Over the past few years I’ve become a die-hard fan of the TV show “24.” My devotion has been fortified by obtaining a DVR that allows me to watch the show on my own schedule and to fast-forward through commercials. It saddens me that the final episode in the eight-year run of “24” will be shown on Monday, May 24. Life won’t be the same without my friends at the Counter Terrorist Unit reminding me each week that the good guys are still winning most of the struggles against evil, at least the fictional ones.
With each episode, “24” confirms for us faithful followers that, in the long run, conflicts are won by those with the most advanced technology. That superior science — to our good fortune — these days is possessed by the United States. So advanced are we that many of today’s toughest challenges are answered not by boots on the ground as occurred for America’s first two centuries, but by mouse-manipulating, keyboard-clicking geeks who stare at computer monitors.
Granted, steely-eyed, whispering Jack Bauer might get the most tube time and elicit the most swoons from groupies, but when CTU needs quick and accurate data, it’s the pouting but pert Chloe O’Brian who gets the job done back at the office. And when it comes to today’s nonfictional warfare, some of the most advanced military tools are researched, designed and manufactured within 70 miles of Clark County. Bingen, in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge, is the home of Insitu, a flourishing firm that specializes in camera-equipped drones. Insitu employs more than 700 people in several sites along or near the river; sales last year topped $148 million. Insitu’s unmanned aircraft have flown 38,000 sorties and spent 300,000 hours airborne. Increasingly, they play a major role for the U.S., flying reconnaissance missions that supply information for humans as well as for the military’s other weapons-loaded drones.
Cameras that save lives
The value of this technology cannot be exaggerated. It is not measured in sorties or hours but in lives saved through the use of pilotless aviation. Another measure is lives saved on the ground. “Quite literally, my son’s life was saved by (Insitu’s) ScanEagles,” RaeLynn Ricarte said in a recent story by The Oregonian’s Allan Brettman. According to Ricarte, videos from the drones showed improvised explosive devices being planted along a route that her son, a Marine, and others were to have traveled.
