It continues to baffle me why the fact they're drones matter in the slightest.
They're not autonomous, they're flown by pilots who just happen to not be sitting in the aircraft they're flying.
Manned aircraft have killed huge groups of innocent civilians more than once, but apparently that's fine because the pilot was sitting in the aircraft.
It matters because it changes the fundamental nature of combat. If a pilot is in the plane you're risking an American life, not to mention a very expensive piece of equipment with numerous safety features etc.
Now take away the risk to American life and lower the cost of the attack significantly, and viola, you've got a much itchier trigger finger now. If you've played MW3, which would you rather do, use the drone to take out enemies or risk your character dying?
A drone totally changes the dynamics of the fight. If we were able to get tons of drones and "mechwarriors", I don't think wars would be quite as difficult to justify. As technologists we are often blinded by the coolness of things. As someone who has worked on AI for drones early on in my career (for the US govt), I shudder to think that I may have contributed in some ways to a terrible technology for humanity. At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...
Regular aircraft are "expensive." They're literally expensive, in dollar terms, but even ignoring that they're logistically and operationally resource-intensive to operate. You only have so much airpower at your disposal, you're limited by flight deck space and pilot availability, you want to keep some in reserve, and aircraft are a bitch to maintain. Like, a week in service per day of flight time.
Basically, you default to not using them. You don't bust them out unless you have good reason to. You don't just cruise around looking for people who look suspicious, because that would be a tremendous waste of resources that could be better-spent elsewhere. Like transporting supplies for the troops on the ground. You only bust out the planes when you have solid, definitive, verified evidence that there is something that should get blown up.
Drones flip that around. You can't quite go cruisin' around just looking for stuff, but it's worth the time & effort to check out quite a few of your semi-sketchy tips. Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. But because the drones are remote, none of that risk is borne by any member of the military performing the operations; all the extra risk falls on the local civilian population. I don't think many people partaking in these operations are intentionally heartless, but this is a classic case of moral hazard, and on the margin more aggressive, risk-taking behavior is incentivized.
Additionally, putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This means that planes tend to be used only against 'static' targets, which gives you an opportunity to scout & verify. Drones allow you to hit 'time-sensitive' targets, which means you are now making time-sensitive decisions. A wedding party got hit because some dude had literally minutes (or less) to decide if a collection of vehicles was a wedding or an armed convoy. I take it as axiomatic that the added time-pressure increases the number of wrong decisions.
I think the point is that the drone strikes are happening in places where the US isn't even at war. They're just bombing any place they feel like and apparently not having a pilot sitting there seems to make it ok, or something...
I would think that it matters because the drones make killing more efficient (both in terms of financial costs and life-risk to the pilot). In other words, if manned aircraft were killing huge groups of innocents on their own, it would stand to reason that drones open the floodgates to exacerbating that problem.
That's a really good point, and I think that it come in the name "drone." These aircraft are NOT "drones." They do not perform menial labor and they are not "thoughtless." They do not perform automated attacks. These are units of force projection that the U.S. military uses as part of a psychological warfare campaign against citizens that it deems to be a threat (or, in other words, pretty much the entire planet).
I think this is the point. Because we're not putting our own lives at risk, we're actually getting more callous about it. This seems paradoxical, but I believe it's true.
This is an interesting point... I think it matters - possibly for a different reason. If you imagine from the ground: a terrorist car bomb VS a drone strike, they're virtually indistinguishable. Both are explosions without warning by the 'enemy.' It's almost a joke that people condemn terrorist acts and respond in kind.
Who says that it does matter? I think the reaction would have been very similar if a manned aircraft had bombed the wedding party. Do you have any recent instances of mass civilian casualties resulting from a "conventional" bomb strike that got ignored?
Would you think we can apply this same argument when it happens to be an american wedding?? Hell no. drones or no drones, we will definitely have some policy changes and definitely some heads will roll.
It is probably easier to get pilots to bomb civilians with a Playstation controller in what looks and feels like a video game, than an actual person present.
If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to.
So the direct financial and career incentive for everyone in the chain is to always make sure there is a stream of new terrorists, new cells, new intelligence chatter about "the Great Satan". And that is indirectly accomplished by indiscriminately bombing civilians. Everyone who is involved in picking the target and knows it is a funeral, will know civilians will die. I can't help but think they also know it is job insurance as well. They would be stupid not to.
American public via media has been tested enough during releases of so many atrocities, torture tapes, lies, monitoring that by now, I think they've built an accurate model of how much outrage will be generated and how much will actually threaten future operations, funding, reelection and so on (so far not much).
The bottom line, I don't even know and 100% believe them when they say these are all "mistakes". The incentives and the motivation, especially in the long term, is for them not to really care if civilians get bombed.
Possibly the first but its not like the USA is using indiscriminate area bombing like they did in Vietnam or the British using poison gas pre ww2 in Iraq.
