Expert Warns Drones Could Be Missing Hundreds of Potential Benghazi-Like Attacks
The United States military has an intelligence problem—it has too much of it.
As drones get better at taking video, the Air Force has an increasingly hard time analyzing it for potential threats, leading one expert to warn that the military might be missing potential attacks.
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“We have hundreds of Benghazis we might need to protect against, and we don’t have the computing power or the manpower to watch it as it’s happening,” says James Keagle, director of the Emerging Challenges Program at National Defense University.
It’s a problem the military is increasingly turning to automated systems to solve—analysts can use NFL-like telestrators to circle a door, for instance. If a drone detects unexpected movement near that door, it can automatically alert people on the ground. But that raises new issues: Human rights organizations object to giving drones even further levels of automation. But even with automation, the military is falling behind, some experts say.