The Morality of Drone Strikes

[Metahive]

In this thread I would like to discuss the following two issues:

1.What goals do drone strikes accomplish?
2.Are they worth the cost in lives?
3.How much different are they in kind from the tactics that terrorists use?

To 1.
As far as I know the stated goal of drone strikes is ostensibly to kill terrorists that would otherwise threaten the lives and well-being of other people. The process after which the targets for these are chosen is obscure and sometimes there are no identified targets at all. Signature strikes are aimed at people that supposedly act suspiciously. Double tabs are used at first responders who rush to the aid of the victims of the first strikes and finally funerals of those targets are also bombarded. Do all the people who perish in these terrorists that need to be disposed of and do their death create more safety for the rest of humanity? In my opinion this is all rather dubious.

To 2.
High explosives are not precision instruments. Innocents are caught in those strikes, including children. I could imagine these sacrifices to be worth it if many more lives could only be saved in this way. I have however come up with nothing that would support this.

To 3.
Now there has to be said that the West doesn't have the same overall callous disregard for human life that terrorists have, the latter's goal is often to just murder as many random people to create an atmosphere of insecurity and, well, terror. The West is more humanist than that. At the same time, why is it seen as acceptable to sacrifice foreigners to increase one's own safety in such a wasteful manner, especially when the increase in security is all but guaranteed? That's something that people really need to think more about.

Signature strikes, double tabs and funeral bombings I however condemn as pure terrorism, I just can't find anything redeeming about them. They kill indiscriminately and are specifically aimed at killing many people and the reasoning behind them is the same callous disregard for human life used by the terrorists, "if you are near any suspected terrorist, you're worthy of death".

[Simon_Jester]

The terrorist role of aerial bombardment is something that people with consciences have been wrestling with for a long time. The Second World War saw variations on the theme of "dehousing" waged by all powers with a substantial air force, and certain weapons that were almost completely useless except as weapons of widespread destruction and terrorization against the ordinary population of an enemy state. Small incendiary bombs and large parachute mines come to mind.

In the modern era, Western governments seem very reluctant to admit that they even have enemy states, while still wanting to gain the advantages of being able to prosecute a war against select elements within that state.* I personally think that this total lack of respect for the older Westphalian system is going to result in disaster in the long run.

Right now, the US enjoys a monopoly on being able to push buttons and kill people in other countries in a risk-free way. If that monopoly is ever removed, then the precedents we are now setting will become disastrous, especially for the US but also for other countries that played less of a role in setting them.

*True for the US in particular but many other states to lesser extents.

[Metahive]

True, in WW2 there was at least an open state of war between nations. What is the morality of bombarding civilians targets in other countries you are not at war with? I feel if the US didn't have this sort of overwhelming economical and military advantage, it would constitute a blatant casus belli and there would have been declarations of war. Another thing that has to be taken into account is the potential destablizing effect this has. I mean, would you trust your government if it couldn't even protect you from another nation shooting rockets into your cities and villages? A nation that has a weakened central government is prime fodder for terrorist infilitration, another why reason why I think this practice of drone strikes is having the opposite effect of what is intended, reducing the terrorist threat.

It's similar to the arm's races of yore, one nation feels threatened so it expands its military which however results in other nations feeling likewise threatened by the increased martial display and so on and so forth.

[Sea Skimmer]

You really think Pakistan with its nuclear weapons and five hundred jet fighters couldn't do something about a propeller driven plane circling in broad daylight at 25,000 feet? Or that that's CIA Predator base was something they actually had a problem with?

Yemen and Pakistan could stop US drone strikes out of hand if they had any real desire to do so. Both have radars, SAMs and supersonic jet fighters more then capable of the task. Though some US strikes in Yemen were with cruise missiles and manned jets, which makes singling out drone strikes as being anything different pointless, but easy political points with an ignorant mass audience. These strikes go forward because the local governments want them, because they have problems they can't deal with themselves. They do ignore public will in this, but well, both have had changes of government and still not opposed it.

