[forktheif]

It continues to baffle me why the fact they're drones matter in the slightest.

They're not autonomous, they're flown by pilots who just happen to not be sitting in the aircraft they're flying.

Manned aircraft have killed huge groups of innocent civilians more than once, but apparently that's fine because the pilot was sitting in the aircraft.

[Killah911]

It matters because it changes the fundamental nature of combat. If a pilot is in the plane you're risking an American life, not to mention a very expensive piece of equipment with numerous safety features etc.

Now take away the risk to American life and lower the cost of the attack significantly, and viola, you've got a much itchier trigger finger now. If you've played MW3, which would you rather do, use the drone to take out enemies or risk your character dying?

A drone totally changes the dynamics of the fight. If we were able to get tons of drones and "mechwarriors", I don't think wars would be quite as difficult to justify. As technologists we are often blinded by the coolness of things. As someone who has worked on AI for drones early on in my career (for the US govt), I shudder to think that I may have contributed in some ways to a terrible technology for humanity. At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...

[golergka]

> you've got a much itchier trigger finger now

I doubt that. It would seem that a pilot sitting in a cockpit would be a lot more trigger-happy.

Both pilots can make two types of mistake: don't recognize an enemy for what he is, or do the same thing with a civilian. If plane pilot mistakes an enemy for something else and said enemy succeeds in his efforts, the pilot will lose his place and may be his life. The drone pilot, on the other hand, will only lose the drone, which is also cheaper then a plane. But the cost of the other mistake is the same for the both of them.

So, it seems that plane pilot has actually much more reason to shoot on targets he's not sure about.

[Killah911]

Clarification: I don't mean that the pilot has an itchy trigger finger, I mean the system or decision maker. I see how the two might be confused based on my original comment.

The commander/politician/leader is answerable and responsible for his soldiers, as such if the risk to the soldier's life is taken out of equation an attack suddenly begins to make more sense as it carrier lower risk & lower costs, therefore requiring less justification.

[nickff]

The reaper/predator and other drones cannot survive in contested airspace; any pilot(s) in modern combat aircraft would be at almost no risk of being shot down.

[kitsune_]

This isn't about the pilot, it's about the decision making process within the higher command structure.

Remember the downed F-117 pilot in Serbia? The repercussions of Somalia? Drones carry no such risks. The risk of political and public fall out is minuscule compared to traditional operations. Public outrage over "collateral damage" is negligible, because frankly, there is no public outrage about civilian deaths. Especially if "suspected Al-Qaeda operatives" were among the killed.

[salient]

Look at it this way: it makes killing people with targeted missiles that much cheaper, which means they will want to do more of it, not just to "important targets", but to "associated targets", too.

It's basically the NSA equivalent of mass spying. If spying becomes so cheap that they can just do it to everyone, then they're thinking "why not"? Same with drone striking. If it ends up costing them only like $10,000 per target - why not kill the associated forces, too? You know...just to be on the "safe side".

[golergka]

> it makes killing people with targeted missiles that much cheaper

Killing people is already really cheap. What's not cheap is deciding _not_ to kill them on the battlefield, given incomplete information. Drones are helping with information and making _not_ killing people cheaper.

[pantalaimon]

I highly doubt deploying soldiers on the battlefield is by any means cheap.

[Jtsummers]

Neither the pilot of a fighter/bomber or a drone gets to decide on the targets. They're given orders from above based on the intel provided to the commanders. So the issue isn't itchy trigger finger of the pilot, but itchy trigger finger of the commanders. The commanders have demonstrated over the last decade a willingness to send drones into situations they would not send fighters/bombers. There are few instances of US incursions with fighter aircraft over the last few years compared to the number of incursions with drones.

[alexeisadeski3]

The US used to send aircraft straight over the USSR!

[Jtsummers]

Much of that spy aircraft predating the widespread use of satellites, and certainly predating modern drone-style aircraft. The options available were different, so of course the option selected was different.

[mcguire]

Yes, and there was a big stink on this side of the Atlantic when one was shot down.

[sophacles]

The thinking is it is easier to dissociate consequences when they are nothing but pixels. It become more of a video game than a reality when sitting in a safe gaming pod flying the drone. It isn't fully transformed to a game, but it is to an extent.

