8 ms·

It continues to baffle me why the fact they're drones matter in the slightest. They're not autonomous, they're flown by pilots who just happen to not be sittin

It continues to baffle me why the fact they're drones matter in the slightest. They're not autonomous, they're flown by pilots who just happen to not be sitting in the aircraft they're flying. Manned aircraft have killed huge groups of innocent civilians more than once, but apparently that's fine because the pilot was sitting in the aircraft.

gaius 13y ago
It is probably easier to get pilots to bomb civilians with a Playstation controller in what looks and feels like a video game, than an actual person present.
- forktheif 13y ago
  Millions of dead from WW2 strategic bombing, disagree with you.
  - gaius 13y ago
    Wholly different scenario, fighting a real war against a tech-equivalent enemy.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      Millions of Japanese civilians were tech-equivalent?
      - walshemj 13y ago
        yeah in 44/45 a b29 raid vs what ever the Japanese air force could cobble together is really equivalent.
    - threeseed 13y ago
      Tens of millions of civilians died during the two wars. Tech equivalency is a meaningless concept and it is completely stupid to apply it in particular to WW2 where the majority of civilians never asked or wanted a war to begin with.
- Blaque 13y ago
  Easier, and cheaper.
- blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  It's not a question of "ease". Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do. Either they follow orders or they are relieved of duty (and possibly face court martial). Some drones are operated by a division of the CIA and are out of military control, however. This is probably the most worrisome aspect of the program. However, as long as 99% of their targets are bad guys, Americans are going to continue supporting the program. It's zero risk for American pilots, and everyone likes to read about more dead terrorists with their morning coffee. More points to whoever's in charge. Governments like Yemen's will also support it because #1 it does their dirty work for them, and #2 they can blame an evil foreign power. Win-win.
  - lmm 13y ago
    > Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do. Either they follow orders or they are relieved of duty (and possibly face court martial). Even so, and despite all the training, some do refuse orders. They're also at least theoretically obliged to refuse illegal orders (i.e. war crimes), at least in my country.
    - codfrantic 13y ago
      http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18535330 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18535330
    - jackgavigan 13y ago
      Different countries have different definitions of what constitutes a war crime, depending on what international treaties they are parties to. Bombing wedding parties would come under what is often referred to as the Principle of Proportionality, as laid out in Article 51 of Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions and Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The United States is not a party to either treaty.
      - mistercow 13y ago
        Since when is the US not a party to the Geneva Conventions?
- tootie 13y ago
  That would imply we people have trouble killing on a battlefield which would seem to be patently false.
  - gaius 13y ago
    Soldiers do have trouble killing on the battlefield; have a read about "operant conditioning", a psychological technique used in modern training to overcome it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-So... General Marshall discovered after WW2 that only 15% of front-line soldiers even fired their weapon at the enemy. Even soldiers don't like to kill enemy troops in the middle of a battle!
    - magicalist 13y ago
      Well, first, his claim was 25%, and while my understanding is that it did end up leading to changes in training, you should at least acknowledge the large disputes on how he reached that number (e.g. based almost entirely on interviews available to him opportunistically, no documented methodology, etc).
ollysb 13y ago
I think the point is that the drone strikes are happening in places where the US isn't even at war. They're just bombing any place they feel like and apparently not having a pilot sitting there seems to make it ok, or something...
- flavor8 13y ago
  That's not new either. The US carried out airstrikes in Iraq throughout the 90s despite not being "at war".
zdean 13y ago
I would think that it matters because the drones make killing more efficient (both in terms of financial costs and life-risk to the pilot). In other words, if manned aircraft were killing huge groups of innocents on their own, it would stand to reason that drones open the floodgates to exacerbating that problem.
zacinbusiness 13y ago
