The Drone War

One of sci-fi's most enduring prophesies is finally coming to pass -- the Drone War. Visionaries from Wells to Orwell to Lucas have long predicted that warring surrogate machines would someday take the humans' place in a new kind of conflict with enormous political implications as military technology evolves. Battles by machines are entirely different -- socially, politically and culturally -- from anything in the history of warfare, as we are seeing in Afghanistan.

There are plenty of human casualties in the Afghan conflict -- though few among Americans -- but the fight seems especially significant in terms of technology and military conflict.

The Predator spy plane and other unmanned drones and gunships (along with satellites, thermal imaging devices, X-ray scanners, etc.) not only search for the enemy, but fire guided missiles, drop powerful oxygen-sucking hyperbaric bombs, and guide bomb strikes from afar. There is no war in recent human history that involved so few humans, at least on one side of the conflict. The most staggering statistic out of Afghanistan might be that the first American combat casualty died nearly three months into the "war."

Before Afghanistan, conventional military wisdom held that a war can't be won without substantial numbers of ground troops. Even as the Afghanistan campaign began, pundits flooded cable talk shows asserting that air power alone wasn't enough, that there would be substantial human sacrifice. Both Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq and the Kosovo conflicts involved the growing used of so-called "smart" laser-guided weaponry, deployed with varying degrees of reliability. But those conflicts also involved either the use of enormous numbers of soldiers on the ground and were controversial in terms of the bomb's precision and effectiveness.

The Afghanistan campaign is a very different kind of fight. Early reports suggest the civilian casualties may be lower than in any other large-scale military operation in modern history. Although dangerous and complex for the military on the scene, it's hard to imagine a conflict more remote to the majority of Americans, asked to go about their business as usual.

Orwell's "Drone Wars" come very much to mind here. So does Sir Arthur Clarke's machine warfare and AI military stories. A handful of human soldiers guide and direct the increasingly sophisticated technological arsenal that has devastated the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda networks with stunningly few U.S. military casualties and American civilian casualties beyond September 11 and the anthrax attacks. The Taliban and their terrorist friends seem to have been totally unprepared for this variety of war, such a stark contrast to the Soviet's ill-fated invasion of Afghanistan just a decade ago.

It seems only a matter of time before other countries developed their own surrogate weaponry, and the idea of the high-tech Drone War -- machines warring with one another -- moves to the next level.

Winston Churchill repeatedly asked his countrymen for brutal sacrifices in World War II. In the new kind of American war, political leaders ask citizens only to keep shopping and traveling.

Military historians like John Keegan have recently argued that the devastating toll of warfare in the 20th Century makes conventional conflicts increasingly less likely. Once a means of expanding territory and amassing wealth, the brutish wars of the 20th Century have rendered both objectives hard to attain. Even before Drone Wars, artillery and aerial warfare along with nuclear weapons suggested that wars can't really be won in the conventional sense any longer; even the victors will suffer unacceptable losses. But drone warfare radically alters the equation. Technologically advanced civilian populations -- just as Orwell foresaw -- can send their technological surrogates off to battle one another while humans stay home to wait for the outcome.

A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea. Why should citizens of any country hesitate to wage such a war if they have the machinery? War has recently seemed so terrible that civilized societies view it as a last resort. But American history is crammed with technological innovations that are neither discussed nor much thought out. Drone Wars might not appear so terrible. They might even become irresistible.

Comments

Such an obvious chance

[aztektum]

And I'm caught w/o a drone pun

He's back!

[sulli]

JonKatz is back ... and so is USian Pie, author of the greatest slashdot aong ever written. How the hell ya been, both of you?

p.s. 1500th post. Love me!

Re:Jew

[GodSmith]

How can you be such an motherf***** asshole?

Re:Wake up!

[suicidal]

Wow, it's racist too.

Re:Unfortunately, an end to wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Note it's spelled : Gandhi !

Re:OK, let's kill soldiers instead.

[zulux]

look at the pictures from WWI where artillery shelling stripped the land of trees down to the ground

I Feel Sadness

[gk underhill]

This exchange has saddened me (as is often the case when I read "political" analyses on /.).

With few exceptions the talk is ugly and uncaring. Drones, smart bombs, and propaganda about "casualties". Where did we learn to return hate for hate? Has this ever appeased hatred? No, only kindness has ever appeased hatred. It takes a courageous people (with courageous leadership) to return kindness in the face of hatred. Evil, greedy, and careless people wage war on the weak -- and then call it justice when it is really revenge (or worse self-righteousness).

I implore thinking and caring people to turn off the media for one week. It is extremely difficult, and many of you will not be able to do it - but it is a worthwhile exercise. The media is like a drug, it dulls your sense of compassion, it damages your psyche, it renders you incapable of reasoned thought. It makes you only capable of thinking in terms defined by it - drones, smart bombs, casualties.

During that week think deeply and compassionately about what is right and wrong. Think about cause and effect. You might be surprised by what you find.