90% of drone strikes miss & other drone details leaked

[Elheru Aran]

If you wanted a pre-technological analogue, it might be like a heavily armed roving knight taking orders to attack a specific peasant settlement because they think a rebel is there. There hasn't been anything much like that in history, mostly because people killing other people tends to happen in groups rather than a single machine targeting people. It's a little harder to get mad at a machine than at people, even if there are people behind the machine. Drone strikes are, to a large degree, more impersonal... and arguably for exactly that reason should be reduced (among so many other reasons).

[Patroklos]

The analogue wasn't to pinpoint strikes specifically, it was to show nations conduction military operations against peers and weaker nations and provoking less than open war in response to this:

No, they were not. But nations also could not just go and bomb another state (due to the lack of "precision instruments" like drones) expecting no reaction. Or more precisely could not bomb without immediately risking war with this nation. Nowadays the US can bomb several other nations without end and thus run a war in the time of peace - an endless war everywhere.

Not only could nations pinprick others if there was a contemporary means to do so, if they didn't have an equivalent they could and did do far more destruction and insulting things and still not provoke open war. Drone strikes are a contemporary invention, but the manor of their use regarding fucking inside other sovereigns prerogatives via operations less than war generally is not novel.

[Patroklos]

Edit: Wrong thread.

[Thanas]

The analogue wasn't to pinpoint strikes specifically, it was to show nations conduction military operations against peers and weaker nations and provoking less than open war in response to this:

No, they were not. But nations also could not just go and bomb another state (due to the lack of "precision instruments" like drones) expecting no reaction. Or more precisely could not bomb without immediately risking war with this nation. Nowadays the US can bomb several other nations without end and thus run a war in the time of peace - an endless war everywhere.

Not only could nations pinprick others if there was a contemporary means to do so, if they didn't have an equivalent they could and did do far more destruction and insulting things and still not provoke open war. Drone strikes are a contemporary invention, but the manor of their use regarding fucking inside other sovereigns prerogatives via operations less than war generally is not novel.

It is still bullshit because those nations took countermeasures and eventually this type of thing got outlawed. Heck, the Spanish demanded (and got) the head of at least one notorious english pirate delivered to them by the English King. Nowadays, there is no chance of countermeasure.

[K. A. Pital]

And US servicemen, regardless of the crime, are protected from international prosecution and extradition via special provisions in US law. Therefore, no one can actually ever hold the US accountable for anything unless they manage to capture US personnel involved in war crimes on the spot (which is sadly impossible in case of remote drone operators).

[Thanas]

The saddest thing is that nobody doesn't even know just how many people are droned. This is maybe the greatest success of the war on terror - they can kill anybody they don't like and nobody gives a damn no matter how flimsy the justification.

[Metahive]

Want a historical analogy that actually works?

Yeah, going full Godwin but whatever, this is just a more advanced version of Hitler's V1 and V2 weapons of "vengeance", same MO, same motivation. America feels the islamic world has hurt them so they lob explosives indiscriminately at muslim population centers in revenge. Doesn't matter what brown-skinned non-Christian gets hurt so as long some brown-skinned non-Christian gets hurt.

Fuck it, that's really all there is to this.

[Ralin]

Want a historical analogy that actually works?

Yeah, going full Godwin but whatever, this is just a more advanced version of Hitler's V1 and V2 weapons of "vengeance", same MO, same motivation. America feels the islamic world has hurt them so they lob explosives indiscriminately at muslim population centers in revenge. Doesn't matter what brown-skinned non-Christian gets hurt so as long some brown-skinned non-Christian gets hurt.

Fuck it, that's really all there is to this.

Do you have Nazi Tourettes or something?

I mean, I get that you have an ax to grind and everything but even so you should still be able to wrap your head around the fact that if the US just wanted to wipe out Muslim population centers as revenge we wouldn't be dicking around with drones, we'd just straight up wipe out cities at every turn.

[Channel72]

Drone targets aren't exactly indiscriminate, in the sense of hitting completely random civilian targets. Let's not exaggerate here ... that doesn't help.

Drone targeting is supposed to be highly precise, but in practice it's not, and Washington exaggerates how precise it is. If a more precise way to hit targets existed, Washington would likely use it - I mean, they're interested in avoiding any "blowback" if possible. (Too late for that...) The problem is that drone strikes aren't very precise at all, and Washington just doesn't care. They have consciously and coldly decided that the collateral deaths are worth it, that's all there is to it. We'll see how history judges this whole situation.

