Drones

"Some U.S. officials and analysts contend that the widespread proliferation of armed drones is inevitable, and that any efforts to influence their use will fail. This assertion disregards the diplomatic, domestic, political, and, for some, technological restraints that have limited the spread of other military capabilities, and the logistical, normative, and legal principles that affect whether and how they are used."

"The e-commerce titan recently received a patent for product-distribution warehouses that float in the sky, and are carried and held aloft by blimps. It's part of Amazon's grand plan to move from ground-based deliveries into the airspace above our heads, where drones would zip quietly overhead, carrying our paper towels, toasters and printer cartridges to us in record time, and generating substantial cost savings for the $887 billion company. The heavenly warehouses, or "aerial fulfillment centers" as Amazon describes them, would be serviced by a fleet of drones, which the company likes to call "unmanned aerial vehicles." "An AFC may be positioned at an altitude above a metropolitan area and be designed to maintain an inventory of items that may be purchased by a user and delivered to the user by a UAV that is deployed from the AFC," the patent document says."

"While we do not believe that UAV strikes cause disproportionate civilian casualties or turn killing into a "video-game," we are concerned that the availability of lethal UAV technologies has enabled US policies that likely would not have been adopted in the absence of UAVs. In particular, UAVs have enabled the United States to engage in the cross-border use of lethal force against targeted individuals in an unprecedented and expanding way, raising significant strategic, legal and ethical questions."

"To the best of our knowledge the US executive branch has yet to engage in a serious cost-benefit analysis of targeted UAV strikes as a routine counterterrorism tool."

"It is not clear where the White House will come out," Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, tells me. "The nonproliferation folks, centered at [the State Department], do not support liberalized armed drone exports," he wrote over email. "On the other side are [Defense department] folks, and some State regional bureaus, who want to export this capacity to allies, like Turkey, and non-allies like Singapore, as part of 'building partnership capacity.'"

"The proliferation of military robotics ... is likely inevitable," says Michael Horowitz, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies military technology. "Much better for close allies and partners to get systems from the US and learn to use them responsibly than to build them themselves or buy them from other countries."

"I think it is entirely sensible. Whether it is foreign citizens who are involved with Al Qaeda or American citizens, we are in a war. They have attacked us. We have a congressional authorization to use military force in response. And that’s what’s at stake here."

"I think it’s a good program and I don’t disagree with the basic policy that the Obama administration is pursuing now in that regards."

"Curbing the proliferation of Weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles is a challenging task. Many potential proliferators are convinced they need to develop WMD and their associated delivery systems to protect their national security. It is estimated that some nations will begin exploiting the full range of UAVs, including delivering WMD in the next decade."

"Commercial drones can travel at up to 100 mph and deliver goods under 5 lbs (2.3 kg) - and according to ARK Investing Group, potentially each trip could occur at a low cost of $1 per shipment."

"“Drone strikes outside a declared war by a state on the territory of another state without the consent of the latter or of the UN Security Council constitute a violation of international law and of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of that country.”"

"In some respects it’s a perfect assassination weapon. . . . Now we have a problem. There are all these nations that want to buy these armed drones. I’m strongly opposed to that."

"I think this idea of being able to execute, in effect, an American citizen, no matter how awful, having some third party being – having a – having a say in it or perhaps some – informing the Congress or the intelligence committees or something like that, I just – I think some check on the ability of the president to do this has merit, as we look to the longer term future."

"It just makes me uncomfortable that the president, whoever it is, is the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner, all rolled into one. So I’m not suggesting something that would slow down response. But where there is time to submit it to a third party, a court, in confidence, and get a judgment that, yes, there’s sufficient evidence, that feels to me like that’s, its not full compliance with the Fifth Amendment … but some independent check on our executive is healthy for the system."

"To the United States, a drone strike seems to have very little risk and very little pain. At the receiving end, it feels like war. Americans have got to understand that. If we were to use our technological capabilities carelessly—I don’t think we do, but there’s always the danger that you will—then we should not be upset when someone responds with their equivalent, which is a suicide bomb in Central Park, because that’s what they can respond with."

"Although US armed drones are made by private firms such as Northrop Grumman and General Atomics, sales would be made through government-to-government negotations. Mr Williams said strict US State Department rules on who could buy armed drones meant the new market would not be a free-for-all. New customers will have to satisfy the US they will comply with international humanitarian and human rights laws. Countries applying to buy drones would be subjected to a "strong presumption of denial", meaning that they would have to make a strong case for needing the weapons. Successful countries will need to prove that their applications constitute the "rare occasions" set out in a 1987 treaty signed by the G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States - known as the Missile Technology Control Regime. This includes assurances they will only use the weapons for the stated purposes, will not modify them without America's consent, and will not transfer the weapons (or replicas of them) elsewhere."