In both cases the problems are rooted far deeper then anything the US has done, neither was ever a strong state. Yemen actually has two different civil wars going on right now, coming after what, three previous ones since the 1960s? Almost all strikes have taken place since both countries were already in civil wars too, and in the case of Yemen Al-Qeada has been operational since the 1990s when it was first formed. Both countries also bomb and shell themselves extensively in said civil wars, I believe Yemen has lost fast jets to the southern insurgency. Iraq and Afghanistan would be open state of war, and far more people died and keep dying from all the other weapons being used. So the situation is far more about the justification of the war then a small slice of how they were and are being fought. Drone kill civilians, everything else killed far more.

Somalia meanwhile has had drone attacks, and at least one naval bombardment and raid by manned European attack helicopters. It also has no functional government and is full of foreign troops from other parts of Africa and the definition of a failed state. Failed since about 1990, long before any of this was a consideration, see Battle for Mogadishu ect.

As it is the US would really like to engage in more ground operations particularly in Pakistan instead of air attacks, but both Pakistan and Yemen explicitly rule this out. That's why Pakistan got so outraged at killing Bin Laden with an M4 carbine. The drone strikes are working fine at the intended purpose, which is the suppress Al-Qeada in places the US can't reach, and help curb the conventional military threat to the Pakistan and Yemeni governments.

[Grumman]

You really think Pakistan with its nuclear weapons and five hundred jet fighters couldn't do something about a propeller driven plane circling in broad daylight at 25,000 feet?

Physically, or diplomatically? The threat of American retaliation is stronger than any armour.

[Sea Skimmer]

Like what, no more money to subsidize the Pakistani military into fighting its civil war? That would stand to reason that it shouldn't happen if you think the drones shouldn't. If you think the US is going to go to war with them over this, incidentally making its position in Afghanistan untenable, you really have no gauge of the situation as it actually exist.

You know these things can't even operate without the cooperation of local air traffic control right? No ability what so ever to sense and avoid other aircraft, but Pakistan diverts aircraft around them for the CIA. Pakistan is deeply involved, and has varied what it will allow over time. They've even gone so far as to send their own manned aircraft to attack certain sites after they were attacked by CIA Predators to help cover things up. These are not actions of an unwilling participant at the governmental level.

Why does this go on? Well for one thing because the drone strikes aren't on the cities, they are in the viliages and the mountains where the insurgency is, and a lot of people in Pakistan actually do support them. Something about all those Al-Qeada and Taliban suicide bombings in Pakistan perhaps? Even in some of the areas that eat the strikes they aren't unpopular, because many of the locals are also at war with the Pakistani Taliban. This isn't a clear cut issue. Remember something like 100,000 people have died in north western Pakistan since this started from all causes and walks of life. Tens of thousands of them were civilians. CIA linked drone strikes have killed several hundred civilians low end, around five hundred high end estimates with as many as half being children. They've also killed 2000+ terrorists/insurgents/people with guns the CIA decided looked worth killing but never actually identified.

[Metahive]

Thank you for your reply, Sea Skimmer. What you say makes sense, but it also gives me something more to worry about. If the West is partaking in a quasi civil war and drone strikes happen with the blessing of the government, doesn't that mean that the "hitlists" are also partially inspired by intel given by the government? If so, isn't there the risk that the persons pointed out on those lists are not only known terrorist troublemakers but also simply people that the government wants to see disappeared for other reasons that aren't related to terrorism? I also see parellels in Iran using foreign auxiliaries like the lebanese Hisbollah to use them as a club against dissidents. Couldn't it be that the West is simply exploited in the same way?

[Simon_Jester]

This is a real danger and always is when waging a war in a loosely affiliated "ally's" backyard- for some reason, the Venetians somehow maneuvering the Fourth Crusade into seizing Constantinople rather than actually going to the Holy Land bubbled into my mind.

