Drone Warfare: just or a must? In February 2001, in a trailer at Indian Springs Airfield in the Nevada desert, US air officials watched in awe as a test pilot pushed a button on a control desk which instantly fired a Hellfire missile from an early model of an MQ-1 Predator Drone flying overhead and hit a tank on the ground around hundred metres away, the first test fire from a predator UAV. Now, fifteen years later Drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper are at the heart of most armed conflict and the ever increasing advancements mean more and more Drones are used over conventional piloted Jets. The Economist, in 2015, declared that ’the future belongs to drones’, but a piece by Reuters, in 2016 stated that drones are ‘the perfect weapon for a …show more content…
Having said that the positives seem to override the negatives. If a drone is shot down in combat then there is no loss of life to crew as there isn’t any, they can be further scrambled quickly to respond to imminent threats and they are capable of autonomous flight which means that less human input is needed. These characteristics make drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper and the Elbit Hermes 450 some of the most advanced pieces of technology in the world and when it comes to the safety of a country you would want the best, would you not? Of course, there are things like cost to build and cost to maintain but in comparison to fighter jets they are not that expensive. The public feel more at ease with the idea of a human pilot as they trust him to make the correct decision thus the are quick to dismiss any claim that the drones will be more advanced compared to the conventional jet fighter. One of the key arguments activists have is the cost of the drones and that it takes a lot of taxpayer money to fund and maintain the various programmes but if one compares the cost of the Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II program which is around USD 382 bn to the MQ-9 Reaper program which costs about USD 121.21 bn, thus it is clear to see that in fact, drones are a cheaper alternative to fighter …show more content…
The US were hunting an Al-Qaeda militant and had mistargeted and around 4pm a missile came through the roof of the makeshift shuttle bus Toyota and instantly put everyone in the car to death. Unfortunately, incidents like these are not uncommon and drones have been used to blow up a compound in rural Afghanistan that is ‘a Taliban stronghold’ but too late it turns out to merely be a farm with a family on it. The guidance systems on the Drones are accurate to an inch but the targeting intelligence given to the pilots can be sometimes inaccurate and unjustified but as they are on the other side of the world it is easily forgotten and the cost of the human lives. A US military analyst found out that drones cause over ten times as many civilian kills and fighter jets and that US drone strike killed 1147 unknown people in strikes despite only targeting 41 people. There are many flaws with drones but they can be fixed, with more accurate weapon systems collateral deaths will be lowered and with even more advanced targeting systems the loss of civilian lives will be lowered as well. For the moment though those giving the orders must have undeniable proof and a clean shot in order to minimise unnecessary loss of human