What you say is absolutely true. But another large problem here is that the targeted countries' governments are ok with those strikes for the most part. Have you noticed that those strikes only happen in poor countries with little means of retaliation?
A large finance source for the Al-Nushra front in Africa is Jordan/Saudi Arabia. But those countries are allies to the US, so there are no drone strikes there. There are also no strikes in Iran or Syria.
Yemen government is very complicit to those strikes and it should at be mentioned in such articles.
Killing innocents from the air indiscriminately is pretty much terrorism by any definition of the word. The problem with this approach is that it turns moderates into people who hate you. If the someone bombed my family, I would hate them. It's pretty much human nature.
Terrorism is a idea, it cannot be killed with bullets or drones.
The Terrorist we know today are a pretty much related to those people who were supported by American Intelligence agencies in the mid70-80s, against the soviet. The "Barbarians" among those folk were given advanced weapons, that America possessed, those weapons might be outdated, and America may have a upper hand, but that is only a matter of time. Sadly, this has became a chicken and egg problem.
The circle of REVENGE is a continuous one, you kill more people innocent or not, you sprout a new rebellion. They will eventually hurt you back, today or tomorrow. and the process will continue.. presidents, prime ministers would come and go by.
The only way to stop this is to actually STOP. Stop interference in ways like espoinage, drone strikes, killing of "Suspected" militants.. never given any right to appear before court.. everything. The root problem is the so called intelligence that does more than just collect information about "suspected" enemies.
Someone has to rise up and stop it. for both sides, perhaps it escape us humans sometimes, the very fact "those who are hurt are the ones who can forgive or take revenge." Thats about there it is to this.
Really sad to hear about that nameless bride/groom & family. May they R.I.P.
Not all that surpising. As was made clear during the Snowden leaks the USG doesn't consider human beings who aren't US citizens to have the same rights as Americans.
This is what I find the most troubling. I used to think the US was trying to still spread democracy worldwide but apparently internally they feel if you are foreign that means there arent any laws as to what we can and cant do.
Here's something that will blow your mind. EVERY country considers its own citizens to have more rights than other countries. Otherwise we wouldn't have millions of people dying every year by preventable means. And there wouldn't be widespread despisement of refugees.
It's not all US citizens. Only well-connected, wealthy US citizens have rights. The rest of the US citizens are semi-disposable like the rest of the world.
> Five of those killed were suspected of involvement with Al Qaeda, but the remainder were unconnected with the militancy, Yemeni security officials said."
> The New York Times reported in 2013 that the Obama Administration embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties, which in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.
So 5 people were of military-age and male? Given a size of 22 people, it sound reasonable. I wonder how many were children.
I think it is time for a world-wide ban on armed drones, period.
Just like we have international treaties for other horrible things like mustard gas.
Do all the reconnaissance you can get away with. But I don't want a tired, overworked, morally disconnected 20-something sitting in a trailer somewhere in the US, pulling a trigger to kill unquantifiable targets anywhere in the world. Or any other country doing it to anyone else for that matter.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the concept of banning armed droned, but I don't think the operators actually get to pick and choose the targets. I don't think the operators have much discretion at all. Those orders, especially orders to fire, likely come from a commanding officer. The same probably applies to fighter and bomber pilots too, though they may have more discretion when it comes to defending the aircraft.
I don't really understand the outrage over drones specifically. This constant bombing of foreign countries is terrible, but I don't understand why the "drones" part of it is also considered bad. Why is a tired, overworked, morally disconnected 20-something sitting in a trailer somewhere in the US worse than a tired, overworked, morally disconnected 20-something sitting in a cockpit of an F-16?
As opposed to a wired fighter jock inbound in a fast mover who has only one pass before he bingo's and might have .5 seconds to decide if he should abort or not - having less pressure will result in better decisions.
It is articles like this that asks the reader to pierce media bias, and take a honest look at a conflict.
If an Qaeda militant had gone to US city and bombed a wedding where they suspected harbored US officer, how would that play out? 22 injured, 17 killed by Qaeda militants in boston. Terrorists mistakenly targeted a wedding, trying to go after 5 US officer.
If there were no propaganda in media, surely this would play out identical as this drone strike. No world leaders expressing their condemnation of the attacks, condolences, and solidarity. Military strikes kills huge groups of innocent civilians all the times in wars, so nothing to write about.
A great book to read on the decline of violence in the world:
The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker.
The Hacker News community should like it as it focuses on the stats and facts rather than anecdotal stories the media slings.
The main thesis: Violence (in nearly every form) has been on a precipitous decline in the modern era. War deaths (and civilian causalities) are at all time lows and still declining.
