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Drone warfare
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In the article ‘’Confessions of a Drone Warrior’’, published in the GQ in October 22, 2013, by Matthew Power, the author talks about a drone pilot’s experience after working with military drones for 6 years. In this article, the main point the author is trying to prove is that flying military drones is not some kind of video game, it’s as real as it gets, even though the pilot doesn’t actually take part in combat. It can change people. During his service, the Airman First Class Brandon Bryant killed 1626 people. It’s terrifying, considering that the pilot had to watch every person die. His job was to monitor people(normally high-value targets in Afghanistan) from the sky and when he got the command to kill from the authorities, he fired a missile
Black Hawk Down - Summary of the book as written by Mark Bowden. It was mid-afternoon on October 3, 1993. There were approximately 160 men eagerly awaiting the signal to proceed. Matt Eversmann sat waiting in Super Six Seven, a Black Hawk helicopter.
In “A Brief Encounter with the Enemy” by Said Sayrafiezadeh, Luke, a pessimistic soldier, walks down memory lane as he travels the path to get to the hill during his last recon. He remembers appreciating nature, encountering and writing to Becky, the first time he’d shot a gun, and Christmas leave. Luke identifies the moment when he realizes that he had joined the army for the wrong reason, after crossing the bridge his team built in order to cross the valley, and at the same time dreading the return to his former office job. Boredom and nothingness destroy him mentally as he waits for enemies to appear. When the enemies finally appear, he shoots them down and goes home the next day. Sayrafiezadeh proposes that expectations don’t always equate
Controversy has plagued America’s presence in the Middle East and America’s usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) contributes vastly to this controversy. Their usefulness and ability to keep allied troops out of harm’s reach is hardly disputed. However, their presence in countries that are not at war with America, such as Pakistan and Yemen, is something contested. People that see the implications of drone use are paying special attention to the civilian casualty count, world perspective, and the legality of drone operations in non-combative states. The use of drone technology in the countries of Yemen and Pakistan are having negative consequences. In a broad spectrum, unconsented drone strikes are illegal according to the laws of armed conflict, unethical, and are imposing a moral obligation upon those who use them. These issues are all of great importance and need to be addressed. Their legality is also something of great importance and begins with abiding to the Laws of Armed Conflict.
Article One: Dainel Byman, in his article Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s weapon of Choice in an August 2013 article in the Brookings Institute, identifies the positive impact of US drone strikes. Byman contends that US drone strikes are extremely efficient, at little financial cost to the government, and protect the lives of American soldiers. For these reasons, Byman believes that US drone strikes are necessary to the war on terror.
On the use of drones, NYT’s Peter M. Singer (“Do Drones Undermine Democracy?”) makes the comprehensive argument that the use of drones goes against the how wars are meant to be fought—human participation. It can be counter argued that these automatons are better in terms of expendability; personnel are not easily replaced while drones are easily replaceable. The Bush 43 strategy relied more on men, and it did yielded adverse results politically. The switch to drones presented dynamic political benefits, for which Singer argued allowed for circumvention of aggravated/emotive discourse among members of the American populace, academics and mass media. It is imperative to remember that the cost of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq—increases in casualties—was detrimental to the American credibility and brought about victory to Obama in 2008 elections.
Richard Matheson’s famed short story ‘Button, Button’ is often alluded to as a simplistic representation of drone policy. Imagine a man offered you a box with a big red button on it. He tells you if you press it, you will receive a hefty sum of money, no questions asked. There is only one consequence: someone you don’t know will be killed. It’s an interesting dilemma – would you press it, knowing some nameless person’s life rests in your hands?
department store to pick up a single item, you can receive just within 30 minutes of ordering it. It
In the article, “Is Obama’s Drone War Moral?”, Matt Peterson argues that the lack of transparency surrounding the number of drone strikes and resulting casualties undermines Obama’s administration efforts to justify the targeted killing program. He states that the administration refusal to detail individual strikes makes it impossible for the public to assess the morality of the program. He attempts to support his points by examining the standards for carrying out violence in self-defense and by explaining how the policies and practices put in place by Obama’s administration fails to uphold these standards. This paper will evaluate the strength and weakness of Mr. Peterson’s analysis to determine whether the conclusions the author draw are
The events that were portrayed in “Black Hawk Down” drastically affected the U.S.’ foreign policy during the 1990’s. The U.S soldiers went into a country in East Africa called Somalia. They went into the one city, Mogadishu, to capture top lieutenants of the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The mission was only supposed to take an hour, but it ended up lasting the entire night into the next morning. It was a short war that the U.S. never wanted to get into.
