The advancement of militarized warfare is a topic that I have been interested in ever since I learned about militarized drones and airstrikes. Through this piece of writing I wanted to convey both sides of this argument for and against drones and mentioning why we would be better off with drones as long as there is maximum security, subservience and supervision. Although it is important to see the other side. No drones would be a slightly more peaceful path, when taking into account that weapons are very harmful, and ideally, and would without military or weaponry could in theory be possible, but unfortunately, because we live in a world filled with violence and destruction drones can be a possible safeguard possibly stopping bigger or larger threats.
Drones are incredible robots that can be used to do so much more than just attack. Many drones are used to film video and take pictures high above where we couldn’t reach, and are also able to detect weather patterns and hotspots in forest fires. They are also probably used to spy on everyone, possibly to detect crime or violence. They are really useful machines, and they have obviously become weaponized. This unsurprisingly created a lot of controversy over whether drone warfare was just or fair, or if it was simply killing, or murder. People wondered if drones more or less beneficial than modern/guerrilla warfare and if strikes were causing more harm than good. This is not the right way to go about this issue. Debating back and forth on weather drone strikes are necessary, is a waste of time. Instead we should be focused more on how to properly manage drone warfare, and warfare in general.
Many agree that the right procedures need to be executed, and security definitely needs to be re enforced when it comes to a weapon like a militarized drone. Research and correct calculations need to be performed and completed flawlessly, ahead of time so that we are capable of carrying out drones strikes that are as free of human error and as accurate as possible. It certainly would be hard for everything to be completely perfect, but when this process is done to the best of everyone's ability, the safer everyone will be. Certainly there will always be casualties. This is unfortunately a negative side effect of war, but there are a lot less civilian deaths than if modern/guerrilla warfare were to take place. The more security we have, the possibility of an accidental disaster of several innocent civilians being killed during a strike could be diminished.
This militarized drone above tells a slightly suggestive story about an airstrike, although with not much context it can be up to the viewer to figure out the whole arc of what is going on. The drone has just fired a missile which most likely means that somewhere, several thousand miles away, a general has ordered a modern day soldier, who is piloting the drone, to take aim and fire on the target in question. In an idealist, utopian world the missile would strike its target perfectly, and on impact, there would be minimal destruction only killing the individual, or those who were targeted. Everyone else would be safe and there would be no injuries on innocent civilians nearby. Unfortunately we don’t live in a fairy tale, and drone strikes are very dangerous.
According to The Huffington Post, on their article titled The Drone Papers, in Afghanistan, “between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets.” The article goes on to state that, “During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly ninety percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.” These two stats may differ slightly for thirty five out of two hundred is definitely greater than ten percent accurate, which is what the other source suggests, but no matter the slight difference in these percentages, based on the data it would seem as if these particular drone strikes weren’t completely accurate. In fact the article states that the U.S. had very little intelligence and evidence of who their target was when it came to these particular drone strikes. The fact that everyone involved had very little idea of what exactly was going on is extremely irresponsible on the half of the general, and on the intelligence researchers. Sloppy situations such as this one are unbelievably wrong that it causes so many people to question the benefits of drone warfare, although if done correctly, can be effective and clean. It is possible for drone strikes to not be a disaster, and cause only slight damage on civilians nearby.
According to The New York Times article titled The Moral Case for Drones, and research that was conducted by Avery Plaw, who studies political science at the University of Massachusetts, of four drone strike incidents that occurred in Pakistan, between four percent and twenty percent of those killed were innocent civilians. This is an example of a drone strike done properly, and executed efficiently. It is certainly possible that there can be arguments stating that twenty percent is a little high, but compared to modern day guerilla warfare, where around forty six percent of all deaths are of civilians, twenty percent is fairly minor. Plaw also found in his research that forty six percent happened to be a low percentage. In fact, “In conventional military conflicts over the last two decades, he found that estimates of civilian deaths ranged from about 33 percent to more than 80 percent of all deaths.” Now, when thinking about the fact that Ninety percent of civilians die due to some airstrikes may not seem entirely unreasonable for the reasons that modern day guerilla warfare can cause up to eighty percent of the death be civilians deaths.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that these statistics are based on the death of civilians in other countries. Taking into account the fact that very little of our soldiers even get wounded from these drone strikes is a huge plus to us. While there is obviously some debate on whether drone strikes are dangerous to innocent civilians it definitely does not mean that drones are absolutely terrible. Drones are quite useful when it comes to the killing of only one or a few people who pose a threat to us and to others without starting a full out war. So, while a more reasonable story for the picture above would be that the missile strikes down possibly killing the target or targets and innocent civilians, causing many injuries, it still doesn’t mean that drones are bad, unethical, unreasonable and murderous.
"The Drone Papers - The Huffington Post." Web. 22 Mar. 2016. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/drone-papers_us_561ed361e4b0c5a1ce61f463>.
Shane, Scott. "The Moral Case for Drones." The New York Times. The New York Times, 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-moral-case-for-drones.html>.
