Spy Technology Spy technology has been advancing at a breakneck pace. As electronics advance so does this technology. Some of our electronics today, which are not created to be spyware can be used that way. Take the cell phone for example, they are easily traced to your location with the right software. The most sophisticated spy software and devices, no doubt, are used by intelligence agencies and the military. In the old days, spying software consisted of telephone taps and planting microphones in areas where you could get secret information. Eventually the bulky microphones turned into tiny electronic bugs which were undetectable without very special detection equipment. Probably the earliest spy equipment of the modern age were cameras in planes. In World War I, aerial photos were used to photograph enemy airfields and important targets. As time went buy cameras were mounted on planes which made this task easier. Many of us today have seen gun camera photos taken by planes. The released photos of UFOs by the navy were taken by gun cameras. Cameras have been improving and there is no greater proof of this than satellite cameras. These cameras can take incredible clear photos from space without the people on the ground knowing this. In the beginning of using cameras on satellites they used film which had to be parachuted back to earth but that all changed when digital photography came into being. Now the photos are transmitted back to earth. Just about one year ago the top acquisition official for the Air Force asked a very small company with only 5 employees to create advanced technologies for the U-2 spy plane. I have no idea why he didn’t go to a bigger company, but he must have had some reason. He wanted the team to update the software in the plane which has been around for many decades. Perhaps you will remember it was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 but the planes are still flying missions. He reappeared at the company a month later and asked them to also develop AI, which is artificial intelligence. He wanted it to be capable of flying the plane. The AI was to act as a copilot which could control the sensors and let the pilot know about missile locations and probably other things which are secret. It seems the company has been able to tackle and solve these tasks. One of the most obvious bits of spy equipment which is also capable of being a deadly weapon is a military drone. One example is the Predator drone. It can spy from high in the sky without being seen and when the need arises it can send missiles or a bomb into a target. It can carry the awesomely destructive Hellfire missile or other weapons and send video back to a station so the enemy can be secretly observed. The Predator is far from being the only military drone however. The Avenger is another drone which can travel at a top speed of 460 miles per hour and has a range over 15,000 miles. There is a version which can carry 3,500 pounds of weapons. There are plenty of other drones also. It is said a catalog of spy equipment was sent to Florida to a law enforcement department but got leaked. It was from a British firm and according to an article the company will sell this stuff to anyone with the cash to buy it. Many people don’t like the idea this type of equipment is being sold to police departments. They feel it is an invasion of privacy. One of the devices which has worried people and been the subject of lawsuits is the Stingray device which is used for spying on a cellular phone call and finding out who is making the call and their location. While this may be upsetting to many people, I guess I would have to remind them the government is monitoring all calls and has been doing it for decades. There are planes the government uses called SpecOps Spy planes. They have the newest sensors and carry anti-GPS jamming gear. The planes are not jets and look like something from the 1940s, but looks can be deceiving. They became generally known when one crashed in Iraq. It turned out the Joint Special Operations Command also known as JSOC has a small fleet of them. It is a multi-sensor platform. Several different civilian planes are in the fleet. The one I referred to is a Beachcraft King Air. These are U.S. Army planes. The planes contain a L-3 WESCAM MX-15-series sensor turret with electro-optical and infrared full-motion video cameras and a signals intelligence suite known as Nebula. I have no idea about how what I am going to talk about next works, but it is the fact some satellites may be capable of not only taking photos, but using sounds to attack a target. It is being said some may be capable of broadcasting a sound that bypasses the normal hearing of a person and goes undetected and yet this sound may harm people. This is the first I am hearing about that. Remember Kellyanne Conway? She was the spokesperson for President Trump. She made a statement saying something to the effect microwaves could be used to spy on people and immediately this was rebuked as nonsense by many people and yet there are some who claim this is true. I don’t know if this is true or not, but what I do know is microwaves were used against our embassies in Cuba, China and Russia and some of the staff got very ill from them. Could they have been used as some sort of spy device? It seems there is more to this story, because why would they just be used to make people sick, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for that? Talking about unusual things I should mention the fact the CIA had an unusual spy device in the 1950s. It was a sort of small submarine which had to be towed into place, but was capable of spying from areas larger ships couldn’t fit in. They also had their own planes such as the A-12 Oxcart from which the SR-71 Blackbird was developed from. The U-2 had preceded that plane. I would like to mention the fact a lot of secret planes including spy planes were developed in a very famous place you may have heard of. It was Area 51 of UFO fame. I would imagine a lot of them were misidentified as UFOs.
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