So the question really becomes, how do the costs and benefits of this compare to the obvious alternative of simply ignoring Al Qaeda in these countries? And to other alternatives? Personally I'm not sure. It seems sort of contrived to say that these groups have our enmity permanently

[Metahive]

To be fair to the Venetians, they didn't set out from the start to exploit the crusaders into ravaging the Byzantines, it's just that they failed to check the credit rating of the crusaders and then sat on a huge pile of shiny new ships that couldn't be paid for. Lo' and behold there's a deposed Byzantine emperor who offers riches if only he gets a little help in regaining his throne...and then suddenly there was the crusader run Latin Kingdom, whoops.
But that only as a tangent.

I think we must make a distinction here between Al-Quaeda and the Taliban. The former is a loosely knit terrorist organization that operates globally while the latter is a localized civil war faction vying for local power. I would argue the most dangerous members, for the West at least, are those relatively well-off and educated muslims, immigrants or converts, living currently in a Western country who adopt Al-Quaeda's ideology. The only effect drone strikes has on them is probably radicalization, they see it as yet more evidence of the West's decadent evil.
Killing Taliban members or Al-Quaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan however seems to me to be rather futile when it comes to securing the West. As long as the circumstances encourage the rise of radical factions there (an overall sense of insecurity and strife) they won't suffer from a shortage of potential recruits. Also, the Israelis kept killing PLO leaders and all it accomplished was the PLO becoming more and more radical until finally the Hamas emerged.

I would go even a step further, as dangerous as muslim extremists have proven themselves to be, they're by far not the greatest threat to the livelihood of Westerners. I mean compare the number of Americans killed by islamic acts of terrorism on american soil to, say, Americans dying due to a lack of healthcare. I think the effort spend on quelling this particular danger is rather unproportionate to the actual risk it poses.

[Thanas]

To be fair to the Venetians, they didn't set out from the start to exploit the crusaders into ravaging the Byzantines, it's just that they failed to check the credit rating of the crusaders and then sat on a huge pile of shiny new ships that couldn't be paid for. Lo' and behold there's a deposed Byzantine emperor who offers riches if only he gets a little help in regaining his throne...and then suddenly there was the crusader run Latin Kingdom, whoops.
But that only as a tangent.

The tangent is wrong. This is Venetian apologia. They - having had very good intelligence and being in fact one of the first state with an intelligence branch of the Government - knew full well the crusaders had little to pay long before the campaign ever reached Byzantine shores. Which is why before they reached Constantinople the crusaders just happened to conquer lands which formed the basis of the Venetian colonial empire. The entire thing was directed and planned by the Venetians from the start. The history of the Crusades is the history of dumb fanatics being used to settle political scores in the east, which has traditions all the way back to the first crusades (long before the official first crusade was used to basically reconquer Byzantine Asia Minor).

**********************

As to the topic at hand, my main concern with the drone strikes is that basically any gathering of people in tribal areas is a valid target should the US decide to do so. It is very reminiscent of terror tactics in itself.

[Metahive]

A so. When I studied economics the Fourth Crusade was used as an example of the differing expectations between the managerial and bookeeping castes within a company, as in while the management might celebrate reeling in huge deals the bookeepers feel a bit more queasy about it if the prospect of actually getting paid is iffy. Shows you what economists know.

[Alyrium Denryle]

To 1.
As far as I know the stated goal of drone strikes is ostensibly to kill terrorists that would otherwise threaten the lives and well-being of other people. The process after which the targets for these are chosen is obscure and sometimes there are no identified targets at all. Signature strikes are aimed at people that supposedly act suspiciously. Double tabs are used at first responders who rush to the aid of the victims of the first strikes and finally funerals of those targets are also bombarded. Do all the people who perish in these terrorists that need to be disposed of and do their death create more safety for the rest of humanity? In my opinion this is all rather dubious.

