorists could successfully employ a nuclear weapon once it was built. 43 Accordingly, supply-side controls that are aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most effective means of countering the risk of nuclear terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War eliminated the rationale for maintaining a large military-industrial complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were closed. 45 This resulted in at least 35,000 nuclear scientists becoming unemployed in an economy that was collapsing. 46 Although the economy has stabilized somewhat, there [*1439] are still at least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid and who are too young to retire, 47 raising the chilling prospect that these scientists will be tempted to sell their nuclear knowledge, or steal nuclear material to sell, to states or terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions. 48 The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. 50 In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. 51 This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. Fortunately boosted UAV patrolling solves Seper 2012 [Jerry Seper, editor for the Washington Times, “Border Patrol adapting to new threats, Strategy to use drones, copters in Southwest”, May 8, 2012, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/8/border-patrol-adapting-to-new-threats/] Just eight months after Defense Department officials complained in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that there was “no comprehensive Southwest border security strategy” in place, the U.S. Border Patrol unveiled a new strategy Tuesday that relies on helicopters and unmanned aerial drones and targets repeat offenders. Recognizing that it had to realign its priorities, resources and organizational structure to focus on new security threats while continuing its missions of immigration enforcement and drug interdiction, the new strategy represents what Border Patrol officials called “an evolution” to account for and take advantage of changes and improvements in the border environment and the agency since the September 2001 terrorist attacks. While threats to the Southwest border have evolved since the agency’s last official strategy in 2004, the new plan said Border Patrol resources and capabilities to meet those threats “have also grown.” Accordingly, the new national strategy is structured to adjust to those evolving threats and to reflect what the agency called “the effectiveness of the Border Patrol’s additional resources and improved operational capabilities.” The new 32-page strategy comes at a time that the number of agents has more than doubled to 21,000 since 2004 and the apprehension of those entering illegally from Mexico has dropped to a 40-year low. The strategy evolves from a resources-based approach to a risk-based approach, built around a framework of what the Border Patrol called the use of “information, integration and rapid response to better secure the border in the most risk-based, effective and efficient manner.” The strategy represents a natural evolution from an under-resourced organization focused on obtaining sufficient personnel, technology and infrastructure to “an organization that is managing rapid growth and is focused on using those additional resources in the most effective and efficient manner.” “The U.S. Border Patrol has proudly protected our borders since its founding in 1924. Its mission has always been important. However, on 9/11, that mission immediately became more vital than ever before to our nation’s security,” Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher says in the report. During a hearing before the House Homeland Security subcommittee Tuesday, the chief defended the new strategy, saying it would give the Border Patrol tools, programs, techniques and approaches that are more focused, effective and efficient. The report said the agency will introduce and expand sophisticated tactics, techniques and procedures; increase mobile response capabilities and expand the use of specially trained personnel; and disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organizations by targeting enforcement efforts against the highest priority threats. It also will increase and sustain the certainty of apprehension for illegal crossings, and increase community engagement through community programs, media relations and leveraging the public to help it achieve its goals. The Sept. 12 GAO report said the Defense Department was hampered in identifying its role regarding border security and planning for that role since it could not identify a comprehensive Southwest border security strategy. GAO’s auditors said top Defense officials expressed concern not just about the military’s role on the Southern border, but that key officials at the Department of Homeland Security - including those who oversee the Border Patrol - had not bothered in eight years to map out a comprehensive border strategy. The auditors said Defense officials told senior leaders at Homeland Security they felt the military’s “border assistance” was “ad hoc in that DOD has other operational requirements.” It noted that the Defense Department assists when legal authorities allow and resources are available, while Homeland Security had “a continuous mission to ensure border security.” Second is Pyroterrorism: Pyroterror attacks are inevitable in the squo Deshpande 2009 a a Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, Canada Version of record first published: 20 Jan 2009. Pyro-Terrorism: Recent Cases and the Potential for Proliferation, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 32:1, 36-44. Pyro-terrorism has the potential to become a tactic of choice for terrorists in more cases and in new places than it has been in recent years. By harnessing the environment as an operational platform, terrorists can avoid traditional security mechanisms designed to detect sophisticated bombs and biological or chemical agents. A reliance on existing vegetation ensures that both the cost and the inherent risk of a terrorist operation are mitigated. It takes little more than fuel and a combustible tool or a crude incendiary device to start a forest fire given the right environmental conditions. It can be safely assumed that extremist groups are also aware of a lack of preparedness for natural disasters and emergency response on a massive scale. Finally, terrorists are aware of the consequences of such scenarios because of widespread news coverage that focuses on the acute visual effects of infernos. An attack of this nature can have extensive repercussions. Today, wildfires represent a growing threat to populations in urban and rural interfaces as climate change and de- mographic shifts increase the size of danger areas. The 2007 California wildfires, one of which was deliberately set, exemplify the problems created by the urban and rural interface that exists in many parts of North America today; as a result of the fires, thousands were evacuated and nine people were killed.4 Fires result in significant economic and market distress and “strategic dislocation,” due, in part, to the overuse of existing resources and the distraction of public and private sector bodies.5 Firefighters and other emergency workers may suffer from psychological stress due to exposure to a high-risk and potentially deadly environment. The threat to human life, although less than that of a direct attack, cannot be ignored. As a result, intentionally set forest fires have the potential to disrupt lives on a massive scale.
Major Baird's thesis discusses that terrorist organizations are adapting to avoid security and screening systems. "Instead of using expensive, complex, and readily detectable nuclear or radiological bombs, a terrorist could easily ignite several massive wildfires to severely damage regional economies, impact military and firefighting forces, and terrorize the American people." Unfortunately, impending destructive energy already exists in our nation's forests. An opportunistic terrorist "can unleash multiple fires creating a conflagration potentially equal to a multi-megaton nuclear weapon." The EMR-ISAC agrees that massive wildfires could overwhelm suppression resources, destroy critical infrastructures, weaken regional economies, demoralize the general public, and put much pressure on local, regional, and national leadership.Therefore, the EMR-ISAC supports Major Baird's call for greater threat awareness by those living and working in the vicinity of wildlands. Increased alertness can be achieved by "community service advertising" on the television, radio, Internet, and in print. The goal of this dedicated campaign should be an aware citizenry looking to reliably identify and quickly report suspicious activity in the nation's forests. Assisted by a vigilant public, law enforcement will be in a better position to catch the perpetrators and negate the devastating effects of pyro-terrorism. Nuclear war Walter Mead, CFR, 4 February 2009 (Only Makes you stronger: Why the recession bolstered America, http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2169866/posts) History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.
Today ZALA AERO would like to announce a successful completion to the planned testing of UAS ZALA 421-08 (2kg) and ZALA 421-12 (4kg) during September 22nd to 24th that tested the capabilities of these systems to monitor and survey for forest fires as well as identifying the roles that UAVs can have in the agricultural industry in the near future. The key finding of the testing that took place in the Moscow region concluded that ZALA UAS systems portability and simply changeable payloads play a key role in providing flexibility that agricultural environment requires. Both of the systems are now equipped with built in photo cameras with GPS mapping and changeable day view or infrared payloads that provide 360 degree viewing angle. During the tests the information from both systems was translated to one ground control station on which the targets were mapped out. As for results, the pre-pared fires that ZALA UAV systems needed to identify on all of the tests the systems identified all burning fires but also identified underground fires that were spreading while also on two separate occasions identifying and tracking the culprits. These tests were conducted with the government agency FGY < Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 0.75 Mb. Share with your friends:
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