There has been an indisputable growth of anonymity added to modern warfare due t

Question

There has been an indisputable growth of anonymity added to modern warfare due to technological advancements in the preceding decades. Does the use of UAVs promote a feeling of being ‘removed from the battlefield’ that allows an individual to consider ‘pulling the trigger’ without wholly considering the consequences? Does this mainstreaming of remote controls and ‘video game-like’ technology create any hazards in modern warfare, or is it a positive step forward that helps save lives that could otherwise be lost when engaging in traditional forms of combat?

Explanation / Answer

In March 2011, as disaster unfolded at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, questions arose about the veracity of the Japanese government’s assessment and disclosure of radiation levels. One year later and 6,000 miles away, a battlefield technology was making its way into this type of mishap. Developers are beginning to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, as tools for gathering images, information, and data for every expect of life.

Proponents of UAVs sometimes hesitate to refer to them as “drones” because of negative connotations conjured by their military use. UAV technology has quickly become an important weapon of war for the United States, growing from a small number in force for the 2003 invasion of Iraq to more than 7,000 UAVs and 12,000 unmanned ground robots. The U.S. Air Force “now trains more unmanned-systems operators than fighter and bomber pilots combined” (Singer, 2011). With this increased usage has come criticism about the moral limits of technology in warfare. Drone opponents question targeted killing beyond the reach of any court, a so-called “nonjudicial execution.” With none of the rights afforded captured prisoners, suspected terrorists are executed in foreign lands via missile-bearing drones. Arguments abound concerning the place of drones under the Law of Armed Conflict, the subset of international law that establishes “minimum standards of human decency on the battlefield”. Proponents argue that drones are the ideal technology to adhere to the law’s principles of maintaining proportionality, minimizing human suffering and curtailing collateral damage. Opponents question the determination of “battlefield,” arguing that the law’s principle demanding military necessity is negated when any street down which a suspected target walks becomes a de facto “battlefield.” This concern is heightened by the distance between the target and any human actor. Because drones such as the Predator fly autonomously to predetermined coordinates and only involve military personnel in the decision to deploy missiles from the safety of their bases in Germany or the United States, critics fear drone operators may grow numb to the human costs of war.

Hence, with the advent of the robotics revolution, war itself has become a first-person-shooter (video game). A youth manning the console of a Predator drone from the safety of an air-conditioned compound thousands of miles from the battle-scene can kill with the same degree of unconcern which a computer game demands.

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