It is not "dubious". It is wrong. Flat. Out. Fucking. Wrong. It is one thing to know you have someone you need to kill (say, Hitler, to make it simple), know where they are or will be, and have the ability to target a missile on that location, then accept the civilian casualties that will result. The benefit of killing Hitler outweighs the cost.

It is another to say "Oh look. Armed men(or men who look like they might be armed, they could be carrying PVC or something) are walking in an unstable poor region. They must be terrorists" and kill them. That is not right. Even if you are certain of the target, the risk of collateral casualties is too high, given the number of people such a person is likely to kill. Factor in the uncertainty, and it is worse.

You know that wikileaks thing with an apache gunning down journalists? Killing the journalists was a good faith error brought about by being in an attack helicopter with optics (or displays. Either way) in their target recognition cameras poorly suited to urban warfare. When they decided to shoot people rendering aid to the wounded however, it was a War Crime. Whether attacking civilians, or attacking those they believed to be a party to the conflict. No matter how you slice it, they were committing a war crime.

Killing those who respond to aid in a drone strike is even worse.

Targeting a funeral is also a war crime, as there are no legitimate military targets present.

Hell, even in strategic bombing, there is a military objective, and civilian casualties are...incidental. Not the point. Signature Strikes Have None.

[Elheru Aran]

To point out another problem with #1, I believe it's been noted that the Afghanistan/Pakistan frontier has one of the highest percentages of armed civilians in the world. An AK rifle is pretty much part of everyday clothing for most men in the various country tribes. As such it's quite possible for civilians to just be walking from one point to another with rifles in hand and perhaps a belt pouch of ammo. Unfortunately to a drone they look identical to terror suspects...

EDIT: Not so much 'to a drone', 'to the drone operators' is more accurate. As far as I know we haven't come up with drones capable of operating entirely independently... yet.

[Sea Skimmer]

To point out another problem with #1, I believe it's been noted that the Afghanistan/Pakistan frontier has one of the highest percentages of armed civilians in the world. An AK rifle is pretty much part of everyday clothing for most men in the various country tribes. As such it's quite possible for civilians to just be walking from one point to another with rifles in hand and perhaps a belt pouch of ammo. Unfortunately to a drone they look identical to terror suspects...

Yes vast numbers of civilians are armed, and vast numbers of them are against the government, but remember the drones normally launch based on other intelligence a lot of which is coming from spies on the ground whom mark targets in various manners. The drones then come and survey an area for in some cases multiple days before attacking. The target areas in which all of this takes are fairly well defined as the Pakistani civil war has clear battle lines drawn on the ground most areas. Target choice isn't arbitrary, far more controlled I say then the way drones have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.

I don't think an attack on pro government armed civilians has ever taken place, though its certainly possible. The reality is the attacks are pretty damn reliable at killing militants, its just they are also reliable at killing people around them too. That's a big problem but it isn't unique to the drones. At times the Pakistani government has just sent out whole squadrons of Cobra gunships to lay waste to areas, and more then one town has been shelled to rubble in Pakistani counter offensives.

Generally though Pakistan is not actually trying to win the civil war on the ground. They are fighting one big holding action for ten years now because they seem to think the Pakistani Taliban will eventually exhaust itself and reach some kind of settlement. That's being generous and assuming Pakistan has a plan, which I'm not sure it really does. The fact that the Pakistani government is so absurdly disfuctional, as well as afraid of India is also a major factor. Read about the nations power grid or railroads, they are getting close to imploding completely. The country of 170 million doesn't even have freight rail service anymore. Meanwhile around 75% of the Pakistani army including all its good units face India, and only the leftovers face the Afghan border. Most of the pro government combat as well as the job of securing the NATO supply line falls to local milita.

As it is the US drone program provides a method Pakistan can deny and yet benefit from to project combat power into those mountain citadels in which it cannot effectively project its own power. That's why it keeps going on. The end result is the US drone campaign is suppressive, and that certainly shouldn't satisfy anyone.