Would anybody be surprised, even sympathetic, if the families of the deceased joined Al Qaeda as a direct result of this? Americans killed their friends and family on a sacred day, and nothing would be more appropriate than seeing they pay for it. Such an atrocity is almost comical when you think that the reason it occurred was to stop Al Qaeda, ends up bolstering it. It's appalling on so many levels.
This certainly seems to be the way it plays out in countless ethnic and sectarian conflicts. I suppose my government is just arrogant enough to believe it's always going to be faster to the drone trigger than the terrorists are at reaching their objectives. I don't think it's a sustainable approach.
I dont know which is tarnishing the American image worse the use of drones strikes or the Snowden leaks. What happens when our allies start to even say enough is enough.
Now go and explain the difference between this incident and a terror attack without using the fact the the former has been carried out by a state while the later has been carried out by civilians.
No, we'd insist that every wedding have a security drone to protect that wedding from other drones. When you ground drones, then only the terrorists have drones.
Drones aren't autonomous. They don't target anything. Weapons officers do.
Besides being plain wrong and bad reporting, dehumanizing (attributing it on the drone) shifts responsibility and makes it seem like problem is solvable by "fixing" drone or by grounding them.
I don't see why the author thinks we would ground our fleet. Police routinely and deliberately kill innocent people in the US, and we don't "ground our police force."
I seem to recall that the Obama Administration was going to restore America's image with the rest of the world -- the image that was presumably destroyed by W.
And just to make drive a little bit the point home: there are quite a few people suspected of terrorism in the US, like one French spy who blew the rainbow warrior, quite a few people from Viña del Mar, US citizen who passed through ESMA in Bs As, probably a few assassins from the mossad etc. And if a pressure cooker is a weapon of mass destruction, I'm pretty sure a hellfire is, too.
[+] [-] forktheif|12 years ago|reply
They're not autonomous, they're flown by pilots who just happen to not be sitting in the aircraft they're flying.
Manned aircraft have killed huge groups of innocent civilians more than once, but apparently that's fine because the pilot was sitting in the aircraft.
[+] [-] Killah911|12 years ago|reply
Now take away the risk to American life and lower the cost of the attack significantly, and viola, you've got a much itchier trigger finger now. If you've played MW3, which would you rather do, use the drone to take out enemies or risk your character dying?
A drone totally changes the dynamics of the fight. If we were able to get tons of drones and "mechwarriors", I don't think wars would be quite as difficult to justify. As technologists we are often blinded by the coolness of things. As someone who has worked on AI for drones early on in my career (for the US govt), I shudder to think that I may have contributed in some ways to a terrible technology for humanity. At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...
[+] [-] lmkg|12 years ago|reply
Regular aircraft are "expensive." They're literally expensive, in dollar terms, but even ignoring that they're logistically and operationally resource-intensive to operate. You only have so much airpower at your disposal, you're limited by flight deck space and pilot availability, you want to keep some in reserve, and aircraft are a bitch to maintain. Like, a week in service per day of flight time.
Basically, you default to not using them. You don't bust them out unless you have good reason to. You don't just cruise around looking for people who look suspicious, because that would be a tremendous waste of resources that could be better-spent elsewhere. Like transporting supplies for the troops on the ground. You only bust out the planes when you have solid, definitive, verified evidence that there is something that should get blown up.
Drones flip that around. You can't quite go cruisin' around just looking for stuff, but it's worth the time & effort to check out quite a few of your semi-sketchy tips. Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. But because the drones are remote, none of that risk is borne by any member of the military performing the operations; all the extra risk falls on the local civilian population. I don't think many people partaking in these operations are intentionally heartless, but this is a classic case of moral hazard, and on the margin more aggressive, risk-taking behavior is incentivized.
Additionally, putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This means that planes tend to be used only against 'static' targets, which gives you an opportunity to scout & verify. Drones allow you to hit 'time-sensitive' targets, which means you are now making time-sensitive decisions. A wedding party got hit because some dude had literally minutes (or less) to decide if a collection of vehicles was a wedding or an armed convoy. I take it as axiomatic that the added time-pressure increases the number of wrong decisions.
[+] [-] ollysb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zdean|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zacinbusiness|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/16/afghanistan-tal...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/06/afghanistan-wed...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r...
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevando|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morsch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kvinnako|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MartinCron|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaius|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wcummings|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethbannon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|12 years ago|reply
If terrorists disappeared tomorrow. Let's say we use our surgical strike weapons to target every cell every member, and in one hour they are gone. What would happen? Billions of dollars disappear from the pockets of everyone in the chain. Military contractors, drone maintenance, promotions, bonuses, career advancements, no more completed missions, medals, no job to go to.
So the direct financial and career incentive for everyone in the chain is to always make sure there is a stream of new terrorists, new cells, new intelligence chatter about "the Great Satan". And that is indirectly accomplished by indiscriminately bombing civilians. Everyone who is involved in picking the target and knows it is a funeral, will know civilians will die. I can't help but think they also know it is job insurance as well. They would be stupid not to.
