Government
officials are firmly focused on starting the drone center in
Pennsylvania, going out the truth that plenty of new jobs will soon
be designed for the general public to apply for. But, as effective as the
employment prospects might appear there's significantly more than
matches the attention with the amount of slots to fill up.
According to one activist 200 jobs are expected to surface because of the drone facility, 180 being military transfers while 20 jobs are thought to be janitorial posts. If the majority of transfers come in from outside the area or even from different states, then no high paying jobs would actually be brought to the region. “We don’t know that they need jobs in that particular neighborhood,” Marjorie Van Cleef, an anti-drone activist, said to the Voice of Russia, “It’s not a poor area.”
Supporters of the drone center have also claimed that establishing a military center would cut costs within the department and overtime. Cost efficiency though may just be Pentagon cheap and the average American would be surprised to know that one drone flight could cost around 50,000 dollars. When a drone is brand new and hot off the assembly line, the price tag could run around 14 to 16 million dollars. “Everybody’s worried about the deficit and the budget crisis, these things are billions of dollars each. This is nuts. We can’t help poor people, but we can build these things,” Bill Deckhart, Coordinator for BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action explained to the Voice of Russia.
Once the unmanned aerial vehicle is sky-high it costs three grand per hour to keep the machine up in the air, and an entire team of people and tools in order for a flight to be deemed doable and sometimes successful. After all the costs and manpower is tallied up, the American government is still spending a decent chunk of change on UAVs, maintenance, and employees to train and operate the technology.
While the land of the free continues its cash saving efforts, the machinery it’s relying on may actually be defective—at least in some instances. Between the unmanned drone and the controller, there stands a 1.2 second differential, which can lead to irreversible faults. Pennsylvania is not the only state that may become a new drone command center, nine other states are in the crossfire including New York, Michigan, and California among others.
As panic rushes through the minds of protestors nationwide against the use and operation of drones for assassinations abroad, an even more discerning fact has surfaced. “There are still people in the United States who ask what is a drone,” Van Cleef said, admitting they are usually middle-aged and older people who are unaware of what a drone is. With the public’s eyes closed and ears shut to up and coming technology that has made companies such as Boeing and General Atomics wealthy, for the most part the program stays covert in hopes of possibly getting the terrorist agenda off the headlines. “If you have these, what can appear to be random and isolated attacks, against individuals around the world, it doesn’t really feel like a war,” Peter Lems, Program Director of Education and Advocacy for Iraq and Afghanistan at the American Friends Service Committee said.
It is safe to say that anti-drone protestors, whose goal is to get rid of the military drone command center, are to face many future struggles. Even though there are Americans who desire peaceful ways of intervention, they are not employed in DC, where Van Cleef said that there are a few peacemakers in DC, but most of them aren’t there anymore. However, politicians are not the only barrier standing in the way of the drone center becoming a distant memory in history. “We have a policy that is very militarized as a way to resolve conflict around the world so there is this notion that we need to have bigger planes and higher walls in order to make us feel more secure,” Lems explained to the Voice of Russia. In the long run, the facility may only add fuel to the fire the US has been building on, each accidental strike at a time. America needs to stand united on the issue of drones or it runs the risk of being a nation divided on yet another policy.
According to one activist 200 jobs are expected to surface because of the drone facility, 180 being military transfers while 20 jobs are thought to be janitorial posts. If the majority of transfers come in from outside the area or even from different states, then no high paying jobs would actually be brought to the region. “We don’t know that they need jobs in that particular neighborhood,” Marjorie Van Cleef, an anti-drone activist, said to the Voice of Russia, “It’s not a poor area.”
Supporters of the drone center have also claimed that establishing a military center would cut costs within the department and overtime. Cost efficiency though may just be Pentagon cheap and the average American would be surprised to know that one drone flight could cost around 50,000 dollars. When a drone is brand new and hot off the assembly line, the price tag could run around 14 to 16 million dollars. “Everybody’s worried about the deficit and the budget crisis, these things are billions of dollars each. This is nuts. We can’t help poor people, but we can build these things,” Bill Deckhart, Coordinator for BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action explained to the Voice of Russia.
Once the unmanned aerial vehicle is sky-high it costs three grand per hour to keep the machine up in the air, and an entire team of people and tools in order for a flight to be deemed doable and sometimes successful. After all the costs and manpower is tallied up, the American government is still spending a decent chunk of change on UAVs, maintenance, and employees to train and operate the technology.
While the land of the free continues its cash saving efforts, the machinery it’s relying on may actually be defective—at least in some instances. Between the unmanned drone and the controller, there stands a 1.2 second differential, which can lead to irreversible faults. Pennsylvania is not the only state that may become a new drone command center, nine other states are in the crossfire including New York, Michigan, and California among others.
As panic rushes through the minds of protestors nationwide against the use and operation of drones for assassinations abroad, an even more discerning fact has surfaced. “There are still people in the United States who ask what is a drone,” Van Cleef said, admitting they are usually middle-aged and older people who are unaware of what a drone is. With the public’s eyes closed and ears shut to up and coming technology that has made companies such as Boeing and General Atomics wealthy, for the most part the program stays covert in hopes of possibly getting the terrorist agenda off the headlines. “If you have these, what can appear to be random and isolated attacks, against individuals around the world, it doesn’t really feel like a war,” Peter Lems, Program Director of Education and Advocacy for Iraq and Afghanistan at the American Friends Service Committee said.
It is safe to say that anti-drone protestors, whose goal is to get rid of the military drone command center, are to face many future struggles. Even though there are Americans who desire peaceful ways of intervention, they are not employed in DC, where Van Cleef said that there are a few peacemakers in DC, but most of them aren’t there anymore. However, politicians are not the only barrier standing in the way of the drone center becoming a distant memory in history. “We have a policy that is very militarized as a way to resolve conflict around the world so there is this notion that we need to have bigger planes and higher walls in order to make us feel more secure,” Lems explained to the Voice of Russia. In the long run, the facility may only add fuel to the fire the US has been building on, each accidental strike at a time. America needs to stand united on the issue of drones or it runs the risk of being a nation divided on yet another policy.
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