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The Big Girl by Steve Payne
 Author
says: what if Hillary Clinton had won the election? Would you want the
"Big Girl" to answer that 3 AM phone call to the White House? Please note
that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the
views of the author(s).
In 2016, May 24th:
on this day first reports from the Middle East of massive civilian
casualties caused by unmanned drone aircrafts were received in a 3 am
telephone phone call to the White House. This nightmare scenario would test
every ounce of the foreign policy experience of US President Hillary Rodham
Clinton which the "Big Girl" had claimed during her election campaign eight
long years before. Click
to watch the Campaign Advert
The vision of developing smarter unmanned aircraft that
could make life-and-death combat decisions on their own was a proposal from
"Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan, 2009-2047", a thirty-eight year road
map plan authored by the US Air Force during the Presidency of George W.
Bush. At that time, drones had been remotely controlled from Air Force
Personnel based in the contintental United States, mainly to provide ground
troops with constant overhead video. And there seemed little imperative to
change, with senior policy makers playing down the ultimate objective of
drone autonomy "because it's a plan. And having a plan is better than not
having a plan".
In 2010 the Defense Department had planned to spend $5.4 billion on unmanned
aircraft development, procurement and operations - about $2.5 billion more
than the military spent on UAVs during the 1990s. Then the world financial
crisis had forced Clinton's Administration to take some brutal cuts in the
military budget.
A decision had been made to accelerate the development of next-generation
unmanned aircraft for a slate of new missions, including air strikes, aerial
refueling, cargo transport and long-range bombing. Before Clinton's
re-election, just one control crew - airborne or ground-based - was able to
control multiple UAVs at once. Soon after the "Big Girl" returned to the
White House, she signed the fateful order that provided executive approval
for developing smarter unmanned aircraft that could make life-and-death
combat decisions on their own.
Investigations at the Creech Air Force Base would later
reveal that the drone had been "hacked" by al-qaeda operatives and that the
decision to fire had not after all been a malfunction.
Author
says content has been repurposed from the source content from an article
in the March 2010 Edition of Popular Mechanics Magazine by Joe Pappalardo
"Over the Horizon: as an unmanned revolution reshapes the U.S. Air Force,
war, politics and budget crunches could drive the Pentagon to trust
intelligent robots with once unimaginable aviation jobs". To view guest
historian's comments on this post please visit the
Today in Alternate History web site.
Steve Payne, Editor of Today in
Alternate History, a Daily Updating Blog of Important Events In History
That Never Occurred Today. Follow us on
Facebook, Myspace and
Twitter.
Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit
differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items
explore that possibility. Possibilities such as America becoming a Marxist
superpower, aliens influencing human history in the 18th century and Teddy
Roosevelt winning his 3rd term as president abound in this interesting
fictional blog.
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