Murphy, Dan. "Aerial Drones Serve as Weapons of War." Weapons of War. Ed. Diane Andrews Henningfeld. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. At Issue. Rpt. from "Briefing: Aerial Drones as Weapons of War." Christian Science Monitor (22 May 2009). Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
“The trouble is that a praise worthy quest for precision can descend into a flattering of tidy minds at the cost of a realistic grasp of the complexity and interconnectedness that is the story of strategic history.” Colin Gray warns in the opening sentences of the chapter “Irregular Warfare and Terrorism” in his book Another Bloody Century of the dangers of oversimplifying the categories of warfare. To look at warfare as either regular or irregular without being absolutely clear on the definitions of each and the context in which the terms are used is fruitless. Regular forces have been known to use irregular type tactics just as irregular forces have used conventional warfare to reach their political goals. It is imperative then, that the U.S. military forces are trained to fight wars falling on a spectrum of warfare and educated to distinguish the type of war they face. In order to protect national security interests as outlined in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, the U.S. armed forces must rebalance and be capable of conducting operations across the spectrum of conflict in order to win against both a regular and irregular adversary, combating a wide scope of tactics and strategies ranging from terror tactics to full scale, multi-phased conflict against a peer or near peer by maximizing the capability of the force and nation.
The use of drones as weapons of war and delivery and surveillance systems should not be dismissed because many people do not realize the real capabilities of drones and how they can be used to better the world through efficient air strikes, faster delivery times, and useful surveillance. Some of the most common misconceptions about drones arise due to the lack of knowledge about what drones are. A drone is a remote controlled, pilotless aircraft that can be used to survey an area, conduct stealth missions, and deliver supplies into difficult to reach areas (Drone). Unmanned aircraft are also, contrary to popular belief, not solely machines that kill without even a thought to who is being fired upon. They have proved to be effective surveillance units in areas that may be dangerous for manned aircraft to fly, along with the potential to be reliable delivery units (Drones).
A lot of countries all over the world depend on technological advances to fight against their opponents. This reduced the risk of having a soldier wounded or dying in a war by making it easier with using these technologies when it comes to head to head combat. Even though using technologies are a great idea but many ethical issues arise from it. One of the main issue is the use of these Drones. This technology is developing more and more. In a recent study showed that there are over 700 active drone development all over the world and these programs are controlled under companies, research institutes, and the government. United States is mainly using these drones to fight against so called “terrorist” but some other countries use them as well. It is immoral and unethical to use these drones because it cause psychological disorders, violate privacy, cause deaths of innocent lives, and increase terrorism. (Reardon)
A couple of people say that drone will increase the number of terrorist, but that will only happen if the army of the United States inhuman, incorrectly, and carelessly. It is true that if a person sees a loved one get murdered, they will want to join the opposing force, but many of them will try to seek peace, so no more people die, or get injured. To avoid the situation where a pilot miss use a drone and hurt people on purpose, they should have some sort of higher rank watching them, or they can different training courses when it comes to using
Living in the digital age where we enjoy the various fruits of latest technological tools and advancements, then at the same time we cannot escape from their hidden or apparent harms. Also, it is a fact that some gadgets supported by these technological advancements are much capable to bring destruction and disaster then construction and convenience. The same goes for the Drone Technology which since past 200 years is being used to create turbulence at the global level. It has proved to be a powerful investigator and bomber at the same time. Drones are specifically associated with military actions and the countries having used them for surveillance purposes include UK, USA, Italy, Japan, Austria, Australia etc. The list of victim counties or nations is much bigger in contrast. Some prominent victims of Drone Air Strikes include Congo, Venice, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. However, it is also an undeniable fact that the massive production and usage of Drones got multiplied in the 21st century.