[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.