First Robotic Drone Squadron Deployed

coondoggie writes with a link to a Network World blog post on the world's first unmanned attack squadron. The US is deploying a full squadron of combat drones to Iraq this week. These armed and remotely controlled robots can be manipulated from on the ground in the field, or via satellite from thousands of miles away. "The MQ-9 Reaper is the Air Force's first hunter-killer unmanned aircraft. It is the big brother to the highly successful and sometimes controversial Predator aircraft, which General Atomics said this week had flown over 300,000 flight hours, with over 80% of that time spent in combat. The company said Predator series aircraft have flown an average of 8,200 hours per month over the past six months while maintaining the highest operational readiness rates in the U.S. military aircraft inventory. The MQ-9 Reaper is twice as fast as the Predator - it has a 900-horsepower turbo-prop engine, compared to the 119-horsepower Predator engine - and can carry far more ordnance - 14 Hellfire missiles as opposed to two."

Comments

Is that really a good thing??

[oni]

War might never be 'humane' but it certainly has the capacity to be a lot more humane then it is. The easiest way to make war safer, besides spewing some idealistic crap about 'lets never fight wars!'

Just playing devil's advocate, is it really a good thing for wars to be more humane? Look at the difference between Iraq and (Germany || Japan). Both Germany and Japan were absolutely fucking destroyed during WWII. As a result, the civilians quit. They threw up their hands and said, "screw this, we quit."

A few years later, Germany and Japan are two of the richest, most prosperous nations on Earth.

Contrast with Iraq. We try *really* hard not to hurt anyone, to avoid casualties, we apologize if we destroy a building. Result: civilians kind of shrug and do their best to live their lives and avoid the fighting. A group of foreign insurgents can move into a town and the civilians will say, "eh, they're not here to kill me so I don't care - it's none of my business."

At this rate, Iraq will continue to be a war zone indefinitely.

So all I'm saying, again as the devil's advocate - what if the people of Iraq had to suffer as much as the people of Germany or Japan suffered? Maybe they would say, "screw this - you foreign insurgents get the fuck out - we want the Americans to rebuild."

Maybe.

Re:That can happen in a smaller way

[GreyPoopon]

Because every offensive war is an unjust war, and the only morally justified war is the one fought on your own soil, in pure self defense.

Sorry, I can't agree with that. Is a war fought on another country's soil because they asked for help in fighting some horrible aggressor not to be considered morally justified? And here's another example (sorry for its length). Let's say there are two tribes living in roughly the same geographic area. Both tribes live along a river not too far from an ocean. The river provides all the resources they need for life -- fresh water, fish for food, fertile soil for farming. The two tribes are aware of each other and have previously had a good relationship. However, things go awry when the tribe upstream has a change in leadership who does not care about the welfare of the tribe downstream. He decides that his tribe will build a dam on the river so that they can have a larger area of available fresh water, and so that his tribe has an easier time finding fish. Without consulting the downstream tribe, he implements his plan. Now the folks in the downstream tribe notice a serious dropoff in water flowing down the river. They head upstream to investigate and find that the source of the problem is the dam built by the upstream tribe. Repeated delegations are sent to the leader of the upstream tribe to explain their position and ask if they can come up with a mutually beneficial solution. Each time, the response is "Talk to the hand," and the leader of the upstream tribe does not yield. During the course of "political discussion", the leader of the upstream tribe builds up a very strong following among his people because they are very happy with their now easier way of life. Few of them are interested any longer in helping the downstream tribe. Now the downstream tribe has two choices: 1. Leave the area where they are living which is, other than the recent loss of the river that they depend on, a more or less ideal spot to live. Or 2. Try to destroy the dam built by the upstream tribe, which will require killing members of the upstream tribe and will clearly be considered an act of war. Would you consider option 2 to be morally unjust?

My point is this. If you take away the resources that my people need to survive and you turn a deaf ear on the fact that you have endangered the existence of my people, I will do what is necessary to regain the resources that my people need. I will obviously choose the path that does the least damage, but I will feel morally obligated to protect my people. I will mourn the loss of members of the opposing forces, but given the same options, I would make the same decision each and every time.