Vietnam Veteran Found Not Guilty Over Drone Protest

Vietnam veteran turns to activism for redemption
Buffalo News
By Phil Fairbanks
News Staff Reporter
on September 1, 2014

Russell Brown, a Buffalo resident and Vietnam veteran, was arrested in Central New York in April 2013 while protesting the use of drones.
Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News

In a suburban courtroom outside Syracuse, before a jury of six men and women, Russell Brown talked about his days as a Marine in Vietnam.

He talked about the fighting and killing – he was in Quang Tri Province, a bloody battleground in the late 1960s – and how a lot of innocent Vietnamese died there.

He also talked about why, 45 years later, his experiences during that war led him to an anti-drone protest and the decision to lie down in front of an Air National Guard base in Central New York and cover himself with paint the color of blood.

It was the “most peaceful experience” since his return from the war in 1968, he told he jury.

“When I was in Vietnam, I didn’t say anything,” the 67-year-old Buffalo resident said. “I never spoke out.”

Brown, who represented himself during the two-day trial in Dewitt Town Court, portrayed his protest as an act of redemption, a way for him to ease some of his guilt and regret about the war.

The jury, after just two hours of deliberation, found him not guilty.
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Veteran pushes for $25 to get a drone-hunting license in Colorado

In one Colorado town, it’s open season on drones
Los Angeles Times
By Matt Pearce
Published: January 19, 2014

DEER TRAIL, Colo. — Wearing a black duster and a black cowboy hat, Phil Steel walked to the front of the meeting room armed with a Nerf gun and a smile.

The U.S. Army veteran was there to pitch his big idea: an ordinance that would legalize and regulate drone hunting inside Deer Trail city limits. If approved, residents could pay $25 to get a drone-hunting license; the town would pay a bounty for every drone bagged.

“Really?” someone asked sarcastically as the theme music to “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” blared during Steel’s entrance. Laughter rippled through the room.

Steel had hammered out the 2,800-word ordinance in just four hours. Its key points:

When a drone flies into its airspace, Deer Trail will consider it an act of war.

You can only shoot at drones flying lower than 1,000 feet.
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CIA’s covert drone program may shift further to Pentagon

CIA’s covert drone program may shift further to Pentagon
By Ken Dilanian
Tribune Washington Bureau
Published: February 17, 2013

WASHINGTON — Facing growing pressure to lift the secrecy around targeted killings overseas, the Obama administration is considering shifting more of the CIA’s covert drone program to the Pentagon, which operates under legal guidelines that could allow more public disclosure in some cases.

John Brennan, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to run the CIA, favors moving most drone killing operations to the military, current and former U.S. officials say. As White House counterterrorism adviser for the last four years, Brennan has overseen the steady increase in targeted killings of suspected militants and al-Qaida operatives.

In written comments released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is considering his nomination, Brennan said coordination has improved between the CIA and Pentagon. If confirmed, he vowed to work closely with Defense officials “to ensure there is no unnecessary redundancy in ... capabilities and missions.”

The proposed shift follows Obama’s vow in his State of the Union speech Tuesday to be “even more transparent” about the “targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists.”
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VFW wants Distinguished Warfare Medal rank reduced

VFW Wants New Medal Ranked Lower
Feb 14, 2013
Military.com
by Bryant Jordan

Barely 24 hours after the Pentagon announced its new medal for cyber warriors and drone pilots, the Veterans of Foreign Wars is demanding the decoration's ranking be lowered.

The Distinguished Warfare Medal is ranked above both the Bronze Star with Combat "V" and the Purple Heart – medals typically awarded for combat in which the servicemember's life is at risk.

"The VFW fully concurs that those far from the fight are having an immediate impact on the battlefield in real-time, but medals that can only be earned in direct combat must mean more than medals awarded in the rear," VFW National Commander John E. Hamilton said in a statement released Thursday. "The VFW urges the Department of Defense to reconsider the new medal's placement in the military order of precedence."

Hamilton said the new medal and its ranking "could quickly deteriorate into a morale issue."

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, who announced the new award on Wednesday, said the military needed a medal that recognizes that post-9/11 warfare is different with servicemembers at consoles in the U.S. directly affecting the outcome of enemy engagements.
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DOD announces Distinguished Warfare Medal

DOD announces the "Distinguished Warfare Medal"

DOD announces the "Distinguished Warfare Medal"
By Jennifer Harper
The Washington Times

Drone pilots, heads up.

