Drone warfare
There have understandably been many posts on this movie concerning the legality/morality and just the basic human response to using a remotely piloted aerial vehicle or UAV to observe and ultimately prosecute human targets.
It's a difficult topic on a legal level but so much more importantly on a human level. It's a topic which continues to be worked but hasn't been and maybe never will be fully fleshed out.
We have unmanned aerial vehicles and continue to refine and will always refine their abilities, it's just nature. The first UAVs were designed to drop bombs more or less indiscriminately - they'd fly to a point and release whatever was strapped to their belly, even if that point had been corrupted by wind or atmospheric pressure.
We now have UAVs guided by GPS which can bring the vehicle within several feet of their intended point regardless of wind or atmospheric pressure.
We have said UAVs guided by GPS which are armed with laser guided munitions.
We can get a UAV to a very specific point on the earth and launch precision guided munitions at a point designated by laser in the UAV itself (or an outside source). I'd talk about the accuracy of the laser and/or the munition homing on it but I can't - but it's very, very accurate.
So what do you do? How do you employ this fantastic weapon system? Obviously the drone operators have a very real interest in where the weapon is going but it might not be what we've come to expect in terms of a no *beep* manned aircraft.
If I have a Hellfire/Brimstone or a GBU-whatever under my wing and I pull the trigger/hit the switch I'll feel and watch it leave me and sometimes even see the splash. I'm responsible for that weapon until I've come to the conclusion based on ROE or whatever else that it needs to leave the aircraft, after that I'm really *beep* responsible for it.
On the same hand if I release a weapon or a drone pilot releases a weapon they/we/she are always responsible for it (this was well played in the movie by the guy who made Meth in Breaking Bad).
What the movie also did well was introducing another level of finger pointing if you want to be a drone pilot.
If I'm flying an Apache, Tornado, Hornet, Cobra or whatever with a Hellfire on the rail I don't have the ability/endurance to stay around for the length of this movie before I pull the trigger - that's sometimes a bad thing.
If I'm flying a drone with a Hellfire or two under the wings it allows more contemplation - that's a very good thing for the little girl selling bread (you know the girl who wants to play with a hoolahoop and otherwise insult Allah by learning the witchcraft of math).
The movie was wrong in so many ways and I rambled but it did well in the bigger picture of why Alan Rickman was a good person and will continue to be so.
Are we always right? *beep* no but at real humans can admit it.