EDIT: Not so much 'to a drone', 'to the drone operators' is more accurate. As far as I know we haven't come up with drones capable of operating entirely independently... yet.

X-47B is testing that technology. In all reality though the F-117 already conducted its missions entirely by computer control. In principle you could have flow it without the pilot with almost no further modifications, the pilot was not even required to aim the laser guided bombs, though they certainly did check the computer aim. But that only worked with a precisely located preplanned target.

[Thanas]

To point out another problem with #1, I believe it's been noted that the Afghanistan/Pakistan frontier has one of the highest percentages of armed civilians in the world. An AK rifle is pretty much part of everyday clothing for most men in the various country tribes. As such it's quite possible for civilians to just be walking from one point to another with rifles in hand and perhaps a belt pouch of ammo. Unfortunately to a drone they look identical to terror suspects...

Yes vast numbers of civilians are armed, and vast numbers of them are against the government, but remember the drones normally launch based on other intelligence a lot of which is coming from spies on the ground whom mark targets in various manners. The drones then come and survey an area for in some cases multiple days before attacking. The target areas in which all of this takes are fairly well defined as the Pakistani civil war has clear battle lines drawn on the ground most areas. Target choice isn't arbitrary, far more controlled I say then the way drones have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.

I don't think an attack on pro government armed civilians has ever taken place, though its certainly possible.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... fact_mayer

The first two C.I.A. air strikes of the Obama Administration took place on the morning of January 23rd—the President’s third day in office. Within hours, it was clear that the morning’s bombings, in Pakistan, had killed an estimated twenty people. In one strike, four Arabs, all likely affiliated with Al Qaeda, died. But in the second strike a drone targeted the wrong house, hitting the residence of a pro-government tribal leader six miles outside the town of Wana, in South Waziristan. The blast killed the tribal leader’s entire family, including three children, one of them five years old. In keeping with U.S. policy, there was no official acknowledgment of either strike.

Given that this happened several years ago I would posit it is more than likely that pro-government civilians have been bombed. In fact, there was an article posted on this board several months ago where it was outlined that Yemeni civilians had been killed who were pro-government, causing the government to lose a lot of support in tribal areas.

I think it is also very hard to believe the Government when it refuses to release official statistics or make any kind of the operation available to judicial review. Any figure the Government releases should be viewed as unreliable propaganda given the US habit of manipulating or outright lying about civilian casualties in the war on terror. I don't think one can with a good conscience trust any US figure that has not been independently reviewed.

Just taking a casual look at dronestream on twitter https://twitter.com/dronestream produces several examples where the US drone strikes have hit civilians, as does this website.

The question then is if these attacks are more or less deadly than attacks by special forces would be to civilians or more prone to mistakes.

I certainly don't think one can argue that any of this applies to signature strikes though, which are well documented to have hit pretty indiscriminately.

[Sky Captain]

How effective would be drone armed with gun that can act essentially as sniper rifle or missiles without high explosive warhead that rely on kinetic impact to kill target? If goal is to kill selected individuals it should be done with a weapon that can hit specific target without spraying shrapnel all over the place.

[Elheru Aran]

How effective would be drone armed with gun that can act essentially as sniper rifle or missiles without high explosive warhead that rely on kinetic impact to kill target? If goal is to kill selected individuals it should be done with a weapon that can hit specific target without spraying shrapnel all over the place.

The missile is possible but the gun would be extremely difficult. There's a reason planes tend to rely upon bombs and missiles for ground attack. Precision strafing isn't something that really happens. Sure, pilots train in ground attack with guns, but not a whole lot actually ever do it, and when they do, they're lucky to hit anything smaller than a tank.

The kinetic missile is more plausible, but again, accuracy is the real question. You have to lock in on a highly mobile target that's only about a maximum of 2m high and 1m wide, in the middle of many similar targets. You have to identify the specific target visually (thermal is no good, although it may help to track the target if they go indoors). You have to do this from who knows how far away, on the other end of a screen, watching a not-great image on a shaky, moving platform.