Compare internet forums vs f2f discussion - it is much easier to end up in a flamewar saying hurtful things on the internet when your opponents are faceless words on a screen than when it's a person sitting across from you.

[roel_v]

Look, I don't have a position in this discussion, but your argument is prototypical for much of the others in this thread and it just seems so flimsy. Here is another totally made up argument just the other way around: for a UAV pilot, and their commanders, the 'kill order' is much more rational. Soldiers get to make decisions that are not influenced by the hate against the person who 2 minutes ago shot their buddy next to them in the head. Nanking massacre? Would never happen with drone pilots.

See? I'm not saying that argument is right. It is only just as neat, simple and (probably) wrong as the 'killing through a joystick causes more casualties because it dehumanzes the process' argument.

[MetaCosm]

> It matters because it changes the fundamental nature of combat.

Said about literally EVERY SINGLE change in warfare over the centuries. I am talking all the way back to armor and catapults to gunpowder based munitions, the blitzkrieg, rockets, planes, bombs, and of course nuclear weapons.

The thing is -- it is absolutely true, but it is always true, and therefore meaningless.

Lets look at the Gulf War for example -- the US lost 113 soldiers to the enemy (an addition 35 to friendly fire)... they killed "at least" 20,000 -- some estimates go as high as 35,000+(and an additional 3,500+ civilians). The asymmetry of modern warfare is nothing new, pointing to drones as some line in the sand is just, IMHO, silliness.

[nitrogen]

"It's always gotten worse, so it should always continue to get worse."

[MetaCosm]

Words like "worse" and "should" are very loaded in this context. Was the blitzkrieg "worse" than the trench warfare of WW1? Was using nuclear weapons "worse" than firebombing (see: Firebombing of Toyko, Dresdon).

"Should" used to mean "probability or expectation", then yes, it "should" continue to to get "worse" (read: change).

War is a horrible endeavor at its very core. It will always be, we try to "civilize" it via rules that are always broken as soon as things become dire. It isn't the implements or efficiency that are the problem, but the waging of combat itself.

[wtvanhest]

In fairness, US owned and piloted planes are very, very, very unlikely to be shot down. There is probably more risk of a crash landing on an aircraft carrier than any of those countries shooting one down. There is essentially no American Life risk.

Someone should have seen this coming a long time ago and called them multistage-guided-missiles or some other name.

The term 'Drone' is basically used as link bait and confuses the argument... If we replace 'drone' with 'stealth bomber', is it now OK to bomb a wedding?

[PavlovsCat]

> At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...

But that's the thing: in my mind more human soldiers means less potential for outright slaughtering of civilians. So more drones might end up raising the body count. in the long run; not for US soldiers, but for people you'd miss just as much if you'd happen to be born as their friends.

[threeseed]

Quite sure that the person who makes the decision whether to deploy air to ground weaponry isn't the one sitting in the cockpit.

[mcherm]

To be specific, the impossibility of retaliation is what differentiates drone attacks from direct human attacks. The reason it is significant is exactly what the article points out. As the article says:

> Our policy persists because we put little value on the lives of foreign innocents.

Suppose, for argument's sake, that this is true: that America puts nearly no value on the lives of foreigners in the pursuit of foreign policy. Nevertheless, attacking so indiscriminately that weddings are targeted unknowingly would be unthinkable because of the tiny chance of retaliation. But with no chance of retaliation it becomes possible for depraved indifference to foreign lives to influence policy.

Now, you may not agree that American foreign policy is depraved in this fashion, but the REASON that many feel that drone strikes are morally different is because if it WAS depraved in this fashion, the use of drones would be different from the use of other military force.

[golergka]

Also,

> If you've played MW3

doesn't have "civilians" as a game mechanic (unlike Counter-Strike or a lot of arcade shooting games, for example), so the comparison doesn't really work.

[Killah911]

Very interesting point, one might argue that the soldier on the ground has more of a "justification" if civilians are killed than a drone, since in the former case the soldier's life was in potentially more danger.

