The Willow Grove Air Base must not have a drone command center

       Horsham Township, Pennsylvania, March 24, 2013: On October 4th, 2013, the United States Airforce announced it will open an entire new command center and begin to station un-maned aircraft operators at the Willow Grove Air Base. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as "drones," have come under scrutiny as many regard them as being a detriment to the United States in both foreign and domestic matters. The effects of such an operation in Willow Grove will not just affect the citizens of Montgomery County, but also the citizens of surrounding counties, including Bucks County.

      The United States currently uses drones in the foreign realm to eliminate Al-Qaeda operatives operating across the world. In the domestic realm, drones are used for both scientific and police work. Please note that the Libertarian Party of Bucks County has no objection to the use of UAVS for scientific research as long as the institutions have clearance. In foreign policy, the UAVs are used in air strikes with the eventual goal of eliminating Al-Qaeda's leaders, as well as fighters. The overall mission is to make American safe from the threat of Al-Qaeda.

The Domestic: actuality

Unmanned aerial vehicles are currently being used by police departments across the United States. But, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles poses a dire threat to our safety as it violates the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution and endangers aircraft pilots and passengers.

Fourth Amendment violation

As lawmakers question whether or not unmanned aerial vehicles can be used with or without a warrant (, the Supreme Court of the United States has issued several rulings which set a precedent for detirmining the constitutionality of using drones over the United States for police use. Katz v. United States, 398 U.S. 347 (1947) set the standard by which a search is determined to have taken place. In the case, a search was defined to have occurred when 1) a person expects privacy in the thing searched and 2) society believes that the expectation is reasonable. Unmanned aerial vehicles can be outfitted with heat vision and other spy equipment, such as cameras and recorders. As such, the use of drones to look through private property, within a person's home, represents a search. Later, in Kyllo v United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the Supreme Court of the United States held that "where…the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment ‘search,’ and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant." As it is currently legal to use an unmanned aerial vehicle without a warrant, the use of UAVs to search a person's home is in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States which protects United States citizens from "unreasonable search and seizure" without a warrant.

Danger to manned aircraft

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles also represents a hazard to aircraft pilots and passengers as they fly throughout the United States. In one instance, a pilot almost hit a drone. On May 14th 2012, the pilot of a Cessna Citation 525 CJI radioed air traffic controllers outside of Denver on May 14th to report that he believed his plane had almost hit a unmanned aerial vehicle. If unmanned aerial vehicles are increasingly used within our communities, incidents in which pilots hit or almost hit UAVs will become more frequent. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles represents a dire threat to thousands of people who fly on aircraft everyday.

Foreign Policy: actuality

The United States is seen as being a heartless and imperialistic nation due partly to its usage of unmanned aerial vehicles on the field of war. The United States use of UAVs on the field of battle partly sets the tone that our foreign policy is set upon  foundation of violence and destruction as opposed to peaceful cooperation and diplomacy. Unmanned a

Collateral damage and Al-Qaeda

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles to assassinate suspected members of terrorist groups does not help the world view the United States in a positive way. It is justified to believe that Al-Qaeda presents a threat to our very way of life, but the method by the United States government uses to eliminate such a threat is, at best, questionable. In many cases, unmanned aerial vehicles are outfitted with weapons used in aerial strikes, and in most cases UAV strikes kill their intended targets. At the same time, the innocent people affected and killed by such strikes are labeled as "collateral damage," almost as if they were subhuman and not deserving of our respect. Through the killing of innocent people, the United States gives Al-Qaeda it's number one recruiting tool. Even as the United States believes that through its assassination of Al-Qaeda leaders it is keeping the United States safe from harm, it is doing the exact opposite. This is blatantly obvious when examining Yemen. In 2010, the Obama administration described the number of Al-Qaeda fighters in the Arabian peninsula as encompassing several hundred members. By mid-2012, that number had risen from several hundred to several thousand members. Two years and several drone strikes later, Al-Qaeda had multiplied by a factor of 10.  At the lowest level, the people are fighting back against the United States's foreign policy.

What should the policy be?

The Libertarian Party of Bucks County firmly holds that the unmanned aerial vehicle command center opening at the Willow Grove Airbase perpetuates the folly of the United States's foreign policy. The Libertarian Party of Bucks County does not support the continuation of policies which are detrimental to the United States. We will not support the continuation of the United States's imperialistic foreign policy. The Libertarian Party of Bucks County does not support the usage of drones domestically as we believe their use constitutes a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights. We believe opening a UAV command center at Willow Grove Airbase will pave the way to allowing domestic police forces to use drones within our communities. The Libertarian Party of Bucks County firmly believes that they UAV command center at Willow Grove Airbase should not become operational.

Marc Connuck & Libertarian Party of Bucks County

Libertarian Party of Bucks County