Anti-Drones Protest Planned For Saturday Outside Former Willow Grove NAS
By Brad Segall
HORSHAM, Pa. (CBS) -- A group calling itself "Drone-Free Horsham" plans to protest tomorrow afternoon outside the main gates of the former Willow Grove Naval Air Station to show their opposition to a new drone command center there.
The group has been using social media, specifically Facebook, to try to garner support for the rally. They bill it as a public awareness protest designed to educate the community about the drone program.
Organizer Sean Miller says there's a misconception that only high-level targets are being hit and that collateral damage is small, but he says innocent people are being killed overseas.
"We think it's making us less safe because it's creating extreme attitudes toward the US in remote parts of these countries that had never given us a second thought prior to this," he tells KYW Newsradio.
The new command center is set to begin October 1st. It brings with it 250 jobs, 75 of them full time.
Drones will not be flown in and out of Horsham, but will be remotely piloted and controlled by a military unit using a "virtual" cockpit.