American public via media has been tested enough during releases of so many atrocities, torture tapes, lies, monitoring that by now, I think they've built an accurate model of how much outrage will be generated and how much will actually threaten future operations, funding, reelection and so on (so far not much).
The bottom line, I don't even know and 100% believe them when they say these are all "mistakes". The incentives and the motivation, especially in the long term, is for them not to really care if civilians get bombed.
[+] [-] walshemj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zarathust|12 years ago|reply
A large finance source for the Al-Nushra front in Africa is Jordan/Saudi Arabia. But those countries are allies to the US, so there are no drone strikes there. There are also no strikes in Iran or Syria.
Yemen government is very complicit to those strikes and it should at be mentioned in such articles.
[+] [-] peterashford|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawleyal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rikacomet|12 years ago|reply
The Terrorist we know today are a pretty much related to those people who were supported by American Intelligence agencies in the mid70-80s, against the soviet. The "Barbarians" among those folk were given advanced weapons, that America possessed, those weapons might be outdated, and America may have a upper hand, but that is only a matter of time. Sadly, this has became a chicken and egg problem.
The circle of REVENGE is a continuous one, you kill more people innocent or not, you sprout a new rebellion. They will eventually hurt you back, today or tomorrow. and the process will continue.. presidents, prime ministers would come and go by.
The only way to stop this is to actually STOP. Stop interference in ways like espoinage, drone strikes, killing of "Suspected" militants.. never given any right to appear before court.. everything. The root problem is the so called intelligence that does more than just collect information about "suspected" enemies.
Someone has to rise up and stop it. for both sides, perhaps it escape us humans sometimes, the very fact "those who are hurt are the ones who can forgive or take revenge." Thats about there it is to this.
Really sad to hear about that nameless bride/groom & family. May they R.I.P.
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] threeseed|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xradionut|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkarmani|12 years ago|reply
Of course? Ask Chinese citizens about their right to free speech.
[+] [-] belorn|12 years ago|reply
> The New York Times reported in 2013 that the Obama Administration embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties, which in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants.
So 5 people were of military-age and male? Given a size of 22 people, it sound reasonable. I wonder how many were children.
[+] [-] ck2|12 years ago|reply
Just like we have international treaties for other horrible things like mustard gas.
Do all the reconnaissance you can get away with. But I don't want a tired, overworked, morally disconnected 20-something sitting in a trailer somewhere in the US, pulling a trigger to kill unquantifiable targets anywhere in the world. Or any other country doing it to anyone else for that matter.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] daigoba66|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeash|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars_technician|12 years ago|reply
Modern fighter pilots can be just as overworked and have about the same risk of dying from being shot at.
[+] [-] belorn|12 years ago|reply
If an Qaeda militant had gone to US city and bombed a wedding where they suspected harbored US officer, how would that play out? 22 injured, 17 killed by Qaeda militants in boston. Terrorists mistakenly targeted a wedding, trying to go after 5 US officer.
If there were no propaganda in media, surely this would play out identical as this drone strike. No world leaders expressing their condemnation of the attacks, condolences, and solidarity. Military strikes kills huge groups of innocent civilians all the times in wars, so nothing to write about.
[+] [-] swamp40|12 years ago|reply
Nobody's calling this a mistake except the media.
5 Al Qaeda dead, 5-10 people sitting next to an Al Qaeda member also dead.
Intelligence even pointed out which 4 cars out of the 11 car convoy contained the Al Qaeda members.
If you think there is no war going on over there, the 52 civilians slaughtered by Al Qaeda on Dec. 5 in a Sana'a hospital would disagree with you.
Check out how Al Qaeda operates here at the 56 second mark, where one of them casually lobs a grenade into a crowd of civilians during the Dec. 5 attack: http://www.guns.com/2013/12/14/graphic-cctv-footage-militant...
The US drone strike was a direct response to the Dec. 5 massacre by Al Qaeda.
[+] [-] holograham|12 years ago|reply
The Hacker News community should like it as it focuses on the stats and facts rather than anecdotal stories the media slings.
The main thesis: Violence (in nearly every form) has been on a precipitous decline in the modern era. War deaths (and civilian causalities) are at all time lows and still declining.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312...
[+] [-] pantalaimon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattyRad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acjohnson55|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] locusm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbruc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badman_ting|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] altcognito|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njharman|12 years ago|reply
Drones aren't autonomous. They don't target anything. Weapons officers do.
Besides being plain wrong and bad reporting, dehumanizing (attributing it on the drone) shifts responsibility and makes it seem like problem is solvable by "fixing" drone or by grounding them.
[+] [-] baddox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clarkmoody|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] headgasket|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nraynaud|12 years ago|reply