Hunter-Killer – That’s right folks, you heard it!

A fellow TAG'er sent me over this item from today’s issue of US Today:

Bomb-laden 'Reaper' drones bound for Iraq

The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It is outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there is no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

The arrival of these outsized U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

My emphasis above

Note that the company building these devices is General Atomics of San Diego and not Cyberdyne Systems, but if the DOD or NORAD starts calling their computer network SkyNet, I think we all should be really concerned.

Is it a case of life imitating art, or something much more sinister?

More here.