people have often pointed to technology as a means to harm reduction in
particular if we look at the expansion of unmanned aerial vehicles colloquially
known as drones particularly in the war on terror so we see a huge increase in
the use of drones in foreign conflict and typically we see that proponents of
this type of technology make a variety of different claims as to the benefits
of this technology so things like reduces civilian casualties and
collateral damage it's cheaper in a monetary sense than conventional warfare
tactics but then also make claims like well it's safer or preferable for US
military personnel and while we don't have a robust amount of data on this
topic what we do have suggests that on all of these margins drones are at best
about equivalent to conventional technologies but in some cases may
actually be worse so UAVs have a higher failure rate than conventional aircraft
for example as opposed to being surgically precise which is often the
terminology that's used by leaders this technology is only as good as the
intelligence that drives it and that intelligence is often very poor and so
the data surrounding things like civilian casualty rates are not robust
they're not reliable at all the US government for instance has made claims
that only a handful of civilian casualties for instance have occurred as
the result of drone strikes however you run into problems when you find out
things like they define a militant as any military aged male within a strike
zone so that is roughly about like 15 to 65 so of course you're going to have
casualty rates or civilian casualty rates that look relatively low if that's
the case what's most interesting I think is if people are really focused on the
supposed benefits to US military personnel as the following data
unmanned aerial vehicles actually take more personnel on the ground to operate
than a conventional military aircraft that is because they have to are they at
this point require a number of individuals within the range that
they're operating and so they also have to be guarded when they're not flying
and so this place is a variety of personnel within harm's way as opposed
to conventional military aircraft which you can launch from an aircraft carrier
there's also some really interesting studies that are being conducted in
psychology looking at the psychological effects of the use of UAVs on UAV pilots
and actually finding comparable or even higher rates of things like
post-traumatic stress disorder and also a variety of other psychological
problems because of the way that drone warfare is conducted as opposed to
conventional warfare if you are a UAV pilot you are watching your target for a
prolonged period of time and so you observe that target you can
see when he's going to the grocery store you observe him with his family and then
the strike is conducted but then when the strike is conducted the drone
doesn't leave you're talking about technology that can take a clear
photograph of you know a coffee cup or a you know something really small you know
from 30,000 feet you know can take a clear picture like three feet off the
ground it's remarkable technology in that way
so they're watching these individuals for prolonged period of time but then
after the strike occurs they're interested in having additional
information and so they watch and so they see the people who are coming to
the site where these strikes have occurred they're seeing people's family
members in the throes of grief as they're finding out that their family
member has just been killed as the result of a military strike and in other
capacities to these drones are often equipped with thermal cameras and so
they can actually physically see a person's body heat like dissipating from
their body over a period of time and so they're pointing to these among other
issues is the genesis of a variety of these psychological issues which you
don't have from a conventional airstrike in which the
pilot is dropping dropping their payload and then leaving
you