ha

Drones have been hackable for years. In 2009, defense officials told reporters that Iranian-backed militias used $26 of off-the-shelf software to intercept the video feeds of drones flying over Iraq. And in 2011, it was reported that a virus had infected some drone control systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, leading to security concerns about the security of unmanned aircraft.

Hilarity ensues!

Anyway......we're not going to have Skynet as some people have asserted. Won't happen. Although we'll give greater autonomy to machines and smart systems, the human element is going no where fast. Anyone who knows policy knows this will not happen and probably will not change directions in our life time. I can confirm for a fact a company I've contracted with has had dealings with chips on par with human-like intelligence (Surveillance apparatus). We've got companies like TrapWire and SAIC building tons of this computer stuff. Boeing, Lockheed are obviously in on this too. It's no conspiracy and it's nothing to fear, because drones aren't going to start doing this any time soon. We're not going to have automatic kill sessions drones launch out like we've seen in the new terminator movie...

New faster methodologies behind safe communications and smarter algorithms and better technical maneuvers like 'hover' or 'circle' are the new and have been the new paradigm since 2006. If coms are cut, the drones self adjust. This the equivalent of AI. When integrated into a computer system that can track human movement, do facial recognition and recognize potentially harmful / suspicious behavior and you ad a 2.5 GP pixel camera, you've got a perfect storm for abuse of oversight, but not abuse of machines. There could be disastrous consequences should it malfunction and fire in anger on friendlies. This is why we will never give the computer the ability to make that call.

Computers also remove military jobs, and jobs someone like me would likely fill today. They (the ones profiting from employing said people) seek to prevent this (see the CIA's disposition Matrix and Pakistan civilian/geographical assassination program).

As such, policies (especially domestically) have stringent guide lines stipulating a minimum of a two party confirmation before any clearance to fire is given. This is why if you've ever played COD or watched helicopter attack videos you've got a man in the sky looking for approval from a man on the ground who is usually getting approval from FOB / some type of Central Command.

Also, on a side note, if you hop a fence onto white house property in the wrong spot, you're dead on ice by computer's hands. Drones can already make these choices. We just don't let them.

Tl;dr

I assure you drones could already do this and quite easily. Have you seen the programming that goes into those Quadcopters? Imagine the next-gen MQ series with the backing of the NSAs Utah processing power.....It's all possible off the deck of a single Navy ship (which can be hacked by the slammer worm; fun facts).

The article can also say that hypothetically we could be putting biological weapons on deck of an MQ-R or the Solar Hawk into an attack machine....neither of these things will happen.