Drone by Hugh Gusterson

Author:Hugh Gusterson [Gusterson, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780262034678
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2016-05-13T20:16:03+00:00

4

Casualties

It’s not about the technology, it’s about how the technology is used. Drones aren’t magically better at avoiding civilians than fighter jets.

—Sarah Holewinski1

The categories we take as rigid and unchanging, such as “terrorist,” are in fact remarkably fluid in the context of Afghan politics.

—Anand Gopal2

In February 2011, at a conference on drones and international law organized by the New America Foundation, Tom Malinowski, then the director of Human Rights Watch, surprised some in the audience by making a strong defense of drone warfare.3 Malinowski argued that, compared to manned aircraft, drones created the opportunity for more ethical and discriminate attacks against targets on the ground because of their ability to linger, often unseen, for hours as they track and evaluate potential targets. Pilots of manned planes flying at high speed and working against time limits enforced by limited fuel might make a rash targeting decision based largely on their own transitory perceptions. Drones, however, can linger for hours as video feeds from cameras are routed simultaneously to multiple decision makers in the United States. These decision makers can consult military lawyers on the laws of war as they debate the pros and cons of attacking a particular target. As the drone circles high above the terrain, relaying high-resolution imagery to command centers away from the battlefield, decision makers can discuss their level of confidence that the potential target is an insurgent, even an individually known insurgent with a detailed case history, and that civilian casualties will be minimized if a missile is unleashed from the drone.

As Peter Singer has observed:

As recently as the 1999 Kosovo war, NATO pilots spotting for Serbian military targets on the ground had to fly over the suspected enemy position, then put their plane on autopilot while they wrote down the coordinates of the target on their lap with a grease pencil. They would then radio the coordinates back to base, where planners would try to figure out if there were too many civilians nearby. If not, the base would order an attack, usually made by another plane. That new plane, just arriving on the scene, would carry out the attack using the directions of the spotter plane, if they were still there, or the relayed coordinates. Each step was filled with potential for miscommunication and unintended errors. Plus, by the time a decision had been made, the situation on the ground might have changed—the military target might have moved or civilians might have entered the area.

Compare this with a UAV that can fly over the target and send precise GPS coordinates and live video back to the operators. Add in the possibility of using an AI [artificial intelligence] simulation to predict how many civilians might be killed, and it is easy to see how collateral damage can be greatly reduced by robotic precision.4

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