Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
To what extent do UAVs and UCAVs prove to be more ethical and effective…
To what extent do UAVs and UCAVs prove to be more ethical and effective options than manned aircraft in reconnaissance and combat situations? Based on this, how should UAV operations change, if at all?
Research Context
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being used for military operations by multiple countries on foreign soil. Said operations consist of reconnaissance and search-and-destroy missions.
Flanagan 36: “Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their armed counterparts, uninhabited combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), are poised to reshape the battlespace by either reducing or eliminating the need for manned aircraft in dangerous situations.”
Flanagan 36: “While generally supportive of recent military operations, the public is increasingly adverse to the risk of casualties and prefers to substitute technology for lives.”
Keene xi: “However, there is ambiguity as to whether this argument of recent attacks by the United States…. Other factors such as sovereignty, proportionality, and legitimacy of the individual targets, and the methods used for the selection of targets must be considered.”
P1 UAVs are effective at maintaining national security through operations abroad in both combat and reconnaissance scenarios. They provide an economic advantage by minimizing personnel at risk. This effectiveness would outweigh the inflated civilian casualty rates per raid, if they exist. Governments should invest more resources in further development of UAVs in order to increase the strategic advantage they provide in battle and should even consider phasing out manned aircraft entirely. UAV usage should continue in order to satisfy the immediate need for preserving national security.
:
Lerner
11: Terrorist organizations such as “al-Qaeda… quite deliberately do not adhere to the laws of armed conflict as understood through the Geneva Convention and customary international law”.
14: “We believe the next few decades will be dominated by advancements in software and hardware… just as last decade was dominated by counterinsurgency. We also believe that historians will look back and see advancements in cyber warfare and robotics as the first two revolutions in military affairs in the 21st century.”
Lerner 13: “UAV strikes have eliminated al-Qaeda leadership and operatives… Notable examples include al-Qaeda’s then-deputy leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, then-deputy leader of the Pakistan Taliban Wali ur-Rehman, al-Qaeda’s then-chief military commander, Ilyas Kashmiri, and many others…” Of the 3300 jihadists killed by UAV strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, "50 of them were senior al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders who cannot easily be replaced.”
Schaub et al
Schaub et al 28: “News from drones can help minimize civilian casualties and to take care of our own soldiers.”
Schaub et al 7: “Removing flight crew could also enable capabilities precluded by human frailty. Extreme maneuverability resulting in high g-forces is an oft-cited example as a potential advantage of UAVs.”
Feiler
Feiler 7: "Operation Iraqui Freedom (OIF) illustrated the potential drones have for wider use… A single, high-altitude, long-range Global Hawk flew about 4 percent of the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions during OIF, yet located 55% of targets."
Flanagan
Flanagan 39: “[UAVs] can be manufactured for an estimated one-third less than manned aircraft, and costs could be cut by 75 percent.”
Flanagan 37: “UAVs have proven their ability to provide near-real time reconnaissance and surveillance to commanders. They are tools for battle management, providing intelligence, and ultimately offering warfighters greater situational or battlespace awareness.”
Flanagan 37: “Development of a lethal platform capable of precision strikes is the logical progression for future UAVs. They will not be limited to support functions such as reconnaissance.”
Flanagan 37: “Without occupants, there is proportionally more room for munitions load in UCAVs.”
Flanagan 37: “This would create enough extra space on the flight deck to increase mission-ready strike aircraft count by 33 percent.”
Flanagan 38: Carrier-based UCAVs equipped with vertical take-off or landing (VTOL) systems could bring the number of mission-ready aircraft [from 36] to 63, nearly doubling the strike aircraft availability of the baseline Nimitz-class carrier air wing configuration.”
Flanagan 38: Due to the rotation of pilots, “UCAVs could afford a nearly permanent presence over an enemy, providing a continuous stream of intelligence while simultaneously delivering a lethal payload in seconds.”
P2 UAVs are not yet, but could be, fully effective at maintaining national security through operations abroad in reconnaissance scenarios in the future. Combat effectiveness would not outweigh these implications, if such effectiveness is proven. Governments should invest more resources in further development of reconnaissance UAVs in order to increase the strategic advantage they provide. While UAVs have their place in some situations, they should assume supporting roles to manned aircraft. Use of UAVs should be further evaluated for civilian casualties and compliance with international law, but there is no glaring need to cancel drone operations right now.
-
Ashkenazi
Ashkenazi 259: “Crucially, given the right kind of programming, UAV swarms can be heterogeneous, with some serving in the ELINT (Electronic Intelligence), others in recon, and others in attack”
Kristensen
Kristensen 15: “[UAVs] have not been designed with longevity in mind.... UAVs are far more prone to accidents, equipment failure, communications glitches, and hostile fire than most manned aircraft…”
Kristensen 15: “It must be accepted that when conditions are not ideal, UAVs will be lost at a rate disproportionate to that of manned aircraft performing the same sorts of missions.”
Kristensen 15: “Removing the man from the cockpit also removes the ability to instantaneously assess and adjust to environmental conditions and malfunctions.”
Kristensen 7: in 2009 “Northrop’s Global Hawk and General Atomics’ Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles have had a combined 9.31 accidents for every 100,000 hours of flying.” This is triple that of the rest of the US aerial fleet at 3.03, according to Bloomberg News.
P3The ethical implications of using UAVs to eliminate targets abroad are too great to ignore, regardless of their efficacy in war. UCAVs and UAVs are being used in such a way that they violate human rights abroad and commit to action abroad in such a way that the people at home have no say. They target civilians and militants almost indiscriminately. No matter the level of importance of a military target, the level of civilian casualties make drones an unethical form of militancy. UAV usage should cease until rules are made and governments pledge to follow said rules.
Keene
Keene xi: “The ethical landscape [of drone strikes] is also ambiguous. One justification is the reduced amount of collateral damage possible with drones relative to other forms of strike… But this is of little benefit if the definition of ‘targets’ is itself flawed and encompasses noncombatants and unconnected civilians.”
Keene 11: on a drone strike in 2012 that killed a senior al-Qaeda official (follow-up strike like Mockingjay) “The follow-up strike has been a potential war crime both because it constituted an attack on civilian rescuers, and also because al-Libi may not have been directly participating in hostilities at the time of the strike.”
Keene 12: “Jus ad bellum theory depends on whether or not the ‘host’ state has consented to the drone strike. If there is consent, then there is no infringement on sovereignty.”
Keene 12: Jurisdiction in Pakistan is much less clear. Although the Pakistani government has publicly denied this, the U.S. military is allegedly conducting operations with their consent. “According to the United States, this is because the Pakistani government believes that the decision to give consent would be unpopular with the Pakistani people. In other words, they are covertly supportive of U.S. action, but for political reasons feel that they must be seen to be opposing it.”
Keene 13: Article 51 of the UN Charter: each state has an “inherent right of individual and collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs.”
Kreps & Wallace 841: Campaigns advocating for stricter rules around drone strikes or suspension thereof, especially those by NGOs “can have some traction, especially when they focus on the questions of civilian casualties and sovereignty as by-products of these strikes.”
Kreps & Wallace
Kreps & Wallace 840: “Dissenting voices from the UN and NGOs still have significant sway on the public’s willingness to support drone strikes… Only criticisms that highlight inconsistency with international legal principles significantly altered public attitudes toward drone warfare.”
Statista
Statista Research Department: From 2009 to 2012, over 250 known civilian casualties in Pakistan ALONE, and over 800 known injured
Statista Research Department: From 2012 to 2014, a random sample of US citizens illustrated an increase in public approval of drone strikes on extremists by 13%.
-