A new award becomes available, Defense Dept. officials say, in a few months. That would be the Distinguished Warfare Medal, meant to provide DOD-wide recognition for “extraordinary achievement, not involving acts of valor in combat, directly impacting combat operations of other military operations,” according to a memo from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Wednesday. The new “DWM” ranks below the Distinguished Flying Cross, but above the Bronze Star.
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FAA told to make room for drones in U.S. skies

FAA told to make room for drones in U.S. skies
By Bart Jansen, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Within a few years, that flying object overhead might not be a bird or a plane, but an unmanned aircraft.

Drones, perhaps best known for their combat missions in Afghanistan, are increasingly looking to share room in U.S. skies with passenger planes. And that's prompting safety concerns.

Right now, remote-controlled drones are used in the U.S. mostly by the military and Customs and Border Patrol in restricted airspace.


Now, organizations from police forces searching for missing persons to academic researchers counting seals on the polar ice cap is eager to launch drones weighing a few pounds to some the size of a jetliner in the same airspace as passenger planes.

On Monday, the Senate sent to President Obama legislation that would require the Federal Aviation Administration to devise ways for that to happen safely in three years.

"It's about coming up with a plan where everybody can get along," says Doug Marshall, a New Mexico State University professor helping develop regulations and standards. "Nobody wants to get hurt. Nobody wants to cause an accident."
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Virus infects computers piloting U.S. drones

Virus infects computers piloting U.S. drones
By Michael Winter - USA Today
Posted : Saturday Oct 8, 2011 14:20:45 EDT
A computer virus that logs keystrokes has infected computers used in Nevada to remotely pilot U.S. drones over Afghanistan and other war zones, Wired reports. As far as the Pentagon knows, no classified information has been lost or transmitted outside.
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Fort Bragg Soldier charged with beating toddler, infant

Soldier charged with beating toddler, infant

Raeford, N.C. — A Fort Bragg paratrooper has been charged with beating his two young children, including one that is 7 weeks old, authorities said Tuesday.

Sgt. Alex Wayne Mages, 22, of 106 Dotson Drive, was charged with one count each of felony child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury, felony child abuse inflicting serious injury and felony assault with a deadly weapon. He was being held Tuesday in the Hoke County Jail under a $150,000 secured bond.


Video here
Soldier charged with beating toddler, infant

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http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/3984269/

Mages was an unmanned drone pilot. Before you think that there is no chance he was affected by this, read this and understand there is a chance it was because he served. Don't assume anything yet.

Remote-control warriors suffer war stress too
by Scott Lindlaw / Associated Press
Thursday August 07, 2008, 3:45 PM



MARCH AIR RESERVE BASE, Calif. -- Working in an air-conditioned trailer nicknamed the Dumpster, Predator pilots peer into Iraq through a bank of computers, operating by remote-control the drone via keyboard and chat software -- and occasionally unleashing missiles on enemy fighters.


When their eight-hour shifts are done, they merge onto the highway and blend into the Southern California suburbs.

For the growing number of air national guardsmen involved in unmanned combat missions, it can be a whiplashing daily transition, and one that is taking a toll on a few of them.

"When pilots finish their job sitting in the ground control station, they climb out of that thing, hop in their car and then they drive home, and they have just been basically at war," said Col. Albert K. Aimar, commander of the 163rd Reconnaissance Wing here.

A Predator's video cameras are powerful enough to allow an operator to distinguish between a man and a woman, and between different weapons on the ground, unit commanders say. While the cameras' resolution is generally not high enough to make out faces, it is sharp, they say.

Aimar, a weapons system operator on F-4 fighters in the 1970s, said flying unmanned Predator drones in combat can weigh on a pilot and on the sensor operators who control cameras and weapons systems.

"When you come in (with a fighter) at 500-600 mph, drop a 500-pound bomb and then fly away, you don't see what happens," said Aimar, who holds a bachelor's degree in psychology. "Now you watch it all the way to impact, and I mean it's very vivid, it's right there and personal. So it does stay in people's minds for a long time."

The 163rd has called in a full-time chaplain and has enlisted the services of psychologists and psychiatrists to help ease the mental strain from this remote-controlled fighting, Aimar said.

"We've been doing this for two years now, and we're pretty adaptable," Aimar said. But, he said, "It's causing some family issues, some relationship issues. It's just not something we ever had to deal with."

Similarly, chaplains have been brought on at Predator bases in Texas, Arizona and Nevada.
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http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2008/08
/remotecontrol_warriors_suffer.html