Drones

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Drones can be remotely controlled by a pilot who mans the drone’s activities or they can be pre-programmed to carry out certain missions without human piloting on a computer. Predator drones have been effective in eliminating “suspected terrorists, Taliban leader and Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan”. They can record video, capture images and follow militant vehicles, record terrain for the men on the ground, and follow suspects to their safe houses where upon confirmation of identity they can eliminate the enemy with the push of a button by deploying a bomb or missile. They offer a safer alternative to troops walking into ambushes on the battlefield by attacking the enemy remotely. Drones may be changing the face of warfare and how wars are fought but the same people are dying; it may be a weapon of precision, but it still endangers the lives of our innocent men, women and children.

Supporters of drones argue that they can fly unnoticed over and into enemy territory, can monitor and track the enemy and carry out precision attacks all without endangering the lives of military personnel. Drone attacks can be timed and their missiles diverted if any civilian causalities become a factor. Operators are required to verify that the target is in fact an enemy before launching the drone missiles, they must also take the necessary precaution to minimize any civilian losses and ensures the “attacks do not cause disproportionate incidental loses”. Removing fighter pilots from combat zones eliminates the threat to our soldiers’ lives and allows operators to make better targeting decisions without the fear for their own safety.

Supports believe drones offer an alternative to putting our men and women in the military in harm’s way and they’re just as lethal in combat as our fighter jets. They argue that even though these strikes can cause collateral damage in the form of civilian lives and property damage, the same can be said about traditional warfare and air strikes.  Even though drones can effectively eliminates their targets, they also hurt and kills innocent civilians as well, leaving the people in these nations in constant fear of other drone attacks, thereby creating more enemies for the U.S. These countries may decide to retaliate with their own drones, putting more innocent people at risk thereby perpetuating the cycle of violence.

Supports argue that the risk to civilian and military causalities is minimal, but we need to take into consideration the effects it can have on those who supply the information about potential targets, or the innocent civilians in the area around the target. Even though drones can be operated remotely, and there is little personal risk if it is shot down, there’s still a risk to those informants on the ground who gathers intelligence about these so called terrorists targets and their movements. These men and women risk their lives to supply information that can be used to carry out these drone missions, and even though they’re not the ones carrying out the elimination, they’re still subject to physical or psychological risk and despite our best efforts to limit civilian causalities, civilians are always at risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

By sending unman drones into other nations without their knowledge, the US is in fact infringing on these nation’s sovereignty, they’re using these unmanned drones to fly into Pakistani airspace without permission and are carrying out targeted aerial assignations often at the expense of innocent civilians.  These drone strikes may result in the death of the targeted suspect, but their “explosion can also kill neighbors, children, animals, and by-standers”. These drone strikes may be taken as an act of war against these nations, leading to an escalation in violence and more bloodshed. It can also be used as a recruitment tool by terrorist groups which can lead to more insurgent wars.

Drone attacks is easy and cost effective, but drone strikes can also “create backlash that feeds blow-back”, facilitating the killing of innocent civilians. “This type of warfare is fundamentally dehumanizing and reduces to almost nothing the value of innocent life that happens to be in the vicinity of the target”. The lives of these people have been reduced to the push of a button or the programming of a computer. The men and women operating these drones who view their action on a monitor can become desensitized to the fact that they’re taking another person’s life, thereby reducing their targets and other causalities to those of a character in a video game. By killing the target, we’re eliminating any chance we have of gathering additional information from them through interrogation,

 Facts:

• Predator drones have been effective in eliminating “suspected terrorists, Taliban leader and Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan”
•  “attacks do not cause disproportionate incidental loses”
• drone strikes can also “create backlash that feeds blow-back”
•  Their “explosion can also kill neighbors, children, animals, and by-standers”
• “This type of warfare is fundamentally dehumanizing and reduces to almost nothing the value of innocent life that happens to be in the vicinity of the target”