Robot Navy Helicopter Breaks The Code Of Streets
The Navy is using unmanned robot helicopters to hunt drug smugglers. A Fire Scout helicopter called MQ-8B (apparently, the Navy shops for robots on the Jawa black market), the craft is more advanced than the remote operated drone planes used in Iraq in that it can take off, fly and land without human assistance. "MQ-8B became the first unmanned helo to deploy on a naval anti-narcotics mission when it left port in Florida on Monday aboard the USS McInerney," reports Popular Mechanics, noting that a crew of engineers were on hand "to help the aircraft stay healthy." Hey, MQ-8B. Here's a word to the wise: You know how a nosy robot helicopter can stay healthy? Stop snitching.
Drug smuggler: These aren't the drugs you're looking for.
MQ-8B: These aren't the drugs we're looking for.
Drug smuggler: He can go about his business.
MQ-8B: He can go about his business.
You are not the kind of robot helicopter who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar. You are on a flight deck being handled by an engineer with a shaved head. All might come clear if you could just slip into the sky and look for a little more Bolivian Marching Powder.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the antitorque tail rotor began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…
And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like small unmanned horizontal-rotor aircraft, all swooping and screeching and diving around the aircraft carrier, which was going about 18 knots an hour with the deck clear to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn surveillance and interdiction drones?"
I thought the first law of the streets was "if you see the cops, warn a Brother HL-3040CN digital printer."
Nice!
Please SkyNet sir, I'll turn in these other meat cases as long as you spare me (and maybe make me King of Andorra, I mean if it's not too much trouble).
The ship on a drug interdiction mission was named the McInerney? How awesome *is* that?