[biohacker42]

There is a difference between fighter pilots and drone pilots but not between drone pilots and who's ever job it is to push the launch button on any one of many missile types we'd had much, much longer then we've had drones. So war = bad, drones = red herring.

[anigbrowl]

I disagree. Almost always, missiles are targeted against fixed military installations. Of course there are tactical missiles fired between aerial and ground targets, but again these are optimized for and usually deployed against hardened military targets like tanks or gunships.

The problem here is not one of drones firing at columns of tanks, but the fact that they are being deployed as anti-personnel devices targeted at guerrilla leaders. I am OK with targeting such people (and as it happens, I support the idea of fighting and defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan, but I'm very disappointed with the implementation). The kind of drones we use now are basically lightweight planes, and given the physics of fixed-wing flight, that means fly-bys and high-yield single-use weapons.

If your intel is good and you have found an isolated Taliban training camp, then OK. But if it's poor, you're throwing a lot of destructive power at the wrong target. Whereas a sniper team might employ a scope or long-range microphone and observe the presence of many women and children or singing and dancing (conclusion: might be a wedding party), a drone on flyby can identify the existence of a target, but is poorly equipped to identify the nature of the target...which is one reason we've blown up a lot of wedding parties in the last few years.

Realistically, we can get away with it to an extent because the US is a big powerful country that can throw its weight around (and is allied with other relatively big and powerful countries). But a 50:1 kill ratio for civilians:bad guys is piss-poor - even if you assume a degree of dishonesty and propaganda on the other side, a ratio of 25:1 or even 10:1 is still piss-poor and exactly the sort of thing held up as an example of moral failure in history. By depending so heavily on tools which do not allow easy discrimination of military and civilian targets, we weaken our freedom to act effectively and early in other contexts.

I hope it's clear that my argument here is economic rather than political.

[jacquesm]

In fact the 50:1 ratio will probably create 2 new fighters for every one killed. Most people have families and don't like seeing their relatives blown up. Do not put people in a position where you've taken away their every reason to live for.

[jacquesm]

excellent point. thank you.