[dragonwriter]

> I’d like to offer the point of view that if the drones become better and more surgical in their precision, it would reduce civilian casualties.

It would reduce collateral casualties per target attacked, which would make the drones easier to use with looser target selection criteria, which might both increase number of targets attacked and increase the number and ratio of incorrect-target-selection casualties.

The law of unintended consequences is most likely to sneak up and bite you when you only bother to consider first-order effects.

[BookmarkSaver]

Ok... but even accounting for civilian casualties due to increased use of drones, civilian victims (and overall casualties) of US military operations has done nothing but drop as technology improves.

This is just throwing in an unfounded qualitative thought, not an actual empirical argument against precision weapons.

[VikingCoder]

> civilian victims (and overall casualties) of US military operations has done nothing but drop as technology improves

If you can definitively tell me how many civilian casualties there were in the Iraq war, we could discuss whether this were true.

"Credible estimates of Iraq War casualties range from 150,000 to 460,000. Other disputed estimates, such as the 2006 Lancet study, and the 2007 Opinion Research Business survey, put the numbers as high as 650,000 and 1.2 million respectively, while body counts, which likely underestimate mortality put the numbers as low as 110,000." [1]

Having a range from 150,000 to 1.2 million makes it kind of hard to discuss, don't you think?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War