Not saying it's impossible... but it's not very probable.

Skimmer, I was meaning more target acquisition and firing rather than just flying around by themselves. There should still be someone to give the go/no go rather than the computer just arbitrarily searching a face database and going "oh hey this guy matches, let's blow him up". How many bearded dudes in a turban and tribal robes are there in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

[Thanas]

Would it be feasible to have variable payloads, say a missile with a very small kill radius and one with a high radius on the same drone, so that it can be attempted first to target a specific person and only if that fails the whole group? Or are impact forces too high?

[Elheru Aran]

Would it be feasible to have variable payloads, say a missile with a very small kill radius and one with a high radius on the same drone, so that it can be attempted first to target a specific person and only if that fails the whole group? Or are impact forces too high?

Weight is a major concern with drones, as I understand it. The small surveillance ones can't carry but one or two missiles at the very most, if anything (most carry none, I think). Use a larger drone and you have to either send it to the location, possibly risking the target's escape, or if it's already on location, odds are they might very well notice the drone before it can fire. It does have to be at least in visual range, unless they've come up with some technology where they can fire a missile from beyond visual range and have it home in onto a camera feed from a smaller drone (certainly possible).

You *could* make a drone specifically engineered for kamikazing, which could be one way to make strikes a little more precise, but then you have to deal with other messes such as if the fuel from the drone engines causes a fire or chemical burns or whatever. Plus if you miss, you aren't likely to get another chance anytime soon.

[Sea Skimmer]

Would it be feasible to have variable payloads, say a missile with a very small kill radius and one with a high radius on the same drone, so that it can be attempted first to target a specific person and only if that fails the whole group? Or are impact forces too high?

Realistically guided weapons are not accurate enough to pick off specific people without an explosive warhead, but much work is going into very small guided weapons, ones which entire mass is lower then that of a Hellfire warhead precisely to cope with this issue.

Some of them are already in service but most are not effective from the range and altitude a Predator A/B operates at, they are more relevant to helicopters and smaller drones at the moment, such as the Viper Strike LGB and but lots of projects are coming up. Two different 70mm sized laser guided missiles are being introduced to US service fo example, one of which is likely to go on Predator series aircraft, but it hasn't happened yet.

Though if the target is a building you've got a basic reality that your killing everyone around the aimpoint, and want to do so. Those houses often happen to have civilians and militants in them at the same time, which is already a war crime when said mixing is done on purpose. If killing them all is a war crime or not is situational, as the laws of war very much allow such targeting, just not when it is disproportionate.

Hit to kill anti personal weapons have certainly been talked about though, but just aren't likely to be effective. The real solution to that will be high power laser weapons. Then of course people will be howling at those too precisely because they would be so lethally accurate. Though even then the beam scatter on a laser can be significant at a range of kilometers.

How effective would be drone armed with gun that can act essentially as sniper rifle or missiles without high explosive warhead that rely on kinetic impact to kill target? If goal is to kill selected individuals it should be done with a weapon that can hit specific target without spraying shrapnel all over the place.

If the drone can snipe someone, someone on the ground can shoot down the drone too, and aiming is a big big problem. A .50cal sniper blimp never got past the early design stage because of this. Of course you could use a bigger gun, and the US wouldn't mind using the AC-130 over Pakistan, but 20-40mm autocannons are going to be just as deadly as small missiles in terms of killing people all around the aimpoint. In fact is isn't uncommon for US Apache helicopters to use Hellfire missiles instead of the 30mm cannon in some instances, even if the target is a single person, because the Hellfire is a lot more reliable in its accuracy. It will rarely miss when used on a stationary target, and when it does miss its usually from complete missile failure dumping it someone very far from the target or triggering self destruct.

[Marko Dash]

i vaguely remember hearing about a missile being developed with this purpose in mind, a small lightweight weapon with tiny CEP and a just as tiny warhead.

IIRC it might be related to the guided hydra rocket