Drone warfare immoral? Less moral than traditional combat?

He who passes the sentence should swing the sword :) If humans have to kill each other, they should only do so up close. Keep it personal, so that the humanity of life and death is never lost.

Besides, this planet has a human overpopulation issue - why do you want to save the lives of troops? Everyone over 65 should be forced to fight to the death, in close quarters and then their biomass should be used to grow trees. We need to save the future :D

Of course it is immoral - it is illegal and a war crime.

Traditional warfare - except wars of aggression - is lawful.

Killing in war is generally lawful. However war crimes are still crimes.

American troops in particular seem to think that just because you are at war means you can violate normal laws. That is why they raped and killed Vietnamese civilians, murdered their own officers (700+ in Vietnam alone), and continued murdering and paring civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately that disregard for the law rubbed off onto some British soldiers.

The use of drones to kill selected people is unlawful. The use of drones to attack a military target is not. The USA is killing thousands of people unlawfully every year,and unfortunately the UK is now also killing some.

I know what you mean. People talk about drone warfare as if it is substantially different than other means of warfare, which all entail death of non-combatants.

The one thing about it, though, is that because there is no pilot at risk, it makes it easier to commit to an attack. If a drone gets blown out of the sky there is no political blowback from losing a pilot or having a crew captured behind enemy lines.

Anything that makes warfare easier makes it more likely.

"Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules. "
-Walter Sobchak

I don't what source told you that people think Drones are less noble. I don't think there are many and they are pin heads. nothing about war is noble or moral.

Since you are not concerned with morality but using the most effective means to kill the enemy and if civilians who have no involvement are killed. It doesn't matter as the enemy is dead.

You must be a proponent of the careful but deadly chemical warfare. It's come a long way since WWI and biological warfare.

Sorry to tell you this but any kind of bombing via drone or plane does not guarantee that the target is taken out. That is why bombing is the opening salvo to hopefully dislodge and disorient the enemy but only with ground troops do you know that you have taken control or eliminated a target. Was Bin Laden taken out with a drone of course not anyone advocating a drone strike would be an idiot.

Seal Team 6 went in on the ground as that was the best way to complete the mission and confirm the target was taken out.

Like any technology if used wisely it works well. When it becomes the go to strategy without thought to others then commanders have become brain dead.

Since saving the lives of our troops is so important then I imagine you would like to see all the special forces teams be drastically reduced. No more Delta Squad or Seal teams, someone could get hurt!

Isis is being bombed and there is not much they can do to stop it. But it won't stop their evil regime.

All the best

Knights felt the same way when the crossbow was invented, not noble as sword fight which takes years to master. After the crossbow a mere peasant could kill a knight from distance.

Any warfare that lowers the threat of friendly casualties also lowers the bar at which an atrocious act may be commited. You may aswell say that nuclear warfare is as noble as hand to hand combat despite the fact there's almost zero risk to yourself while total annihilation for the other chap who doesn't have nuclear weapons.

If you can't comprehend that crookedbill then that is no one's fault but your own, perhaps you just have Aspergers.



Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. -Isaac Asimov

such a liberal movie

The efficiency, cost effectiveness, relative safety for the attacking side etc. arguments you make, alongside other factors from ease of maintenance to contribution to ultimate victory goals and the like are certainly important considerations for politicians and the pentagon - as they are for any and every weapons system considered for deployment.

However, with regards to the specific morality question you pose, these factors are completely irrelevant.

Here's why:
It is indisputable that it is far more efficient, immeasurably cheaper, friendly casualty minimizing and far safer for the ISIS commanders way back in the caliphate to spend a pittance on a website to radicalize some idiot to get in a truck and mow down 84 people in Nice than to,say, spend 10 years and $10 billion to build a missile system (which will be continually bombed all the while causing friendly casualties) capable of killing the same numbers in Southern France. Ergo the truck option from their POV is a no-brainer. Does this make the truck attack moral then? Of course not. Factors such as cost effectiveness and the like only determine the likelihood of a weapon being adopted for use not whether a weapon is moral or not.

Like every other weapon, morality rests on why you are using it and whom you are using it against. Same as with a traditional air force. It's neither moral nor immoral by itself - but there are shades of grey differences stretching between say, using the AF to bomb the 12th SS Hitlerjugend Division counter-attacking the Normandy beachhead (with French civilian collateral deaths almost certain) and using the AF to fire-bomb Dresden to ashes (with 99% of the casualties going to be civilians) in order to demoralize the average German civilian's will to fight on. IMO this is the test, whether it is conducted by drone or piloted aircraft isn't.

As to perceived "nobility" of drones, that's a completely different kettle of fish.

The issue with drones is that life or death is completely and arbitrarily in the hands of the attacker. To use your analogy of the archer vs the swordsman, even in this scenario, the later still has a shot of seeing it coming - in which case there are a number of things he may do. He may die, he may disengage and withdraw, he may try to surrender before the arrow is loosed or he might try to take it on his shield and counter-charge the archer.

One cannot see a drone coming, one cannot surrender to a drone, one cannot counter-attack a drone. In a nutshell - this is the 1000 year old debate between stabbing someone in the back compared to stabbing him/her in the front. From the attacker's POV stabbing someone in the back is both safer and much more likely to succeed. Keep in mind, however, that part of the definition of "nobility" and "honor" is a sense of fair play. Ergo, the less at risk the attacker puts himself in, the less of the latter he is going to get...they are mutually inverse almost by definition.

Some may consider the concept of "warrior honor" outdated/dead and just move on. If you are not one of those and being perceived as "honorable" is still important, then drones do indeed carry some blemish.