How Drone Warfare Works
Generally speaking, drone warfare is carried out overseas among the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, that is not where the pilots are located. While the drones themselves may physically be in combat overseas, they are in fact controlled via satellite from Nellis and Creech US Air Force base located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Of all places, Las Vegas is the control center for all of the American and some British drones currently at war with Afghanistan and Iraq, which is quite a change from the type of warfare the world is used to. What is essentially happening is that ground crews launch drones from conflict zones, and from there the operation of these drones are “handed over to controllers at video screens,” almost like it’s a real-life video game trained soldiers get to play (dronewars.net). The drone controllers are located in the middle of the Nevada desert, sitting down in specially designed trailers. They have a designated person to fly the drone, someone to operate and monitor the drone’s cameras and sensors, and a third person who maintains contact with the ground troops and commanders who are overseas in the war zone (dronewars.net). This entire set-up has cut off these soldiers from war, and the more people are being cut off from it, the more dehumanized war will become.
Pilots detached from War
According to Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Black, a former Air Force predator pilot (see image to the left), the task of going to war is very similar to going to a regular, everyday office job. He would “grab a Starbucks, hit the road…and it was a 45 minute drive” to get to work. Pilots fly three 8-hour shifts, and have to put on their “game face” while in the work place. However, unlike an office job, pilots step into a conex box, completely cut off from the outside world, and fly a plane that’s already mid-flight. These isolated ground control stations at Creech Air Force base control drones in the middle of missions, fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq, and the pilots just step right into the middle of the battle. Lt Col Black addresses the fact that the journey from Las Vegas to Creech is long enough so that the pilots are separated from society, providing a distinction between the realities of civilian life from those of wartime. Being trapped inside an isolated box and flying a plane that's overseas, with the sounds and familiarity of battle, makes pilots forget that they are safely at home in Nevada, not fighting in Afghanistan. Then after a mission is over, pilots get up, leave their box, and let the next pilot complete his or her mission; just another day at the office. There is a disconnect between physically fighting overseas and piloting a drone that is fighting overseas instead, because pilots are leaving this state of mind where they feel immersed in the battle, but after a few hours they can simply get up and drive home (bbc.com).
Are drones justifiable?
According to UN’s Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, “the use of drones is not combat as much as ‘targeted killing’” (dronewars.net). Alston has tried multiple times to get the US to justify its use of drones to target and kill individuals under international law. However, up to this point the US has refused to explain how they justify such matters, which Alston replied to with comments such as specifying “the bases for decisions to kill rather than capture particular individuals,” and requesting the number of civilian deaths due to drone attacks (dronewars.net). Truth of the matter is, if people weren’t so caught up in the war and took a step back, they might see the immorality of the United States’s actions. This isn’t even including those operators who have become “trigger happy,” using remote controls to fire on people, comfortable and safe in the middle of Nevada, far away from the war zone. One army chaplain, Keith Shurtleff, also mentions “that as war becomes safer and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrors of war and see the enemy not as humans but as blips on a screen, there is very real danger of losing the deterrent that such horrors provide” (dronewars.net). The United States, along with any other countries using drone warfare, are prone to the very real possibility that as soldiers become more and more detached from wars, sitting contently in operating rooms instead of fighting on the battlefield, they will become “trigger happy,” almost as if the blips on the screen were part of a mere video game and not real-life human beings whom they are killing without a second thought.
Dehumanizing war
According to Tom Engelhardt, a fellow at The National Institute, over the years war has become more and more remote for Americans, until there was the concept of remote war itself, which is what drone warfare is. Drones, which were once a top secret program of the US government, are now all over the news worldwide. Worldwide exposure means that many people have been made aware of what drones are capable of, and the impact this type of technology will have on warfare. Soldiers, in this case Americans, are taken out of harm’s way due to the usage of drones, killing fewer citizens than in ordinary combat and creating a more effective military. A more effective military means the executive branch also has more power towards waging secret wars, or “undeclared wars” like in Pakistan and Yemen, because all that’s needed are a few trained controllers to man drones back in the States -- no transportation or gear or foot soldiers are really needed for war now. The easily accessible drones can stay afloat for long periods of time, meaning they can “circle a target for hours” before striking, tracking someone almost indefinitely (globalization101.org).
The major issue with the drones is the level of detachment there is from the war zone; this is a significant ethical issue because many people are afraid that having drones will “increase the possibility of combat” (globalization101.org). Human Rights lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, believes that the dehumanization of war has already occurred due to drone warfare, especially with US authorities referring to people killed by drones as “bugsplat,” a term from computer games. This is because dehumanizing the enemy makes it easier to kill them. Some of the drawbacks of completely removing humans from war include the dependence upon the accuracy of the drones. The drones depend on two-way satellite communication, which could easily be jammed by enemy militants, resulting in faulty information being transmitted. There are also potential latency problems, meaning a delay between the instructions given and the drone’s response to those instructions. However, in comparison to having soldiers physically fighting overseas, drones can be considered the “lesser evil” because soldiers can fight without risking their safety. With sci-fi movies like The Terminator in our not-so-distant future, the world needs to be prepared for robot armies instead of citizens.
The major issue with the drones is the level of detachment there is from the war zone; this is a significant ethical issue because many people are afraid that having drones will “increase the possibility of combat” (globalization101.org). Human Rights lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, believes that the dehumanization of war has already occurred due to drone warfare, especially with US authorities referring to people killed by drones as “bugsplat,” a term from computer games. This is because dehumanizing the enemy makes it easier to kill them. Some of the drawbacks of completely removing humans from war include the dependence upon the accuracy of the drones. The drones depend on two-way satellite communication, which could easily be jammed by enemy militants, resulting in faulty information being transmitted. There are also potential latency problems, meaning a delay between the instructions given and the drone’s response to those instructions. However, in comparison to having soldiers physically fighting overseas, drones can be considered the “lesser evil” because soldiers can fight without risking their safety. With sci-fi movies like The Terminator in our not-so-distant future, the world needs to be prepared for robot armies instead of citizens.
"From 2004 -March 2012, an estimated 1,778- 2,764 deaths are attributed to U.S. Predator strikes in Pakistan, of those an estimated 1,485-2,293 were militants. The numbers are not exact because after a drone attack, the militants quickly remove the dead and do not report the exact numbers."
The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot
According to Daniel Suarez, autonomous robot drones have the capabilities to make lethal decisions about humans all on their own. These drones can automatically identify human targets, firing when they choose, because that is how advanced they are. By using autonomous drones, or even remotely controlled drones, war is being dehumanized, which is “changing the social landscape” of war (ted.com). Victory used to depend on who had the best weapons, then who had more men, but now it is returning to who the best weapons, with less men fighting as a result of drones take over. By returning to fewer men needed to fight, the country is resetting a 5,000 year old trend back when power was centralized into the hands of the few (ted.com). This is happening because of the usage of drones, as more remotely piloted combat drones and autonomous drones take the place of humans, making them obsolete. The drones are capable to think and evaluate the situation without assistance, so eventually decisions will be made without any human input, which is a terrifying thought. Since there is no way to possibly view all the footage drones record, software will most likely be developed that “will tell humans what to look at, not the other way around” (ted.com). Not only are drones dehumanizing war, but they’re also making humans obsolete.
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