"Since when is the intelligence agency supposed to be an air force of drones that goes around killing people? I believe that it has to be the Department of Defense."

"What I think is absolutely true is it’s not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we’re doing the right thing. … There has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil. We respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counterterrorism operations outside of the United States. The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside the United States."

"That's something that you have to struggle with, if you don't, then it's very easy to slip into a situation in which you end up bending rules thinking that the ends always justify the means. That's not been our tradition. That's not who we are as a country."

"No second thoughts."

"When children from other countries are telling us that we've made them fear the sky, it might be time to ask some hard questions."

"Drone strikes are one of those things that it's really convenient not to think about that much. Like the daily life of a circus elephant or that Beck is a Scientologist."

"The president, a politician, Republican or Democrat, should never get to decide someone’s death by flipping through some flash cards and saying, ‘You want to kill him? Yeah, let’s go ahead and kill him’."

"Blood is "expensive, lifesaving but doesn't last very long," Zipline co-founder and CEO Keller Rinaudo said. "So traditional supply chains do a very poor job of distributing it. Using drones, we can deliver blood 10 times as quickly as cars, on demand.""

"The reason Zipline has raced ahead in Rwanda is because the government has been more flexible than many other regulatory regimes around the world. That's also why Google is piloting drones in Australia and Amazon is working in the U.K. But the United States is finally taking steps to allow drone business models to experiment and develop on a local level around the country."

"Reuter said Zipline is communicating with blood banks, health systems and clinics and learning how to most effectively communicate with clients. "It's difficult to do that at scale," he said. "The hard part of drone delivery is not making a drone that can carry something. It's building a service that can run every day, making thousands of deliveries in a reliable manner, and do so in an economically sustainable way," said Reuter, who has been to Zipline's first distribution center in Rwanda. "We believe Rwanda can serve as a model for the rest of the world in how to enable drone delivery.""

"Here you have something truly chilling. Here you have the United States government saying, we can kill you, American citizen. You have no constitutional right to a jury by your peers. You have no constitutional right even to probable cause or to due process. You have no right to a lawyer. You have no right to counsel. You have no right to anything. If we suspect you, just suspect you, without evidence, that you were thinking about committing an act against the United States of America, we can kill you."

"“Given that countries are getting access to larger drones that can operate with larger payloads, and some of those countries have nuclear weapons, how should we be reacting?” says Paul Scharre, project director for the 20YY Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “It hasn’t gotten much attention in the U.S. defense community because it’s considered a crazy idea, but other countries may think about this quite differently.”"

"In a new report called “Limiting Armed Drone Proliferation,” published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Micah Zenko and Sarah Kreps argue that the time has arrived for the U.S. to set regulatory limits on the use of drones. Because drones do not have pilots, they write, the threshold for launching war is lower -- and the planes cannot avoid sudden danger as easily. Countries may also fire on manned fighter planes -- confusing them with drones."

"Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours? That President Obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is an American? Would your Supreme Court really want to tell humankind that we, like the slave Dred Scott in the 19th century, are not as human as you are? I cannot believe it. I used to say of apartheid that it dehumanized its perpetrators as much as, if not more than, its victims.”"

"“We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes."

"In a statement to the Guardian, Daniel Schwarz, the senior privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said: “Deploying surveillance drones over New Yorkers gathering with their friends and families to celebrate J’ouvert is racialized discrimination and it doesn’t make us safer.” Schwarz also accused police of “playing fast and loose” with New Yorkers’ constitutional rights to due process and to freely hold peaceful gatherings. He added that the drone ploy was also antithetical to the 2021 Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act, which requires New York police to publish impact and use policies on its surveillance technologies. “As the NYPD keeps deploying these dystopian technologies, we must push for stricter guardrails – especially given the department’s lengthy history of surveilling and policing Black and brown communities,” he continued."

"Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, called the decision a “terrible plan that should never have gotten off the ground”. “We see that there’s a real pattern with the NYPD and with Eric Adams (the New York City mayor) – whenever there’s a risk of bad headlines, they’ll turn to the next technology gimmick,” Cahn told the Guardian. “They did this when they rolled out drones in the middle of Times Square; they did it when the mayor was being attacked for failing to respond to the Canadian wildfire smoke; and he announced that they will be using drones as a public announcement system for emergencies,” Cahn said. “It’s just a clear pattern that they use technology as a PR stunt, even when it means breaking the law, as it does here.” Cahn went on to explain the difference between airplanes and helicopters compared to drones, which he said are “even more invasive because they can fly at such low altitudes”. “I’m also worried about not just video recordings but potentially audio recordings,” he said. “No one should have to worry that they’re going to be surveilled by the police on their own property or that they’ll have the NYPD showing up unannounced to their weekend barbecue.”"

"Hannah Zhao, a staff attorney at the nonprofit digital rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said drone surveillance should require warrants. “Our position is that aerial surveillance via drones should require a warrant because drones are fundamentally different from helicopters or planes,” Zhao said. “They are smaller, easier to maneuver, and cost a minute fraction of the price to purchase and operate. It’s also much harder to surreptitiously spy on people with manned aircraft because of their size and the amount of noise they make.”"

"The casual observer’s understanding of what drones can do is mostly informed by the way they’re used to make movies, television shows and commercials. Since 2014, when the use of drones in filmmaking became legal (it is still highly regulated by the FAA), aerial footage captured by drones has become so common that we barely notice it. In the early days of drone use, filmmakers quickly realized how useful these nimble devices were for close-up action shots. Drones proved especially handy for filming chase scenes, like the opening motorcycle sequence of the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall. In Martin Scorsese’s 2013 The Wolf of Wall Street, drones were used to shoot a raucous party scene from above, allowing audiences to peer voyeuristically into characters’ lives. Cinematographers are finding increasingly creative ways to use drone technology: in the 2015 Jurassic World, a drone-mounted camera swoops low over a crowd of people who are being attacked by pterosaurs to mimic the movement of the flying reptiles. But if drones are becoming ubiquitous, they’re also still somewhat controversial, and some filmmakers are turning their cameras on the machines themselves. On an episode of the sci-fi show Black Mirror, for example, characters lose their privacy when a blackmailer films them with a drone. The audience sees the scene through both regular cameras and through the drone’s lens, underscoring the ways in which these devices make us vulnerable."

"Although drones can be extremely cost effective for certain applications—in place of, or in combination with, dollies and jibs, for example—when it comes to aerial views, they haven’t fully vanquished the use of helicopters and cranes. Their limited battery life still makes some uses impractical, and they can be flown legally only at relatively low altitudes. But when they can be used, the savings are significant."

"The aerial perspective—of sheep or anything—is liberating precisely because it’s destabilizing, Biro says. “Drone vision allows us to see that there are multiple ways of seeing ourselves and seeing the rest of the world. We step out of ourselves to some extent. That’s its positive potential.”"

"In a 2012 report that was based on nine months of data analysis and field interviews, a team of law students from New York University and Stanford concluded that the dominant narrative in the U.S. about the use of drones in Pakistan—“a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the United States safer by enabling ‘targeted killing’ of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts”—is false. The researchers found that C.I.A.-operated drones were nowhere near as discriminating toward noncombatants as the agency’s leaders have claimed. Various estimates have put the civilian death toll in the hundreds. An analysis of media reports by the New America Foundation concluded that drones probably killed some two hundred and fifty to three hundred civilians in the decade leading up to 2014. Researchers working under Chris Woods at the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism conducted field interviews to supplement a separate analysis of media reporting. They estimated that American drones killed between four hundred and nine hundred and fifty civilians."

"The total death toll from drone strikes in Pakistan is estimated at between two thousand and four thousand. Even if one accepts a civilian death toll of nine hundred and fifty-seven—the highest nongovernmental estimate—drones have probably spared more civilians than American jets have in past air wars. And if the numbers Feinstein cited are accurate, drones killed more than twenty fighters for every civilian—a huge leap in precision."

"In 2008, the last year of the Bush Administration, at least one child was reported killed in a third of all C.I.A. drone strikes in Pakistan, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism—a shocking percentage, if it is accurate. In Obama’s first year in office, the figure was twenty per cent—still very high. By 2012, it was five per cent."

