View U.S. Drone Attacks in Pakistan in a larger map US Drone Strikes Along the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border from 2004-2010
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It's a Monday morning in Pakistan, and you have just woken up to the sounds of birds chirping melodiously. There is nary a cloud in the sky, and you are thinking that your first day of third grade is going to be perfect. You get ready and see that you still have time before you have to be at school, so your mom sends you to the market to pick up a few items. You're on your way, humming along to your favorite song, enjoying this peaceful morning.
Then BOOM it all happens at once, and you find the world fading to black.
The situation described above is made up, though there is no doubt that similar situations have played out since the inception of American drone strikes on Middle Eastern countries in 2002. These drone strikes are often carried out by the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, which initially was used only for reconnaissance roles but was modified to be equipped with two missiles. These unmanned pieces of machinery are controlled via satellite communication by an operator in a ground control station, usually in Nevada.
The problem is that these drone strikes, intended to eliminate suspected terrorists without risking the loss of human soldiers, are not perfect and do cause significant collateral damage. Civilians are injured in great numbers. The University of San Francisco International Affairs Review estimates the target-to-civilian death ratio to be as high as 1:146 for the period of 2009-2010. It is reasonable to conjecture that as the technology of these drones improve and evolve, the accuracy of their strikes would improve. However, as The Guardian reports, there was a threefold increase in reported civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2013 from drone strikes. Drone attacks accounted for nearly 40% of all civilian casualties from air strikes (manned and unmanned).
It is unlikely that these drones could have become even less accurate than they were a decade ago, so maybe there is something else at play here. Something that relates thematically to human existence. Something that involves the human obsession with delegating difficult, less practical tasks to unfeeling, programmable machines.
Perhaps as we have had more experience working with these drones, we have realized just how easy and unfeeling it is to pull the trigger on human lives from thousands of miles away sitting in a cushioned chair while drinking a cup of coffee. Perhaps this automatization of warfare has been a gradual introduction, moving from hand-to-hand combat to guns to air strikes to drone strikes, allowing humans to gradually remove themselves from having to be up close to the human being's life they are ending. "Dehumanizing" warfare if you will.
These thematic goals are what this website is exploring. Using the topic tabs at the top of the page, we take a journey throughout all of the aspects and evolution of drones and warfare and hope to be able to trace why humans have shifted toward forms of anonymous warfare and have developed a tendency to design machines to perform otherwise difficult or impractical tasks. Come join us!
Then BOOM it all happens at once, and you find the world fading to black.
The situation described above is made up, though there is no doubt that similar situations have played out since the inception of American drone strikes on Middle Eastern countries in 2002. These drone strikes are often carried out by the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, which initially was used only for reconnaissance roles but was modified to be equipped with two missiles. These unmanned pieces of machinery are controlled via satellite communication by an operator in a ground control station, usually in Nevada.
The problem is that these drone strikes, intended to eliminate suspected terrorists without risking the loss of human soldiers, are not perfect and do cause significant collateral damage. Civilians are injured in great numbers. The University of San Francisco International Affairs Review estimates the target-to-civilian death ratio to be as high as 1:146 for the period of 2009-2010. It is reasonable to conjecture that as the technology of these drones improve and evolve, the accuracy of their strikes would improve. However, as The Guardian reports, there was a threefold increase in reported civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2013 from drone strikes. Drone attacks accounted for nearly 40% of all civilian casualties from air strikes (manned and unmanned).
It is unlikely that these drones could have become even less accurate than they were a decade ago, so maybe there is something else at play here. Something that relates thematically to human existence. Something that involves the human obsession with delegating difficult, less practical tasks to unfeeling, programmable machines.
Perhaps as we have had more experience working with these drones, we have realized just how easy and unfeeling it is to pull the trigger on human lives from thousands of miles away sitting in a cushioned chair while drinking a cup of coffee. Perhaps this automatization of warfare has been a gradual introduction, moving from hand-to-hand combat to guns to air strikes to drone strikes, allowing humans to gradually remove themselves from having to be up close to the human being's life they are ending. "Dehumanizing" warfare if you will.
These thematic goals are what this website is exploring. Using the topic tabs at the top of the page, we take a journey throughout all of the aspects and evolution of drones and warfare and hope to be able to trace why humans have shifted toward forms of anonymous warfare and have developed a tendency to design machines to perform otherwise difficult or impractical tasks. Come join us!