This morning on NPR the aircraft flying over Paris were referred to from the top as "small recreational drones" and "toy aircraft". They visited a shop in Paris that sells them, where they were called quadricopters.
I don't understand why no one's getting this. If you were presented a news headline about children playing with guns, wouldn't it alarm you? And when you found out further down in the article that the children were only playing with toy guns, wouldn't you feel misled?
I'm only saying I feel misled when presented a news story about drones when they're actually toys. I'm not saying these toy drones can't represent a threat (I've stated several times that they
*can* represent a threat, but some seem to have missed this), but it's a threat of a much lower magnitude than a real drone, you know, the kind we use to fire missiles at terrorists. The kind that aren't flying over Paris or the White House.
Radio controlled model aircraft have had the ability to fly over the White House, the Eiffel Tower and the American Embassy in Paris for a very, very long time. Yes, they're more capable today than a half century ago, and they represent a greater potential threat today than they did then, but it isn't asking too much for the news media to be up front about whether they talking about a real drone or not.
--Percy