That's a really good point, and I think that it come in the name "drone." These aircraft are NOT "drones." They do not perform menial labor and they are not "thoughtless." They do not perform automated attacks. These are units of force projection that the U.S. military uses as part of a psychological warfare campaign against citizens that it deems to be a threat (or, in other words, pretty much the entire planet).
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  I'm glad we can argue semantics while the world burns.
  - zacinbusiness 13y ago
    No I'm not arguing, my point is that the terminology is what makes people so comfortable with it. It's a lot easier to be angry about a pilot or a gunner accidentally killing someone than it is to get angry about a drone, because I think a lot of people believe that drones are autonomous craft that fly around without being piloted. It's in the name "drone." I think that's why the U.S. military popularizes the term drone over "unmanned aircraft" which even then isn't true - it's a remotely manned aircraft.
  - MereInterest 13y ago
    Suppose I ask you how you feel about murdering babies. Then I ask you how you feel about terminating fetuses. The way that I phrase the question is going to influence how you respond. There is a difference between "job creators", "business owners", and "fat cats", even though each of them refers to the same thing. Words are important, and language frames every issue. "Drones" as opposed to "unmanned aircraft" or "unmanned assault aircraft" is a huge difference in perception.
    - throwaway2048 13y ago
      Which is exactly my point of course, "drone strikes" has a certain, extremely negative connotation. Making a big fuss how they "arnt really drones you see, its just force projection" smells a lot like "enhanced interrogation" and other attempts to euphanise atrocities behind some neat, sterile sounding language.
Killah911 13y ago
It matters because it changes the fundamental nature of combat. If a pilot is in the plane you're risking an American life, not to mention a very expensive piece of equipment with numerous safety features etc. Now take away the risk to American life and lower the cost of the attack significantly, and viola, you've got a much itchier trigger finger now. If you've played MW3, which would you rather do, use the drone to take out enemies or risk your character dying? A drone totally changes the dynamics of the fight. If we were able to get tons of drones and "mechwarriors", I don't think wars would be quite as difficult to justify. As technologists we are often blinded by the coolness of things. As someone who has worked on AI for drones early on in my career (for the US govt), I shudder to think that I may have contributed in some ways to a terrible technology for humanity. At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...
- threeseed 13y ago
  Quite sure that the person who makes the decision whether to deploy air to ground weaponry isn't the one sitting in the cockpit.
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  In fairness, US owned and piloted planes are very, very, very unlikely to be shot down. There is probably more risk of a crash landing on an aircraft carrier than any of those countries shooting one down. There is essentially no American Life risk. Someone should have seen this coming a long time ago and called them multistage-guided-missiles or some other name. The term 'Drone' is basically used as link bait and confuses the argument... If we replace 'drone' with 'stealth bomber', is it now OK to bomb a wedding?
- golergka 13y ago
  > you've got a much itchier trigger finger now I doubt that. It would seem that a pilot sitting in a cockpit would be a lot more trigger-happy. Both pilots can make two types of mistake: don't recognize an enemy for what he is, or do the same thing with a civilian. If plane pilot mistakes an enemy for something else and said enemy succeeds in his efforts, the pilot will lose his place and may be his life. The drone pilot, on the other hand, will only lose the drone, which is also cheaper then a plane. But the cost of the other mistake is the same for the both of them. So, it seems that plane pilot has actually much more reason to shoot on targets he's not sure about.
kevando 13y ago
This is an interesting point... I think it matters - possibly for a different reason. If you imagine from the ground: a terrorist car bomb VS a drone strike, they're virtually indistinguishable. Both are explosions without warning by the 'enemy.' It's almost a joke that people condemn terrorist acts and respond in kind.
- ars_technician 13y ago
  Almost, but not quite. The difference would be that the US isn't killing civilians just for the sake of killing civilians to cause terror.
  - throwaway2048 13y ago
    That is exactly what they are doing. Terrorism is all about relatively minor, cheap, covert strikes against somebody perceived as the enemy. The USA wont kill everyone that opposes them with such a campaign, but the point is the same as "terrorism", to send a message of fear if you dare oppose us, or associate with people who oppose us, damn the "collateral damage". Make no bones about it, this is exactly the same kind of asymmetrical warfare that the USA itself condemns as terrorism.