We can only hope that 20/30 years from now, history books include this dark chapter of American history, and condemn it just like we now condemn FDR rounding up Japanese Americans and placing them in internment camps. (The current situation is, in fact, much worse than that.)

[Metahive]

I mean, I get that you have an ax to grind and everything but even so you should still be able to wrap your head around the fact that if the US just wanted to wipe out Muslim population centers as revenge we wouldn't be dicking around with drones, we'd just straight up wipe out cities at every turn.

Yeah, and if Al Capone was such a greedy criminal, why didn't he rob Fort Knox?

No, the US don't want to murder all Muslims just like Iranians and Al-Quaeda and ISIS don't want to kill all Americans. Murdering a few at a time does the job just fine, giving the peeps back at home the impression that something is done about that terrible islamic threat (even though it accomplishes fuck all) and killing a few Muslims since they're collectively guilty for 9/11 and need to pay a tithe in blood or something.
Just like the ultimately futile V1/V2 launches served no practical purpose but to assuage the people back home that something, anything was done and to wreak petty vengeance.

Drone targets aren't exactly indiscriminate, in the sense of hitting completely random civilian targets. Let's not exaggerate here ... that doesn't help.

Eh, this very thread is about how drones are fired with a 9:1 chance of hitting something other than their intended targets (which, let's remember, aren't picked with the greatest of care already). Sorry, but if someone uses weapons as inaccurate like this and fires them into population centers anyway, it's very hard for me to see anything but the intent to indiscriminately kill people.

[Channel72]

In that case, you have something of a loose definition of "intent" vs "apathy".

[K. A. Pital]

When probability really is 1:9, I think the line between intent and apathy becomes very thin. It is kind of like if you use chemical weapons to accomplish some military objective. Commiting a war crime was not the main reason, but it was intent, was it not?

I also think that while drone bombs are a valid weapon for a real war, their use as omnipresent assassination tools under, formally, peace or undeclared war, is very questionable from the standpoint of the laws of war.

[Metahive]

Because it doesn't matter for the nine people you killed in addition to the one intended target? They're dead, no matter what. Intent ain't magic.

If I levelled your hometown just to kill one person that happened to be there at the moment, would it matter for you that I didn't "intend" to kill your friends and relatives together with that person? If you say no, why exactly should it be different for the US' "unintentional" drone victims?

[Channel72]

Whatever - it's semantics. The way I would use the word "intent" would imply an action that contributes to a desired objective or end goal - not some kind of byproduct of that objective. If your objective is to kill person A, and you know that as a byproduct of your goal, you will also likely kill persons B, C and D, it still doesn't make killing persons B, C and D part of your intent. It just means, you don't give a shit about person B, C and D, because your goal of killing person A is all that matters to you.

But again, it's semantics. I'm just saying, as a native English speaker, I wouldn't really be inclined to extend the definition of "intent" to include "things that happen as a byproduct of your goal, but are not themselves part of your overall goal".

[Metahive]

Please, if the US actually gave a shit about all the "collateral damage" they wouldn't use weapons like that. It's not like the US doesn't know that every drone fired will kill more than just the intended target, yet they do so anyway.

Also, why didn't you answer my question? If Oskar McDouchy is in your city and I absolutely have to kill him for his bad limericks and I do so with nuclear bomb, does it matter that I actually only wanted to kill Oskar and didn't "intend" to kill you and your entire family as well?

[Channel72]

Please, if the US actually gave a shit about all the "collateral damage" they wouldn't use weapons like that. It's not like the US doesn't know that every drone fired will kill more than just the intended target, yet they do so anyway.

???

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3930792

Pretty much what I said.

Also, why didn't you answer my question? If Oskar McDouchy is in your city and I absolutely have to kill him for his bad limericks and I do so with nuclear bomb, does it matter that I actually only wanted to kill Oskar and didn't "intend" to kill you and your entire family as well?

Yes. I wouldn't describe the situation like that if someone was asking. I'd say you were so sociopathic that you don't care about the lives of millions of people. Saying you "intended" to kill millions of people would imply to the listener that your goal was to kill millions of people, not Oskar McDouchy specifically.

