Over the past fifteen years unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, have risen from an obscure technology to becoming a key component of Western military power,
with US, British and Israeli forces launching thousands of drone strikes across Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Drones have become one of the most used weapons in conventional wars, but are also being used far from any battlefield in so-called targeted killings to ‘take out’ those deemed to be a threat to security.
While officials describe drone strikes as ‘the most precise and effective application of firepower in the history of armed conflict’, human rights organisations and journalists have documented that hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in such strikes.
But armed drones are more than just a new weapon system, the latest in a long line of supposed technological solutions to international security problems. Drones are also at the forefront of the rehabilitation of war itself.  Through using remote-controlled drones as well as precision weapons, we are told, war is no longer the hell it once was. Such a narrative is extremely naive and dangerous. Not only does it obscure the casualties and destruction caused by drone strikes, but it also means that whenever there is an international political crisis, the press and politicians demand we ‘send in the drones’ as there is no perceived cost in doing so.  Read more here