  - kevando 13y ago
    I mean, yeah, that's what we're told. But the fact remains - drone strikes create terror. And on the other side, believing terrorist acts are simply to create terror is naive.
morsch 13y ago
Who says that it does matter? I think the reaction would have been very similar if a manned aircraft had bombed the wedding party. Do you have any recent instances of mass civilian casualties resulting from a "conventional" bomb strike that got ignored?
kvinnako 13y ago
Would you think we can apply this same argument when it happens to be an american wedding?? Hell no. drones or no drones, we will definitely have some policy changes and definitely some heads will roll.
- danielweber 13y ago
  If the United States had firebombed Denver instead of Dresden, yes, the US government would have made sure it didn't happen again.
wcummings 13y ago
When we declare war on Yemen you'll be right. This is more akin to the bombings in Cambodia.
- pekk 13y ago
  The use of manned bombers has occurred in "police actions" over and over
  - wcummings 13y ago
    Yeah, it worked so well subduing MOVE! [1] But in all seriousness, this isn't police action, its a foreign power. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing
brudgers 13y ago
Right. Dead is dead. And hitting a wedding was a consequence of an ongoing policy carried over from the previous administration. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/16/afghanistan-taliban-us-foreign-policy http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/16/afghanistan-tal... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/06/afghanistan-wedding-air-raid-kandahar http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/06/afghanistan-wed... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r...
mathattack 13y ago
I think this is the point. Because we're not putting our own lives at risk, we're actually getting more callous about it. This seems paradoxical, but I believe it's true.
lmkg 13y ago
In a word, commoditization. Regular aircraft are "expensive." They're literally expensive, in dollar terms, but even ignoring that they're logistically and operationally resource-intensive to operate. You only have so much airpower at your disposal, you're limited by flight deck space and pilot availability, you want to keep some in reserve, and aircraft are a bitch to maintain. Like, a week in service per day of flight time. Basically, you default to not using them. You don't bust them out unless you have good reason to. You don't just cruise around looking for people who look suspicious, because that would be a tremendous waste of resources that could be better-spent elsewhere. Like transporting supplies for the troops on the ground. You only bust out the planes when you have solid, definitive, verified evidence that there is something that should get blown up. Drones flip that around. You can't quite go cruisin' around just looking for stuff, but it's worth the time & effort to check out quite a few of your semi-sketchy tips. Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. But because the drones are remote, none of that risk is borne by any member of the military performing the operations; all the extra risk falls on the local civilian population. I don't think many people partaking in these operations are intentionally heartless, but this is a classic case of moral hazard, and on the margin more aggressive, risk-taking behavior is incentivized. Additionally, putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This means that planes tend to be used only against 'static' targets, which gives you an opportunity to scout & verify. Drones allow you to hit 'time-sensitive' targets, which means you are now making time-sensitive decisions. A wedding party got hit because some dude had literally minutes (or less) to decide if a collection of vehicles was a wedding or an armed convoy. I take it as axiomatic that the added time-pressure increases the number of wrong decisions.
- nickff 13y ago
  >Like, a week in service per day of flight time. When you read hours of maintenance per flight hour, you should remember that much of the maintenance is done on parts which are being rebuilt off the airframe. >Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. Please provide a citation for this claim, as it is not self evident. Many claim that the increased loiter time of UAVs allow for better timing and targeting, and there has been video evidence of this. You may be correct, but you still bear the burden of evidence when you make this claim. >putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This is untrue, as the USA has had B1 and B52 bombers continuously in flight over Afghanistan for weeks on end at many points in the war, to provide air support for ground forces. Most strike aircraft and bombers are also much faster than the UAVs.
MartinCron 13y ago
For what it's worth, people had similar debates about the morality of using manned aircraft when airplanes were first invented.