"On September 17, 2001, President George W. Bush signed a new counterterrorism M.O.N., partly based on Rizzo’s input. It was “multiple pages” in length, according to Rizzo. He had worked at the C.I.A. since 1976 and he regarded this document as the “most comprehensive, most ambitious, most aggressive, and most risky Finding or M.O.N. I was ever involved in.” Among its provisions, “one short paragraph” authorized targeted killings of Al Qaeda terrorists and their allies. “The language was simple and stark.” That paragraph became the foundation for the C.I.A.’s drone operations. George Tenet, the agency’s director at the time, supplemented the M.O.N. with internal guidelines that set down in greater detail how an individual believed to be actively involved in terrorist plots could be nominated and approved for capture or killing. Among other things, the guidelines instructed drone supervisors to avoid civilian casualties “to the maximum extent possible,” according to a former senior intelligence official. It was a decidedly lawyerly and elastic standard."

"Musharraf allowed the C.I.A. to operate drones out of a Pakistani base in Baluchistan. He told me that he often urged Bush Administration officials, “Give the drones to Pakistan.” That was not possible, he was told, “because of high-technology transfer restrictions.”"

"In July, 2008, President Bush approved a plan, proposed by Hayden, to increase drone strikes on Pakistani soil, mainly in North and South Waziristan. Taliban fighters were pouring into Afghanistan from FATA, without much interference from Pakistan, to attack American troops. “These sons of bitches are killing Americans. I’ve had enough,” Bush told Hayden, according to Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” (2010). No longer would the United States seek permission from Pakistan to strike or notify Pakistani generals in advance."

"After mid-2008, the drone program changed quickly into a more conventional, if unacknowledged, air war. In the three months between August and October, drones struck North and South Waziristan at least twenty times—more strikes than in the previous four years."

"In 2009, Panetta oversaw some fifty lethal drone attacks; more than half of them produced civilian deaths, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “American policy was to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible,” Panetta wrote in his recently published memoir. An operation that deliberately targeted women or children alongside terrorist suspects “was to be authorized only under extraordinary circumstances.” Panetta described cases in which he gave such permission, while seeking to “balance duty to country and respect for life.”"

"Being attacked by a drone is not the same as being bombed by a jet. With drones, there is typically a much longer prelude to violence. Above North Waziristan, drones circled for hours, or even days, before striking. People below looked up to watch the machines, hovering at about twenty thousand feet, capable of unleashing fire at any moment, like dragon’s breath. “Drones may kill relatively few, but they terrify many more,” Malik Jalal, a tribal leader in North Waziristan, told me. “They turned the people into psychiatric patients. The F-16s might be less accurate, but they come and go.”"

"North Waziristan residents and other Pakistanis I spoke with emphasized how difficult it would be for a drone operator to distinguish between circumstances where a Taliban or Al Qaeda commander had been welcomed into a hujra and where the commander had bullied or forced his way in. If the Taliban “comes to my hujra and asks for shelter, you have no choice,” Saleem Safi, a journalist who has travelled extensively in Waziristan, told me. “Now a potential drone target is living in a guest room or a guesthouse on your compound, one wall away from your own house and family.”"

"The C.I.A. has never explained the criteria it uses to count a drone victim as a civilian. Nor has it described what sort of interviews or field research, if any, the agency’s analysts undertake to investigate possible mistakes. According to a May, 2012, Times article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants . . . unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” In briefings to congressional intelligence committees, the C.I.A. has disputed that characterization, saying that any person deliberately targeted must be associated with a known fighting group or enemy facility, or else be observed preparing for violence."

"Historically, the greatest use of UAVs has been made in the areas of intelligence gathering, surveillance, and battle damage assessment (BDA), where they allow armed forces to avoid placing pilots at risk. They have also been used to gather nonmilitary information in environments that are hazardous to human beings. For example, B-17 bombers were adapted to fly by remote control during the Bikini Atoll nuclear bomb tests. The Israelis have also used UAVs extensively for reconnaissance purposes. During the Gulf War, the coalition allies used them for intelligence and BDA purposes. In fact, the Pioneer UAV was praised as "the single most valuable intelligence collector" in the war against Iraq. They have proved to be extremely reliable and have had high mission completion rates. During the Gulf War, only one UAV was lost in more than 300 missions."

"…as US experiences hunting Scuds in the Gulf War showed, it is almost impossible to locate and destroy a small mobile system that is covertly deployed. In fact, the Gulf War intelligence community never could furnish reliable information on the number and location of Iraq's Scud launchers. This forced an intensive anti-Scud campaign that seriously reduced the number of Scud firings, but never totally ended them. UAVs should be even harder to find than mobile Scuds were, given their smaller size and reduced maintenance and support requirements."