[liquidise]

There is something philosophically unsettling about drone strikes. Violence, particularly mortal violence is naturally self-policing in nature. In order to kill something you must be there and risk injury yourself. Technology based distance attacks like drones and missiles remove this doubley: you not only de-risk your person, you are also more emotionally distanced from the attack as well.

It is not a trend that bodes well for humanity in the future.

[megous]

OTOH, in this instance it's at least elites killing each other directly with their toys, and not peasants killing each other for a bunch of megalomaniacs and war spoils.

This was a real decaptitation strike. US killed a major mastermind, organizer, and an icon to some. It's akin to killing Al-Baghdadi or Hannibal at the peak of their successes. It will be interesting to see how that will end up working out.

[gremlinsinc]

With drones and the right technology you could literally assassinate virtually ANYBODY in the world covertly without any trace tying it back to you. Esp w/ smaller and smaller drones.

Imagine a drone the size of a fly landing on a President or someone high up in a country and 'stinging' them with a poison then flying back home? Even if it was caught/destroyed it wouldn't always be traceable if using vpn's and pre-programmed flight patterns and ai.

There's been nothing like this ever. It's scary and kind of fascinating in a JAmes Bond kind of way, but still mostly scary. If the tech is ever open sourced or democratized it could be used to attack anyone you don't agree with or who's wronged you, etc... basically a super tiny hitman that isn't as stupid/error prone as a real hitman.

[AnimalMuppet]

Artillery. Bombers. Naval torpedoes. And worst of all, land mines. We've had this problem for a long time. If anything, drones have the problem less than land mines do.

[senectus1]

its interesting in that, you can happily hurl big rocks at people in castles via catapults while being unable to see what /who you're hitting and be perfectly safe, yet you might not (I know i dont) have an issue with it like you (and I) do with drones...

its basically the same thing. just an upscale in range, and really safe distance is safe distance... doesn't really change the situation when you add more 00's to the distance.

[boomboomsubban]

Iran is not sieging our castle, that is the key difference. We are the aggressor, even if the acts of the other side are morally repulsive

[true_religion]

In his example, we are the aggressor too as we have the catapult and they have the castle.

[Jon_Lowtek]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_prox...

[boomboomsubban]

Saudi Arabia is a US client kingdom, their proxy war would not be happening if Iran was still a US subject.

[TechBro8615]

They were sieging our embassy...

[freeflight]

Many people are getting the time-line of events completely wrong.

The embassy protests (call it riots if you like) were a response to the US killing at least 25 of them [0], which was a response to them supposedly being responsible for the death of US contractor [1].

There were no casualties during the embassy protests, yet the consequence of that was the US killing QS, and other PMU leadership, near Baghdad airport.

Now some people are peddling stories about how those two were supposedly not connected at all, and the US allegedly had intelligence how QS was planning to attack US Americans all over the world, which comes across as a bit of FUD to distract from the reality that the US just assassinated the general of another nation.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50951742

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/27/politics/iraq-rocket-atta...

[gremlinsinc]

In basically their territory. Why do we need a presence or embassy there? Why waste the money? Does Canada have an embassy in every nation? Does France? What about Sweden and Denmark?

If we absolutely need a presence why not have coalition embassies? A single office w/ 1 member from each coalition country, and equal soldiers from all countries and diplomatically making unilateral decisions as a group not based on any country's agenda.

[jancsika]

its interesting in that, you can happily guide drones to kill people at great distances while being unable to see what /who you're hitting and be perfectly safe, yet you might not (I know i dont) have an issue with it like you (and I) do with triggering self-replicating nanobots anonymously through the internet to target victims based on a secret set of metadata ruled by a secret set of laws...

its basically the same thing. just an upscale in precision, and really safe distance is safe distance... doesn't really change the situation when you add more dangerous technology to the mix.

[senectus1]

heh, you make my point forward looking.

I think I agree.

[liquidise]

Point taken, though i would argue that somewhat-blindly hurling rocks at walls is materially different from intentionally ending a specific life from across the world.

[ryacko]

Collateral Murder was disturbing in the enthusiasm by the soldiers for what is a grainy video. I wonder if WWII bombardiers when looking down and seeing miniature sized vehicles and buildings were as enthusiastic as well.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstri...

Amusingly, the video starts with Wikileaks decrypted the video, but all drone feeds are unencrypted.

[dogma1138]

It’s not a drone feed it’s form the gun sight camera of an Apache attack helicopter.

Drone traffic is now predominantly encrypted it’s not the early 2000’s anymore when you could tune into drone feeds with a satellite dish and $30 worth of software.

[ryacko]

The aircraft flies like a plane, not a helicopter. Helicopters have very small turning radii.

I think it is from a drone.

[dogma1138]

You seem to not understand that the gunsight is gimbaled and can rotate and zoom independently of the helicopter flight path.

Also the turn radius of a helicopter is what ever the pilot wants it too be.

For CAS you wouldn’t turn on a dime you’ll take slow wide turns to allow the gunner to maintain their engagement and for you to have better situational awareness you aren’t evading incoming fire here.

This isn’t a drone you do get such angels form fixed wing drone footage, not to mention that drones don’t come with auto cannons...

[ryacko]

Yeah, it must've been at a pretty high altitude far away.

Too bad the pilot was flying past a building, blocking view of the civilians carrying indistinct objects. Maybe the pilot didn't know what he was doing. I suppose I will be downvoted for my views, but I abhor dishonesty.

[dogma1138]

The video is heavily edited, it was cut and over 20 min were removed by WikiLeaks that showcase the entire engagement.

There was an inquiry into this, yeah mistakes were made and quite a few lessons had to be learned but this wasn’t a joy ride.

[robkop]

The first sentence of the wiki page mentions that they were in two AH-64 Apache Helicopters.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstri...