Remotely operated aircraft have been on the Canadian Forces' wish list since the 1990s. Trials of a variety of drone prototypes began at the Canadian Forces Experimentation Centre in 2002.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As far back as 2008, the Canadian Forces brass was explicit: drones with 'all-weather precision strike capabilities' were a 'requirement' for Canada's overseas operations.
When I was the director of Central Intelligence in the early '90s, I tried to get the Air Force to partner with us in building drones. And they didn't want to, because they had no pilots.
It is already clear that, because of advances in technology, drones are going to play an increased role in warfare in the years ahead. It is therefore vital that the legal frameworks governing their use are robust and internationally recognised.
The use of drones is rapidly transforming the way we go to war. On the battlefield, a squad leader can receive real-time data from a drone that enables him to view the landscape for miles in every direction, dramatically expanding the capabilities of what would normally have been a small and isolated unit.
I think the reason that drones have become so controversial is because they're used in Pakistan; they're used in Yemen; they've been used in all kinds of places.
A drone isn't any different than a bomb; it's not any different than other weapons that are used, where there is always a capacity for people to be killed who you wished were not. It's just the weapons platform.
My business partner gave me a drone, a small helicopter you pilot with an iPhone, and also it has a camera so you can see what it sees on the iPhone. Great fun. I fly it outside in Portugal. It's wonderful to oversee gardens.
We have no regulation of drones in the United States in their commercial use. You can see drones some day hovering over the homes of Hollywood luminaries, violating privacy. This question has to be addressed. And we need rules of operation on the border, by police, by commercial use, and also by military and intelligence use.
We have institutionalized a drone program where the oversight is almost completely internalized.
I love flying and kind of just fascinated with it, and to fly something like an F-22 would be a blast.
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