Drones are the newest form of military killers. Ten years ago the US had under 50 drones. That number has now grown to 7,000 with plans to expand that number even more with the request to congress for more funds in the coming year. This is due to their extreme effectiveness in the fight against terrorism. Drones were responsible for discovering the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, carrying out the assassinations of Ilyas Kashmiri and Anwar al-Awlaki. They have been used greatly in the anti-Qaddafi fight in Libya. However, in a wrongful targeting 23 Afghani civilians were killed.
No one can deny that the use of drones has allowed us to infiltrate places that would be extremely dangerous for troops. This is obviously a positive, decreasing the amount of endangered lives to our soldiers. This seems to be enough to make the decision to use these weapons easy. However, we have to think of the global and future implications of the use of drones. We have seen over the many decades, how the increase in weapon knowledge equals an increase in the efficiency of killing. As the operator is looking at a screen and making the choices to take life, they are separated from the situation, like a video game. Will this make it easier to take human lives? As other countries, even terrorist groups acquire this technology is it even going to make a difference in the long run? I wonder, how soon will we be the transmitted image on the screen?
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/unmanned_aerial_vehicles/index.html
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