> <i>There were missile strikes so hasty that they hit women and children, attacks built on such flimsy intelligence that they made targets of ordinary villagers, and classified rules of engagement that allowed the customer to knowingly kill up to 20 civilians when taking out an enemy.</i><p>Why is the article focusing on the goon pulling the trigger, as opposed to these <i>actual</i> killed-dead casualties?
Really now? I know Western newspapers like the NYTimes have become very, very enamoured with the military-industrial complex, and I get that, de facto, the US is at war, but why should anyone feel sorry for the people mentioned in the article, people whose mission is to kill some poor peasants herding their goats in the mountains of Yemen or who are attending a wedding somewhere in Afghanistan?
The obvious quote apropos here is Max Frisch "Technology is a way of
organising the world so that we don't have to experience it.", which I
probably cite a bit too often. But I'll offer a quote from Digital
Vegan which I think is not out of place here, and I hope conveys a
deeper message;<p>"" An immanent problem with enabling technologies, is that they enable
all connected parties and carry their values. Stare into the abyss,
and the abyss stares back at you. When picking up a technological
tool you had better know what it is for. What is connected to the
other side of it? And you should do so with the intent of mastering
it, and using it kindly. As Andre Loesekrug-Pietri, a founder of
European JEDI ('The European DARPA') project put it, unless the
people of Liberal democracies take control of technology "other
people or other political systems will impose their values on
us". ""<p>The rationale for remote weapons is risk reduction. Despite the
apparent diffusion of responsibility and decoupling of action and
consequences, the operator remains connected to the target. Blurry
pixels turning red on a screen are still lives being
extinguished. Unless you have a generally low IQ and very poor
emotional intelligence that fact is still inescapably bound to your
actions and will haunt you as if you had seen the whites of their eyes
and body parts. Indeed the trauma may be worse, because you now have
to fill in the gaps with your imagination, somewhere between
dispassionate official EKIA reports and gruesome media accounts.
You'll never know, and so you'll never get closure. Each technological
action has an equal and opposite reaction.
> <i>Starting in 2015, the Air Force began embedding what it called human performance teams in some squadrons, staffed with chaplains, psychologists and operational physiologists offering a sympathetic ear, coping strategies and healthy practices to optimize performance.<p>“It’s a holistic team approach: mind, body and spirit,” said Capt. James Taylor, a chaplain at Creech. “I try to address the soul fatigue, the existential questions many people have to wrestle with in this work.”</i><p>Just amazing to read this, I mean after hearing all about the innocent lives taken, and then to be presented with their attempts to optimize the teams involved with it.
In addition to the morality of such ops, keep in mind that those drones (such as the Reaper) are nearly useless against an opponent that has a proper air defense setup (SAMs). Having high price tags and carrying lethal weapons would make them a priority. Their only practical application is to "bully" an unsophisticated enemy. For example, had Russia tried this kind of a weapon against Kiev or Lviv then the s300 and Buks would have taken them out in a matter of minutes.<p>Also, thinking that a remote pilot has different level of empathy vs a pilot that's inside the aircraft is a little deranged from the reality of military operations. A weapon is a weapon, it is meant to eliminate/kill targets.
>"And sometimes what the customer wanted did not seem right. There were missile strikes so hasty that they hit women and children, attacks built on such flimsy intelligence that they made targets of ordinary villagers, and classified rules of engagement that allowed the customer to knowingly kill up to 20 civilians when taking out an enemy"<p>All nice and dandy. And the world looks the other way.
If my kids play a lot of realistic drone strike games, does it increase the likelihood of their being recruited as child soldiers for the Great Drone War? Asking as a concerned parent.
It's behind a paywall, but I was able to find it here.<p><a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/uw-grads-story-reveals-the-unseen-scars-of-those-who-kill-via-remote-control/" rel="nofollow">https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/uw-grads-story-rev...</a><p>Looks like it was more the drug policy of the U.S. Air Force that lead this man to fall apart more than the droning of people far away.