gaius 13y ago

It is probably easier to get pilots to bomb civilians with a Playstation controller in what looks and feels like a video game, than an actual person present.

forktheif 13y ago
Millions of dead from WW2 strategic bombing, disagree with you.
- gaius 13y ago
  Wholly different scenario, fighting a real war against a tech-equivalent enemy.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    Millions of Japanese civilians were tech-equivalent?
    - walshemj 13y ago
      yeah in 44/45 a b29 raid vs what ever the Japanese air force could cobble together is really equivalent.
  - threeseed 13y ago
    Tens of millions of civilians died during the two wars. Tech equivalency is a meaningless concept and it is completely stupid to apply it in particular to WW2 where the majority of civilians never asked or wanted a war to begin with.
Blaque 13y ago
Easier, and cheaper.
blisterpeanuts 13y ago
It's not a question of "ease". Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do. Either they follow orders or they are relieved of duty (and possibly face court martial). Some drones are operated by a division of the CIA and are out of military control, however. This is probably the most worrisome aspect of the program. However, as long as 99% of their targets are bad guys, Americans are going to continue supporting the program. It's zero risk for American pilots, and everyone likes to read about more dead terrorists with their morning coffee. More points to whoever's in charge. Governments like Yemen's will also support it because #1 it does their dirty work for them, and #2 they can blame an evil foreign power. Win-win.
- lmm 13y ago
  > Military pilots take orders; COs tell them how high to jump, and that's what they do. Either they follow orders or they are relieved of duty (and possibly face court martial). Even so, and despite all the training, some do refuse orders. They're also at least theoretically obliged to refuse illegal orders (i.e. war crimes), at least in my country.
  - codfrantic 13y ago
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18535330 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18535330
  - jackgavigan 13y ago
    Different countries have different definitions of what constitutes a war crime, depending on what international treaties they are parties to. Bombing wedding parties would come under what is often referred to as the Principle of Proportionality, as laid out in Article 51 of Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions and Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The United States is not a party to either treaty.
    - mistercow 13y ago
      Since when is the US not a party to the Geneva Conventions?
tootie 13y ago
That would imply we people have trouble killing on a battlefield which would seem to be patently false.
- gaius 13y ago
  Soldiers do have trouble killing on the battlefield; have a read about "operant conditioning", a psychological technique used in modern training to overcome it. http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-So... General Marshall discovered after WW2 that only 15% of front-line soldiers even fired their weapon at the enemy. Even soldiers don't like to kill enemy troops in the middle of a battle!
  - magicalist 13y ago
    Well, first, his claim was 25%, and while my understanding is that it did end up leading to changes in training, you should at least acknowledge the large disputes on how he reached that number (e.g. based almost entirely on interviews available to him opportunistically, no documented methodology, etc).

ollysb 13y ago

I think the point is that the drone strikes are happening in places where the US isn't even at war. They're just bombing any place they feel like and apparently not having a pilot sitting there seems to make it ok, or something...

flavor8 13y ago
That's not new either. The US carried out airstrikes in Iraq throughout the 90s despite not being "at war".

zdean 13y ago

I would think that it matters because the drones make killing more efficient (both in terms of financial costs and life-risk to the pilot). In other words, if manned aircraft were killing huge groups of innocents on their own, it would stand to reason that drones open the floodgates to exacerbating that problem.

zacinbusiness 13y ago

That's a really good point, and I think that it come in the name "drone." These aircraft are NOT "drones." They do not perform menial labor and they are not "thoughtless." They do not perform automated attacks. These are units of force projection that the U.S. military uses as part of a psychological warfare campaign against citizens that it deems to be a threat (or, in other words, pretty much the entire planet).