Language is important. Words are important. It helps to be precise with words, if not with drones.

[Simon_Jester]

Drone targets aren't exactly indiscriminate, in the sense of hitting completely random civilian targets. Let's not exaggerate here ... that doesn't help.

Drone targeting is supposed to be highly precise, but in practice it's not, and Washington exaggerates how precise it is...

I think the fundamental problem here is that the powers that be have gotten mixed up about the difference between precise weapons and precise attacks.

Drone missiles are about as accurate as a weapon can be, they hit just about exactly what they're ordered to hit. The problem is targeting. And Washington, like every great capital of the modern age, has too much confidence in its intelligence agencies' ability to give it precise, detailed, accurate information on what foreigners are doing. When in fact it's all too common for intelligence to end up confused and trapped in a rabbit hole of useless speculation and conspiracy theorizing.

So they see a missile they can fire at any spot they want, and hear intelligence agents assuring them that assassinating this guy will make a difference... and put two and two together and get five.

[Channel72]

Right. The flaky intelligence is probably the larger aspect of the problem here. But there's also the problem of the technology itself. It's accurate as it can be, sure, for a missile ... but accurately hitting your target while also blowing away 5 to 10 innocent bystanders somewhat strains the definition of "accuracy" and "precision". Recall Al-Awlaki's son, who was merely eating dinner in the general vicinity as some of his cousins, when he and everyone around him was obliterated in a drone strike.

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah. Intelligence is one thing, the modus operandi of a missile is another thing. Somehow lobbing what are essentially cruise missiles into urban areas is no longer seen as a problem. "Job done" is not an acceptable excuse at some point. When you bomb a city to destroy enemy production plants, this can be understood in the greater context of the war, although it is also a practice far from unquestionable... But when you bomb residential building blocks to take out a certain person, acting as a careless evil robot Hitman, it is even more questionable. Even with perfect intel, if you always, absolutely in all cases kill one bad person with 9 bystanders, should this practice be continued?

If the police killed 9 bystanders for every killed or apprehended criminal, I bet they would be in trouble...

[Ralin]

Yeah, and if Al Capone was such a greedy criminal, why didn't he rob Fort Knox?

Because he didn't have the ability to do so. It was guarded by soldiers with guns and other weapons who would have killed him and his men if he'd tried.

Are you claiming that the US military can't indiscriminately bomb the fuck out of any given Afghan, Pakistani or Iraqi city?

No, the US don't want to murder all Muslims just like Iranians and Al-Quaeda and ISIS don't want to kill all Americans.

Ah right, just like Hitler! Hitler was all about killing a few people at a time to make a point.

Murdering a few at a time does the job just fine, giving the peeps back at home the impression that something is done about that terrible islamic threat (even though it accomplishes fuck all) and killing a few Muslims since they're collectively guilty for 9/11 and need to pay a tithe in blood or something.

Why? If the US really was the racist Muslim-hating ogre that you want to pretend it is why would we half-ass it with drones that kill a dozen or so people when Bush and Obama clearly had the ability to do much more? Why trumpet it when they manage to kill someone who genuinely was a terrorist/Taliban warlord/etc and brush the collateral damage under the rug if we just wanna kill a few of dem brown people who as we all know are collectively guilty for 9/11?

Just like the ultimately futile V1/V2 launches served no practical purpose but to assuage the people back home that something, anything was done and to wreak petty vengeance.

I have difficulty believing that you're genuinely this dumb, but let's just be charitable and assume you have some big blind spots and need it spelled out for you: The Nazis wreaked petty vengeance because they didn't have the ability to do more at the time. America has the ability to wreak much, much more than petty vengeance on poor Muslim people in places like Afghanistan. That doesn't justify what the US has done. But your comparison is really, really fucking stupid and this is a subject that deserves to be taken seriously. Not hijacked for whatever the hell vendetta you have against your mental image of AmeriKKKa.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Drone missiles are about as accurate as a weapon can be, they hit just about exactly what they're ordered to hit. The problem is targeting. And Washington, like every great capital of the modern age, has too much confidence in its intelligence agencies' ability to give it precise, detailed, accurate information on what foreigners are doing. When in fact it's all too common for intelligence to end up confused and trapped in a rabbit hole of useless speculation and conspiracy theorizing.