When a robotic combat bot/UAV is used, it is significantly harder to justify civilian casualties as it then becomes a much more cold/calculated decision. Guess it then boils down to the "precision" that is available. I don't suppose a drone can take out a single occupant in a vehicle so it's minimum quantum attack size is an entire vehicle and hence the additional casualties.

This bot driven warfare is some scary ass technology with a huge potential for abuse. Even if a future UAVs could target a single individual, that type of technology would have any aspiring dictator salivating at the thought...

[ars_technician]

Fighter pilots now have very little risk of being shot down. The only real difference is the cost like you mentioned.

[lmkg]

In a word, commoditization.

Regular aircraft are "expensive." They're literally expensive, in dollar terms, but even ignoring that they're logistically and operationally resource-intensive to operate. You only have so much airpower at your disposal, you're limited by flight deck space and pilot availability, you want to keep some in reserve, and aircraft are a bitch to maintain. Like, a week in service per day of flight time.

Basically, you default to not using them. You don't bust them out unless you have good reason to. You don't just cruise around looking for people who look suspicious, because that would be a tremendous waste of resources that could be better-spent elsewhere. Like transporting supplies for the troops on the ground. You only bust out the planes when you have solid, definitive, verified evidence that there is something that should get blown up.

Drones flip that around. You can't quite go cruisin' around just looking for stuff, but it's worth the time & effort to check out quite a few of your semi-sketchy tips. Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. But because the drones are remote, none of that risk is borne by any member of the military performing the operations; all the extra risk falls on the local civilian population. I don't think many people partaking in these operations are intentionally heartless, but this is a classic case of moral hazard, and on the margin more aggressive, risk-taking behavior is incentivized.

Additionally, putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This means that planes tend to be used only against 'static' targets, which gives you an opportunity to scout & verify. Drones allow you to hit 'time-sensitive' targets, which means you are now making time-sensitive decisions. A wedding party got hit because some dude had literally minutes (or less) to decide if a collection of vehicles was a wedding or an armed convoy. I take it as axiomatic that the added time-pressure increases the number of wrong decisions.

[nickff]

>Like, a week in service per day of flight time.

When you read hours of maintenance per flight hour, you should remember that much of the maintenance is done on parts which are being rebuilt off the airframe.

>Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly.

Please provide a citation for this claim, as it is not self evident. Many claim that the increased loiter time of UAVs allow for better timing and targeting, and there has been video evidence of this. You may be correct, but you still bear the burden of evidence when you make this claim.

>putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky.

This is untrue, as the USA has had B1 and B52 bombers continuously in flight over Afghanistan for weeks on end at many points in the war, to provide air support for ground forces. Most strike aircraft and bombers are also much faster than the UAVs.

[ollysb]

I think the point is that the drone strikes are happening in places where the US isn't even at war. They're just bombing any place they feel like and apparently not having a pilot sitting there seems to make it ok, or something...

[flavor8]

That's not new either. The US carried out airstrikes in Iraq throughout the 90s despite not being "at war".

[zdean]

I would think that it matters because the drones make killing more efficient (both in terms of financial costs and life-risk to the pilot). In other words, if manned aircraft were killing huge groups of innocents on their own, it would stand to reason that drones open the floodgates to exacerbating that problem.

[zacinbusiness]

That's a really good point, and I think that it come in the name "drone." These aircraft are NOT "drones." They do not perform menial labor and they are not "thoughtless." They do not perform automated attacks. These are units of force projection that the U.S. military uses as part of a psychological warfare campaign against citizens that it deems to be a threat (or, in other words, pretty much the entire planet).

[threeseed]

It is so annoying when the hyperbole grows to the point of ridiculousness.

You can argue about force projection all you want but the US is not trying to engage in some warfare campaign against the entire planet.

[zacinbusiness]

I don't know that I agree 100%.

We deploy drones in places where there are perceived terrorist threats. As you can see in collateral murder, all you have to do to be perceived as a threat is to be alive. This tells me that the U.S. government is overly paranoid.

Next, we are or will soon be deploying drones right here in the U.S. That tells me that the government perceives its own citizens as a threat or as a possible threat. This is backed up by the fact that they 'accidentally' collect U.S. citizen electronic communications.