throwaway2048 13y ago
I'm glad we can argue semantics while the world burns.
- zacinbusiness 13y ago
  No I'm not arguing, my point is that the terminology is what makes people so comfortable with it. It's a lot easier to be angry about a pilot or a gunner accidentally killing someone than it is to get angry about a drone, because I think a lot of people believe that drones are autonomous craft that fly around without being piloted. It's in the name "drone." I think that's why the U.S. military popularizes the term drone over "unmanned aircraft" which even then isn't true - it's a remotely manned aircraft.
- MereInterest 13y ago
  Suppose I ask you how you feel about murdering babies. Then I ask you how you feel about terminating fetuses. The way that I phrase the question is going to influence how you respond. There is a difference between "job creators", "business owners", and "fat cats", even though each of them refers to the same thing. Words are important, and language frames every issue. "Drones" as opposed to "unmanned aircraft" or "unmanned assault aircraft" is a huge difference in perception.
  - throwaway2048 13y ago
    Which is exactly my point of course, "drone strikes" has a certain, extremely negative connotation. Making a big fuss how they "arnt really drones you see, its just force projection" smells a lot like "enhanced interrogation" and other attempts to euphanise atrocities behind some neat, sterile sounding language.

Killah911 13y ago

It matters because it changes the fundamental nature of combat. If a pilot is in the plane you're risking an American life, not to mention a very expensive piece of equipment with numerous safety features etc. Now take away the risk to American life and lower the cost of the attack significantly, and viola, you've got a much itchier trigger finger now. If you've played MW3, which would you rather do, use the drone to take out enemies or risk your character dying? A drone totally changes the dynamics of the fight. If we were able to get tons of drones and "mechwarriors", I don't think wars would be quite as difficult to justify. As technologists we are often blinded by the coolness of things. As someone who has worked on AI for drones early on in my career (for the US govt), I shudder to think that I may have contributed in some ways to a terrible technology for humanity. At the time, I had friends deployed and in my head, I thought that it's better we have UAVs than my friends coming home in bodybags...

threeseed 13y ago
Quite sure that the person who makes the decision whether to deploy air to ground weaponry isn't the one sitting in the cockpit.
wtvanhest 13y ago
In fairness, US owned and piloted planes are very, very, very unlikely to be shot down. There is probably more risk of a crash landing on an aircraft carrier than any of those countries shooting one down. There is essentially no American Life risk. Someone should have seen this coming a long time ago and called them multistage-guided-missiles or some other name. The term 'Drone' is basically used as link bait and confuses the argument... If we replace 'drone' with 'stealth bomber', is it now OK to bomb a wedding?
golergka 13y ago
> you've got a much itchier trigger finger now I doubt that. It would seem that a pilot sitting in a cockpit would be a lot more trigger-happy. Both pilots can make two types of mistake: don't recognize an enemy for what he is, or do the same thing with a civilian. If plane pilot mistakes an enemy for something else and said enemy succeeds in his efforts, the pilot will lose his place and may be his life. The drone pilot, on the other hand, will only lose the drone, which is also cheaper then a plane. But the cost of the other mistake is the same for the both of them. So, it seems that plane pilot has actually much more reason to shoot on targets he's not sure about.

kevando 13y ago

This is an interesting point... I think it matters - possibly for a different reason. If you imagine from the ground: a terrorist car bomb VS a drone strike, they're virtually indistinguishable. Both are explosions without warning by the 'enemy.' It's almost a joke that people condemn terrorist acts and respond in kind.

ars_technician 13y ago
Almost, but not quite. The difference would be that the US isn't killing civilians just for the sake of killing civilians to cause terror.
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  That is exactly what they are doing. Terrorism is all about relatively minor, cheap, covert strikes against somebody perceived as the enemy. The USA wont kill everyone that opposes them with such a campaign, but the point is the same as "terrorism", to send a message of fear if you dare oppose us, or associate with people who oppose us, damn the "collateral damage". Make no bones about it, this is exactly the same kind of asymmetrical warfare that the USA itself condemns as terrorism.
- kevando 13y ago
  I mean, yeah, that's what we're told. But the fact remains - drone strikes create terror. And on the other side, believing terrorist acts are simply to create terror is naive.

