Hello guys!
Today I want to talk to you about a subject that I find truly fascinating: the war of drones. Since the beginning of their use in 2001, drones have already taken millions of lives, and have totally changed the way men make war.
What are drones?
When we look at the evolution of warfare, we can see drones as a complete revolution: they are unmanned weapons that actualizes violence at a distance and are also called unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Originally designed for aerial surveillance and intelligence gathering, UAVs have been modified for killing the “enemy", and are directed by crews in a room with a lot of screens everywhere and with all the accessories of a true gamer: padded chairs, joysticks, computer screens, in rooms that are situated thousands of miles away from the real battlefields and in a completely safe environment. But at the end, people who leave this "job" of drone operators are still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders.
Drones are very powerful weapons because they can take off, land and fly by themselves. The operators can program a destination or a desired patrol area and then concentrate on the details of the mission while the aircraft takes care of itself. Packed with sensors and sophisticated video technology, drones can see through clouds or in the dark. They can remain at the same place for hours or even days over a target... Of course, the most significant fact about drones is precisely that they do not have pilots on board, so they are totally risk-free for the state or the person who own it. This system raises questions, for example on the ethical side. For example, there are a lot of debates now because some people criticize the fact that is once again the US, in their attempts to establish democracy all around the world, that decides who are the terrorists and that defined the standards of which people they attack and so on.
Drones in today's wars
The use of drones in today's wars is kept mostly secret, except at the times that people who have seen these objects in action or who have controlled them for a while and who find the necessity of sharing their experience to the public. In 2016 Obama has admitted quite recently that the US uses drones to target fighters of Al-Qaïda. The issues that are often related by the people who work with drones is that the targeting is not always very precise and that maybe people who direct them from their rooms are not always aware of the reality of what they are doing. They are also more based on the behavior of the person than of the personality: sometimes, it is sufficient that someone acts like a fighter so the CIA sends a drone to kill or spy that person. For the moment, they are built for the fight against "terrorism" or "bad people", as the United States likes to call them.
In fact, the US has a list of "people to be killed" that is decided during some meetings of a special committee, and on basis of simple presumptions, for example just because they are a phone number in the wrong mobile phone. The US developed a real program of cyber espionage for these people, controlling the SIM-card and so on.
But as you can easily imagine, a lot of innocent citizens are also hit by drones attacks. People in Israel, Palestine, Syria and other states in which the US are involved constantly live in fear of the sound of a drone. There are a great number of dead citizens in these attacks and this is totally recognized by the US: "the drones are not as accurate that they should be". There are a lot of mistakes, because of the lack of identification of the next victims.
If you want to learn about this new kind of warfare, Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist and former war correspondent, has made a great book about it, called The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program, that explains some parts of the secret assassination program of the US! You have also some former drone operators testimonies, like Brandon Bryant, who has made some interviews for the British TV-channel BBC.