Cheap drones can now penetrate the most sophisticated security perimeters — and nuclear reactors are a potential site of catastrophe.
By Harvey Wasserman, Free Press
Terrifying reports from the Ukraine-Russia front underscore an inescapable new nuclear reality: In the age of drone warfare, the myth of atomic reactor safety has been exploded.
No matter how thick the containment domes, or how vehement the industry denials, a quantum leap in the killing power of weaponized drones has completely blown past official atomic safety assurances.
The unwelcome new reality has been brought home by two recent features in the New York Times.
A devastating, Pulitzer-level dispatch from C.J. Chivers in the Times Magazine covering the Ukrainian killing fields seems to announce a total transformation in trench warfare.
In excruciating detail, Chivers documents the new-found ability of remote drone operators to overcome with lethal force virtually any defensive barrier or evasive maneuver.
From safe bunkers sometimes miles away, Ukrainian operators now send small un-manned devices worth as little as $400 to destroy tanks and heavy artillery pieces worth multi-millions. They’re also killing terrified Russian soldiers in open fields or dense underbrush even as they desperately try to escape. The Ukrainians are even flying their drones deep into buried bunkers, obliterating whoever’s in there.
Amidst a campaign to deploy a million drones per year, the vastly outnumbered Ukrainians have been able to overcome with astonishing ease highly complex, sophisticated defensive barriers as well as frenzied, desperate attempts at evasion.
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