New British flying robot killer death machines renamed 'Protector' The UK Ministry of Defence has tried to rebrand its latest batch of airborne death machines as “Protector” drones rather than their actual trade name of Reaper. The so-called Protector drones are actually based on the latest model of the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drone – known in its latest variant as the Predator – which …
As we live in a nation where the most popular "celebrity" in a TV show is only a celebrity because she is in a TV show that is nothing more than a bunch of characterful people watching and talking about OTHER TV shows, it should be no surprise that so many people find "(%)y Mc(%)face" so funny.
I really do worry about who is going to look after me in the few years between retiring and dying... the current up-and-coming generations are about as reassuring as a chocolate fireguard...
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"Perhaps we could call them "goodwill ambassadors"
Isn't that what Trump wanted Farage for?
Come to think of it if you are looking for a name for something that falls from the sky and causes widespread damage while protecting the UK from foreign invaders then "Farage" might be about right.
It would at least present some decent challenges for the newsreader who had to report on Farage barrage carnage of a marriage carriage.
The RN used to give its smaller ships friendly names like Kingfisher or Gannet. Till you remember that kingfishers and gannets are pretty deadly when you're fish-shaped.
There were Flower class sloops in the First World War, and Flower class corvettes in the Second. HMS Daffodil doesn't seem that aggressive.
There have also been several ships called HMS Terrible, the last a 1940s aircraft carrier. Maybe reviving that name would be a little too close to the truth, given the aircraft carriers that don't have any aircraft, the destroyers that can't be used in warm water etc.
<i<The RN used to give its smaller ships friendly names like....Gannet.</i>
Friendly only to people who don't know what a gannet is.
If the twats who give names to military products had thought for about 20 nanoseconds, they'd have realised that instead of "Brimstone", "Hellfire", Statanic Death" or the other usual missile names, they would have had far less of a PR problem choosing names like "Gannet", "Kingfisher", and "Kinell".
I have heard the name change was driven by our former Prime Minister, you know, the one who couldn't organise a referendum, as he didn't feel it would go across well if he announced we were buying drones with too aggressive a name. It's a bit odd as we stopped giving foreign military equipment a different name in WW2 as we found it just got confusing trying to order spares etc. Hence we named the Wildcat the Martlet and the Avenger the Tarpon for a bit until sanity prevailed.
There was a slight logic to the renaming as the UK had a policy with naval fighters being named after birds, naval bombers after game fish, land fighters being named after meteorological phenomena etc. I mean there probably is still a policy we just don't make enough for it to be noticeable now.
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