The U.S. government makes far too many "accidents" for them to all be truly accidental.

[throwaway2048]

I'm glad we can argue semantics while the world burns.

[MereInterest]

Suppose I ask you how you feel about murdering babies. Then I ask you how you feel about terminating fetuses. The way that I phrase the question is going to influence how you respond. There is a difference between "job creators", "business owners", and "fat cats", even though each of them refers to the same thing.

Words are important, and language frames every issue. "Drones" as opposed to "unmanned aircraft" or "unmanned assault aircraft" is a huge difference in perception.

[throwaway2048]

Which is exactly my point of course, "drone strikes" has a certain, extremely negative connotation. Making a big fuss how they "arnt really drones you see, its just force projection" smells a lot like "enhanced interrogation" and other attempts to euphanise atrocities behind some neat, sterile sounding language.

[zacinbusiness]

No I'm not arguing, my point is that the terminology is what makes people so comfortable with it. It's a lot easier to be angry about a pilot or a gunner accidentally killing someone than it is to get angry about a drone, because I think a lot of people believe that drones are autonomous craft that fly around without being piloted. It's in the name "drone."

I think that's why the U.S. military popularizes the term drone over "unmanned aircraft" which even then isn't true - it's a remotely manned aircraft.

[PeterisP]

Actually, the world isn't burning. Everyone should be glad if we're talking about a wedding party bombed as a single, rare incident - if the same pilots were doing proper bombardment instead of those drones, as in previous wars, then we'd have a bunch of wedding parties killed every day and they'd be invisible in the total casualty list of a major city firebombing or napalming of a few villages.

The 'world burning' today is ten times less of actual burning than in, say, US actions in Vietnam or Korea, and hundred times less than ww1/ww2 - I'm glad that the scale of suffering is shrinking so much.

[brudgers]

Right. Dead is dead. And hitting a wedding was a consequence of an ongoing policy carried over from the previous administration.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/16/afghanistan-tal...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/06/afghanistan-wed...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r...

[mathattack]

I think this is the point. Because we're not putting our own lives at risk, we're actually getting more callous about it. This seems paradoxical, but I believe it's true.

[kevando]

This is an interesting point... I think it matters - possibly for a different reason. If you imagine from the ground: a terrorist car bomb VS a drone strike, they're virtually indistinguishable. Both are explosions without warning by the 'enemy.' It's almost a joke that people condemn terrorist acts and respond in kind.

[ars_technician]

Almost, but not quite. The difference would be that the US isn't killing civilians just for the sake of killing civilians to cause terror.

[throwaway2048]

That is exactly what they are doing. Terrorism is all about relatively minor, cheap, covert strikes against somebody perceived as the enemy.

The USA wont kill everyone that opposes them with such a campaign, but the point is the same as "terrorism", to send a message of fear if you dare oppose us, or associate with people who oppose us, damn the "collateral damage".

Make no bones about it, this is exactly the same kind of asymmetrical warfare that the USA itself condemns as terrorism.

[kevando]

I mean, yeah, that's what we're told. But the fact remains - drone strikes create terror. And on the other side, believing terrorist acts are simply to create terror is naive.

[morsch]

Who says that it does matter? I think the reaction would have been very similar if a manned aircraft had bombed the wedding party. Do you have any recent instances of mass civilian casualties resulting from a "conventional" bomb strike that got ignored?

[kvinnako]

Would you think we can apply this same argument when it happens to be an american wedding?? Hell no. drones or no drones, we will definitely have some policy changes and definitely some heads will roll.

[danielweber]

If the United States had firebombed Denver instead of Dresden, yes, the US government would have made sure it didn't happen again.

[MartinCron]

For what it's worth, people had similar debates about the morality of using manned aircraft when airplanes were first invented.

[gaius]

It is probably easier to get pilots to bomb civilians with a Playstation controller in what looks and feels like a video game, than an actual person present.

[blisterpeanuts]

It's not a question of "ease". Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do. Either they follow orders or they are relieved of duty (and possibly face court martial).

Some drones are operated by a division of the CIA and are out of military control, however. This is probably the most worrisome aspect of the program.

