Sunday, 1 September 2013
UAVs - a force for good and evil

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or 'drones' as they’re commonly known, are suddenly everywhere. Conservationists and academics are using them to map our rivers; engineers surveyed the interior of the earthquake damaged Christchurch Cathedral with one, and then, of course, there’s the military drones used to such lethal effect in Pakistan and Yemen. Ideas visits Palmerston North’s Skycam UAV – New Zealand’s leading manufacture of UAVs; talks to the interim president of the Association of Unmanned Operations – a union of US drone pilots; and Professor James Cavallaro tells us about the findings of a report he co-authored, Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.