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Reaper aerial killbot harvests its first fleshies

Hapless meatsacks slaughtered by flying mechanoid

The new MQ-9 Reaper airborne wardroid has mown down its first fleshies, according to the US Air Force.

The MQ-9, aka Predator-B, is a derivative of the original MQ-1 Predator drone aircraft, one of the first mechanoids to kill human beings. Famously, a CIA Predator blew away al-Qaeda bigwig Qa'ed Sunyan al-Harethi in 2002 after his cellphone turned traitor and squealed on him to its digital chums. A-model Predators have notched up a number of kills since then in the Wars on Stuff.

The old Predator was a fairly small and limited machine, originally intended to be no more than an eye in the sky. Its anti-human weaponry was added retrospectively. By contrast, the Predator-B was designed from the outset to hunt fleeing meatsacks and cut them down like corn. It is designated an "unmanned hunter/killer weapon system" by its human quislings in the US air force, and can be tooled up with a fearful array of guided Hellfire missiles, Paveway beam-riding bombs or autonomous smart weapons with their own satnav/inertial guidance.

Not for nothing have comparisons been made with the remorseless airborne slaughter-droids seen in the dystopian future of the Terminator movies, employed by the ruling machine-intelligence overlord to harvest the last ragged human resistance fighters scuttling ratlike through the ruins of their civilisation.

Now the Reaper, recently deployed to Afghanistan, has begun its deadly work.

"According to Central Air Forces," the Air Force Times reported last night, "an MQ-9 fired a Hellfire missile at Afghanistan insurgents in the Deh Rawood region of the mountainous Oruzgan province. The strike was 'successful'..."

Nothing but the new electromagnetic pulse bomb technology can possibly save us now. Just pray that it comes in time. ®

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