morsch 13y ago

Who says that it does matter? I think the reaction would have been very similar if a manned aircraft had bombed the wedding party. Do you have any recent instances of mass civilian casualties resulting from a "conventional" bomb strike that got ignored?

kvinnako 13y ago

Would you think we can apply this same argument when it happens to be an american wedding?? Hell no. drones or no drones, we will definitely have some policy changes and definitely some heads will roll.

danielweber 13y ago
If the United States had firebombed Denver instead of Dresden, yes, the US government would have made sure it didn't happen again.

wcummings 13y ago

When we declare war on Yemen you'll be right. This is more akin to the bombings in Cambodia.

pekk 13y ago
The use of manned bombers has occurred in "police actions" over and over
- wcummings 13y ago
  Yeah, it worked so well subduing MOVE! [1] But in all seriousness, this isn't police action, its a foreign power. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE#1985_bombing

brudgers 13y ago

Right. Dead is dead. And hitting a wedding was a consequence of an ongoing policy carried over from the previous administration. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/16/afghanistan-taliban-us-foreign-policy http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/16/afghanistan-tal... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/06/afghanistan-wedding-air-raid-kandahar http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/06/afghanistan-wed... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r...

mathattack 13y ago

I think this is the point. Because we're not putting our own lives at risk, we're actually getting more callous about it. This seems paradoxical, but I believe it's true.

lmkg 13y ago

In a word, commoditization. Regular aircraft are "expensive." They're literally expensive, in dollar terms, but even ignoring that they're logistically and operationally resource-intensive to operate. You only have so much airpower at your disposal, you're limited by flight deck space and pilot availability, you want to keep some in reserve, and aircraft are a bitch to maintain. Like, a week in service per day of flight time. Basically, you default to not using them. You don't bust them out unless you have good reason to. You don't just cruise around looking for people who look suspicious, because that would be a tremendous waste of resources that could be better-spent elsewhere. Like transporting supplies for the troops on the ground. You only bust out the planes when you have solid, definitive, verified evidence that there is something that should get blown up. Drones flip that around. You can't quite go cruisin' around just looking for stuff, but it's worth the time & effort to check out quite a few of your semi-sketchy tips. Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. But because the drones are remote, none of that risk is borne by any member of the military performing the operations; all the extra risk falls on the local civilian population. I don't think many people partaking in these operations are intentionally heartless, but this is a classic case of moral hazard, and on the margin more aggressive, risk-taking behavior is incentivized. Additionally, putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This means that planes tend to be used only against 'static' targets, which gives you an opportunity to scout & verify. Drones allow you to hit 'time-sensitive' targets, which means you are now making time-sensitive decisions. A wedding party got hit because some dude had literally minutes (or less) to decide if a collection of vehicles was a wedding or an armed convoy. I take it as axiomatic that the added time-pressure increases the number of wrong decisions.

nickff 13y ago
>Like, a week in service per day of flight time. When you read hours of maintenance per flight hour, you should remember that much of the maintenance is done on parts which are being rebuilt off the airframe. >Now you're doing a lot more operations, on less-reliable intel, and the risk of cock-ups rises significantly. Please provide a citation for this claim, as it is not self evident. Many claim that the increased loiter time of UAVs allow for better timing and targeting, and there has been video evidence of this. You may be correct, but you still bear the burden of evidence when you make this claim. >putting a drone in the sky is faster than putting a regular plane in the sky. This is untrue, as the USA has had B1 and B52 bombers continuously in flight over Afghanistan for weeks on end at many points in the war, to provide air support for ground forces. Most strike aircraft and bombers are also much faster than the UAVs.

MartinCron 13y ago

For what it's worth, people had similar debates about the morality of using manned aircraft when airplanes were first invented.