{"id":14661,"date":"2012-11-15T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=14661"},"modified":"2013-02-07T14:20:04","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T20:20:04","slug":"droning-on-about-drone-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/hardware\/droning-on-about-drone-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Droning On About Drone Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"
During the foreign policy debate leading up to the presidential election, grumblings were heard over President Obama and Governor Romney both giving their full support to the expanded use of drone technology in military operations. Politics are like that. In their quest to show that they are different from that other guy, campaigns prefer for their candidates to disagree over every subject right up to, but certainly including, boxers or briefs. If one side says Pepsi the other says Coke, and by the way, I hear that Pepsi might be a bit of a communist. Agreeing is not what campaigns are about. But in the case of military drones, both sides gave the technology their complete support. Certainly this political consensus speaks to the attractiveness of the versatility and striking power of the technology, plus the downright sexy advantage of not putting the lives of American troops in jeopardy in the process. As far as military technology goes, drones appear to be a complete win. So, why is it that some people are getting upset about the ethical implications of war by remote control?<\/p>\n
While various types of simple remote control military devices have a long history, modern unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) were first used in combat by the Israeli Air Force during the 1982 Lebanon war for surveillance as well as providing radar decoys. During their war with Iraq, post-revolutionary Iran became the first nation to attach rockets to a UAV, using the vehicles to harass and demoralize civilian populations along the countries’ mutual border. Despite some drawbacks with control technology, these early devices demonstrated the clear advantage provided by small unmanned aircraft capable of staying aloft for extended period of times and carrying a solid punch when used. By the time the war in the Balkans rolled around in the 1990s, NATO forces using U.S. technology and crews, extensively used UAVs for surveillance, finding them invaluable for tracking movements of troops and partisans in Bosnia and Serbia. Quiet, inexpensive and best of all able to complete complicated missions without endangering pilots or crews, it was undeniable that UAVs were the wave of the future. By the end of the Clinton administration in 2001, the U.S. was actively working on updating their Predator drone into an armed, offensive vehicle. Technology that was warmly embraced by the new Bush administration, and rapidly deployed into the post-911 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, started becoming the first major weapons advancement of the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n