[wilsonnb]

First of all, people haven't even come to a consensus on when war itself is ethically justified. It shouldn't surprise anyone that drone warfare, a subset of something we can't come to an ethical consensus on, is a highly debated ethical issue.

It's very easy to justify our drone program from a utilitarian perspective. All you have to do is show that it has a lower civilian to target ratio than more conventional forms of warfare. It's even easier if you count the lives of US soldiers as more important than civilians in war zones, and a lot of people agree with that.

I haven't read it yet, but I look forward to reading this 22 page paper [1] on the ethics of drone warfare. I read the abstract and the conclusion, which states that "much more nuanced and probing analysis of the moral dimension of remotely piloted aircraft operations is needed". Perhaps you will enjoy reading it as well.

edit: You've added some rather inflammatory language about killing children and civilians since I last saw your comment, so I thought I'd add this - it's pretty easy for anyone who's studied ethics to come up with situations in which killing hundreds of children can be justified with a common ethical framework. Ethics is not at all a black and white subject.

You're just trying to appeal to people's emotions instead of making an actual ethical argument.

[ocdtrekkie]

"All you have to do is show that it has a lower civilian to target ratio than more conventional forms of warfare."

Well...

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/15/90-of-peopl...

And...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone...

[wilsonnb]

Your first source states in the headline that the drone strikes "kill innocents 90% of the time".

Then, in the body, it says the drone strikes "caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times".

An unintended target is not the same as an innocent, and it's misleading to use them interchangeably.

Your second source is better, but you haven't provided any data on the civilian-to-target ratio of more conventional methods. You can't have a meaningful comparison without that.

[ocdtrekkie]

I am reasonably confident that conventional pilots kill civilians less than 9 out of 10 times.

[wilsonnb]

Without data to back it up, your reasonable confidence doesn't help me much.