So they see a missile they can fire at any spot they want, and hear intelligence agents assuring them that assassinating this guy will make a difference... and put two and two together and get five.

This is when they actually use gathered intel at all and not a "signature strike" against a wedding party for flashing their headlights at each other (something that clearly only terrorists would do).

[Simon_Jester]

Arthur, yes, that is an even better example of launching a missile attack on the basis of bad intelligence... in multiple senses of the term.

Metahive, I've got to agree with Ralin. Your analogical reasoning is so bad that it makes your arguments useless and inadequate. There have been rulers who wanted to exterminate entire ethnic groups (Hitler). There have been rulers who wanted to conquer large stretches of territory (Ghengis Khan at the high end of brutality, people like Alexander and Napoleon lower down the scale).

Both these motives are different than the motives of Bush/Obama in the 'War on Terror.' Which is essentially the mindset of a bored and detached emperor commanding tiny fractions of his forces to cause a bit of frightfulness in the province on the other side of the Empire's border, in order to deter the 'barbarians' from becoming annoying.

This is totally different from the motivation behind Hitler's vengeance weapons. It is also totally different from mass area bombing of Muslim cities with the aim of causing mass death among Muslims.

It is morally wrong for its own, specific reasons, which are related to the nature of the act, and if you are too historically ignorant to talk about the nature of the act, you should not invoke analogies to history.

I remember Thanas on the first page, saying "I don't like how ill-chosen historical analogies are bandied around. "

I agree with him. And I like to think that he'd be calling you out on THIS ill-chosen analogy too. Because I know I sure am.

[Metahive]

Because he didn't have the ability to do so. It was guarded by soldiers with guns and other weapons who would have killed him and his men if he'd tried.

There's your answer. If the US goes for mass-extermination of the Muslim world, it will get a few nukes lobbed its way since China and Russia would feel massively threatened by a US willing to commit outright nuclear genocide.

Here endeth the lesson.

Yes. I wouldn't describe the situation like that if someone was asking. I'd say you were so sociopathic that you don't care about the lives of millions of people. Saying you "intended" to kill millions of people would imply to the listener that your goal was to kill millions of people, not Oskar McDouchy specifically.

Language is important. Words are important. It helps to be precise with words, if not with drones.

So it's just a matter of numbers then? Killing ten people for every one guy you want to kill (maybe...intelligence isn't so great after all) is OK, but there's an upper limit? Could you please define the upper limit of collateral damage for me after which it becomes just "sociopathic" to engage in such practices?

Metahive, I've got to agree with Ralin. Your analogical reasoning is so bad that it makes your arguments useless and inadequate. There have been rulers who wanted to exterminate entire ethnic groups (Hitler). There have been rulers who wanted to conquer large stretches of territory (Ghengis Khan at the high end of brutality, people like Alexander and Napoleon lower down the scale).

Yeah, I agree, my analogy was poor. After all, Hitler acted out of desperation. You lot don't even have that. You do it out of...what? Can you answer me the question of why your country kills people with a ratio of 10:1 of innocents vs intended targets?

[Imperial528]

Right. The flaky intelligence is probably the larger aspect of the problem here. But there's also the problem of the technology itself. It's accurate as it can be, sure, for a missile ... but accurately hitting your target while also blowing away 5 to 10 innocent bystanders somewhat strains the definition of "accuracy" and "precision". Recall Al-Awlaki's son, who was merely eating dinner in the general vicinity as some of his cousins, when he and everyone around him was obliterated in a drone strike.

I just had an idea.

Would it be feasible to gut the missile down to the guidance system and an inert armor-piercing head or a shotgun shell at the front? Assuming the missile is precise enough to reliably hit a man-sized target, that would cut down a lot on collateral damage and the deaths of innocents. You could also use a smaller missile because you no longer have to carry a room-leveling warhead.


Note: I am opposed to drone strikes for moral reasons, this is just conjecture to see if the technology exists to allow drone strikes that would reliably kill a single person. If it does, one has to ask why the US military is not using it.

[Purple]

It might be plausible but you still have the problem of the missile body it self, fuel and all crashing into the target. You'll still get a nasty fireball even if you remove the warhead altogether. As for making the missile smaller that probably can't be done because the bulk of the missile is in fact not the warhead but the guidance systems and engine.