However, as long as 99% of their targets are bad guys, Americans are going to continue supporting the program. It's zero risk for American pilots, and everyone likes to read about more dead terrorists with their morning coffee. More points to whoever's in charge.

Governments like Yemen's will also support it because #1 it does their dirty work for them, and #2 they can blame an evil foreign power. Win-win.

[fraction]

"However, as long as 99% of their targets are bad guys, Americans are going to continue supporting the program."

The problem here is that 100% of the targets are bad guys while seemingly a very low percentage of the casualties are. Americans continue to support the program because the media does not do it's job. Instead they act as a mouth piece, a cheer leader, instead of doing actual journalism.

The War on Terror, much like the War on Drugs, is a utter failure. It has ZERO chance of being successful because of tactics like this.

[viraptor]

> Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do.

Do you really think that the disconnection doesn't have an effect on some level? Whether it's the number of people signing up at all, being ready for a mission, or actually following orders?

How many people would follow the order of shooting from a controlled plane to unsuspecting people in a convoy -vs- an order to take a knife and kill an unarmed not resisting person in front of them? The end result is the same. Giving them enough distance just makes it much much easier.

[blisterpeanuts]

Undoubtedly the video game quality of the drone program abstracts the carnage and makes it easier for the operator to sleep at night.

[hansjorg]

I recently stumbled upon an excellent, but slightly dark, browser game which explores these kind of themes. You play the role of a military drone pilot going about his everyday menial tasks.

Unmanned:

http://unmanned.molleindustria.org

[lmm]

> Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do. Either they follow orders or they are relieved of duty (and possibly face court martial).

Even so, and despite all the training, some do refuse orders. They're also at least theoretically obliged to refuse illegal orders (i.e. war crimes), at least in my country.

[jackgavigan]

Different countries have different definitions of what constitutes a war crime, depending on what international treaties they are parties to. Bombing wedding parties would come under what is often referred to as the Principle of Proportionality, as laid out in Article 51 of Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions and Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The United States is not a party to either treaty.

[mistercow]

Since when is the US not a party to the Geneva Conventions?

[dragonwriter]

Protocol I and Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 are later agreements that added to the 1949 Conventions, the United States is not a party to either Protocol, though it is a party to all four of the 1949 Conventions.

[codfrantic]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18535330

[Kliment]

Sure, and those who refuse get replaced by new ones who won't. Doesn't take long to "fix" that "problem".

[bluedino]

>> It's not a question of "ease".

I think the previous commenter was speaking on the level of disconnect between a drone pilot and their intended targets. It's much, much easier for someone to go through with clicking a button and watching an explosion on a screen than it is to say, murder each of those people if they were in the same room.

[forktheif]

Millions of dead from WW2 strategic bombing, disagree with you.

[gaius]

Wholly different scenario, fighting a real war against a tech-equivalent enemy.

[threeseed]

Tens of millions of civilians died during the two wars.

Tech equivalency is a meaningless concept and it is completely stupid to apply it in particular to WW2 where the majority of civilians never asked or wanted a war to begin with.

[alexeisadeski3]

Millions of Japanese civilians were tech-equivalent?

[walshemj]

yeah in 44/45 a b29 raid vs what ever the Japanese air force could cobble together is really equivalent.

[tootie]

That would imply we people have trouble killing on a battlefield which would seem to be patently false.

[gaius]

Soldiers do have trouble killing on the battlefield; have a read about "operant conditioning", a psychological technique used in modern training to overcome it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-So...

General Marshall discovered after WW2 that only 15% of front-line soldiers even fired their weapon at the enemy. Even soldiers don't like to kill enemy troops in the middle of a battle!

[magicalist]

Well, first, his claim was 25%, and while my understanding is that it did end up leading to changes in training, you should at least acknowledge the large disputes on how he reached that number (e.g. based almost entirely on interviews available to him opportunistically, no documented methodology, etc).

[Blaque]

Easier, and cheaper.

[wcummings]

When we declare war on Yemen you'll be right. This is more akin to the bombings in Cambodia.

[pekk]

The use of manned bombers has occurred in "police actions" over and over

[wcummings]

Yeah, it worked so well subduing MOVE! [1]

But in all seriousness, this isn't police action, its a foreign power.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing