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Current Anthropology, 2019
US drone warfare in Waziristan has been legitimated through a discourse of military humanism that claims very low rates of civilian casualties and a concern to spare the lives of the innocent. In practice, in concert with the Pakistani government’s counterinsurgency campaign and the tactics of the Taliban, drone strikes in Waziristan have killed substantial numbers of civilians and, in a manner reminiscent of the effects of death squads in Central and Latin America, have torn apart Waziri civil society while creating a culture of terror. “Drone essentialism” (a false conviction that drones are inevitably used in a way that minimizes suffering) has concealed a process of “ethical slippage” through which drone operators relaxed their operational practices. This process of slippage enabled drones to become terror weapons even as they functioned at the level of discourse as alibis—signifiers of discriminate force. One task of anthropological analysis is to prize open the contradictions inherent in this situation.
Drone Warfare - Oxford Bibliographies
Oxford University Press Bibliography on Drone Warfare, 2018
Extensive Bibliography on Drone Warfare. Textbooks and General Overviews Conceptual Questions Drone History and Historical Research Debates and Controversies Ethics US Politics International Implications International Politics Geopolitics Nonstate Drone Use Critical Literature Geography Public Opinion
Essay on Drone wars and its effect on Human Rights Violations
Drones, Drone Strikes, and US Policy: The Politics of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
The US Army War College Quarterly, Parameters, 2014
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in military operations is currently among the most hotly debated topics in the national and international media. While at first few showed interest in this military technology, the increasing number of missile strikes carried out via UAVs in remote areas of Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia by the United States Armed Forces and the CIA has raised public awareness. [...] The four books reviewed in this essay are all motivated by the belief that “the precipitous increase in drone use we have witnessed over the past few years represents just the beginning of the proliferation and widespread use of UAVs, across many contexts.” Disagreement may reign over whether or not this development is positive; however, the authors agree on one point: drones are here to stay.
From a View to a Kill: Drones and Late Modern War
Theory, Culture & Society, 2011
The proponents of late modern war like to argue that it has become surgical, sensitive and scrupulous, and remotely operated Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or ‘drones’ have become diagnostic instruments in contemporary debates over the conjunction of virtual and ‘virtuous’ war. Advocates for the use of Predators and Reapers in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns have emphasized their crucial role in providing intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, in strengthening the legal armature of targeting, and in conducting precision-strikes. Critics claim that their use reduces late modern war to a video game in which killing becomes casual. Most discussion has focused on the covert campaign waged by CIA-operated drones in Pakistan, but it is also vitally important to interrogate the role of United States Air Force-operated drones in Afghanistan. In doing so, it becomes possible to see that the problem there may not be remoteness and detachment but, rather, the sense of proxim...
The Role of Drones in Contemporary Warfare
This master degree dissertation thesis examines the role of drones in the contemporary warfare, using the quantitative and interpretative method to analyse the surrounding issues. This thesis provides basic background to the origins of drones and their evolution. Main focus of this thesis is to examine whether the US conduct of those strategies is justifiable and appropriate for the war on terror. Arguing that drones have undergone a severe transformation of capabilities – from surveillance to target killing – and thus there should be change in the military conduct and the use of appropriate strategies. Applying the Just war theory, Beck’s theory of World Risk Society and threat of terrorism.
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare
Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, 2017
This volume's contributors offer a new critical language through which to explore and assess the historical, juridical, geopolitical, and cultural dimensions of drone technology and warfare. They show how drones generate particular ways of visualizing the spaces and targets of war while acting as tools to exercise state power. Essays include discussions of the legal justifications of extrajudicial killings and how US drone strikes in the Horn of Africa impact life on the ground, as well as a personal narrative of a former drone operator. The contributors also explore drone warfare in relation to sovereignty, governance, and social difference; provide accounts of the relationships between drone technologies and modes of perception and mediation; and theorize drones’ relation to biopolitics, robotics, automation, and art. Interdisciplinary and timely, Life in the Age of Drone Warfare extends the critical study of drones while expanding the public discussion of one of our era's most ubiquitous instruments of war.
Drone Warfare: War in the Age of Digital Reproduction (2012, Master's Thesis)
Lund University, 2012
In this paper I explore the scopic regime of drone warfare as the production of the image as a site of meaning. The first part of the paper I describe what a drone is, through its technical specifications and through detailed reports on actual drone attacks in the recent ‘War on Terror.’ I highlight some of the contemporary debates surrounding its use and how drone technology has transformed the mechanization of war. In the second part of the paper I relate drone technology to a historical framework, specifically referring to the work of Walter Benjamin and his seminal essay, ”The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” This moves through a discussion of the relationship between vision and war during the First World War and political implications of representations of mechanized warfare during the aesthetic movement of the Futurists. The final section of the paper approaches specific aspects of drone technology that depart from mechanized warfare into a digital realm. These aspects connect to the development of artificial visual intelligence programs and the primacy of visual pattern recognition being increasingly utilized in drone surveillance. I highlight concepts in the work of Paul Virilio in his book, “The Vision Machine” such as telepresence and the industrialization of vision, in examining the contemporary implications of drone technology.