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The Forum > General Discussion > War as a 9 to 5 job

War as a 9 to 5 job

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I am reading "WIRED FOR WAR". It is a book about combat robots. The subtitle is "THE ROBOTICS REVOLUTION AND CONFLICT IN THE 21ST CENTURY". The author is P. W. Singer.

One of the photographs shows two men in a cubicle somewhere Nevada. They are flying an armed UAV somewhere over Iraq or Afghanistan. They have a lorry in their sights. Presumably they are about to release a missile at it. It is not clear whether there are people in the lorry.

One of the UAV pilots is quoted as saying "It's antiseptic. It's not as potent an emotion as being on the battlefield." Another says, "It's like a video game. It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it's f*c*ing cool."

This youtube video shows the sort of thing the two UAV pilots in Nevada may have been doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ-dNu5uOQc

So how does this work? You get to the office at 9 am, coffee in hand. Sit down. Kill a few terrorists. Take the bus home. Kiss your wife. Hug you kids. Watch football.

Presumably it's a 24 /7 operation so, before you leave you hand over to the evening shift. You brief the next guy on what you're doing. Tell him you expect to be ready for the kill shot in about an hour. Next morning, when you get to work you see those terrorists have been killed. You see who or what is on your kill list so far today.

I am not a pacifist. Sometimes you need to go out and kill your enemy or use the last resort which would be to surrender without a fight. And sometimes, in killing your enemy, you kill civilians including women and children.

It's not even as if I have much sympathy for the people being killed in the youtube video. They were themselves prepared to kill and somebody got them first.

But killing from an office does seem bizarre.I wonder what effect it has on the UAV operators. Can they just forget about it when they're off duty?
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Sunday, 28 June 2009 12:15:56 AM
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<“But killing from an office does seem bizarre.I wonder what effect it has on the UAV operators. Can they just forget about it when they're off duty?”>

I think you'll find it's normal most of the killing is controlled from away from the actual fighting. Leaders have always sat on the hill behind the front, in headquarters or overseas and directed the killing. The only difference now is they have more sophisticated and deadly weapons, directly controlled from far away.

If you were in the 8th century, or any century for that matter. You'd probably be asking if they had the right to stand back and fire arrows, burning articles and rocks at each other from a distance, rather than stand and fight. Throughout history, the actions are the same, it's only the methods they use which change. Showing us humanity just goes round and round in ideological circles, only improving it's killing abilities and not an ethical approach or application to life.
Posted by stormbay, Sunday, 28 June 2009 12:10:31 PM
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More thoughts:

In the past soldiers WENT to war. They were on a battlefield. They knew this was something different from civilian life. There was no confusion between civilian life and killing people in battle.

But this mixes civilian life with battlefield life and death. UAV operators could work from an office block in downtown Melbourne. The guy sitting next to you in the tram may be on his way to kill people.

And what if you kill the wrong people?

Let's face it, the other side is always going to say those 50 people you killed were innocents out on a picnic. Let's also understand that the people you are trying to kill do try and hide among civilians so killing some civilians in war is inevitable.

But sometimes you may, in error, genuinely kill people at a wedding party. What then? Is it just a bad day at the office? Do you go home, kiss your wife, hug your kids and watch some TV just as you do every day?

UAV operators need not even be members of the military. I have a friend who is a keen computer gamer. For medical reasons he could never become a soldier. But he would probably be very good at operating a UAV in a combat zone from an office tower in Melbourne.

Office workers whose job happens to be killing people! Coming to an office near you!
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Sunday, 28 June 2009 12:15:10 PM
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Stormbay,

What's changed is this.

In the past the leaders may have "sat on the hill behind the front, in headquarters or overseas and directed the killing." But they still had to find humans willing to put themselves in harm's way in order to do the killing.

But the way robotics is going the leader of a technologically advanced nation may not need to put many humans in harm's way at all. He can go to war without risking or even materially disrupting the lives of most citizens.

Soon the UAVs may have no operators at all. They'll make their kill decisions autonomously.

And it's not confined to the air. MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) and SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System) are to all intents and purposes the pre-cursors of "robo-soldiers".

Are you afraid of snakes? Beware robo-snake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxGnHLIrMnM

Just one more reason to avoid snakes.

The future looks scary.

See also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yliThCy3RxY

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE5q3tklHsw
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Sunday, 28 June 2009 12:55:51 PM
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as many solgers will tell war is 99 percent doing boring stuff..[its also funny to realise 99.999 percent of bullits fired never hit anyone]..war is a funny buisness...but the thing is its a business

its no different from the backroom guys playing war games..[where amoung the details of war are the death statistics..[for things like the d/day landing..[i think its reported that churchhill..reportedly said to his wife one night..tonight 35,000 children/solgers will die..[i think that was the d-day landing..predicted number..of casualties

anyhow its stressfull..[but so is making an atom bomb,..or how you think those fools making phospher bomlets..dropped on palistein/gaza felt..[or those that made the naplam..[that killed 15 million japs in a few weeks..when the yankies bombed japan back into the stone age,..near the end of ww2

war is for fools and cowards..regardless of which side they are murdering for...the only winners are the bankers who paY FOR ALL OF THEM...i was going to talk about robotic snakes...only the latest robot i have heard of desined purely to faciltate murder...but enough of this insanity of war

no one can claim to serve god..[the life-giver..via the murder of any...god alone gave to live...all war is wrong...sadly only/mainly the poor die...its the slums that get bombed

[or in the case of caza the gulag...while the settlers swim in their swimming pools/..the palistinians gets their raw sewrage discharge..flowing out of their gated communities..[settlement's]...

why cant i think of war without thinking of that little state..that claims to be gods people..while murdering others for possesion and despoiling..land given to live on..[not die for]..by the same god..the life giving god is not honoured by murder
Posted by one under god, Sunday, 28 June 2009 1:07:51 PM
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Steven while soldiers on the physical front line are not supposed to exercise moral judgement when obeying a command there is an element of judgement that is different when you are in the thick of it as opposed to someone in a position of safety who might be described as a 'passive' participant.

On the frontline there is a human element involved that allows for some degree of moral judgement when it comes to the collateral killing of innocent civilians and children.

For example a group of soldiers tasked to go into a North Vietnamese village would have been able to discriminate easily between children and men with guns so the risk of harm to children was minimised - albeit not perfect in that particular war.

Would carrying out a similar mission from a building in Nevada increase the risk of harm to innocent civilians? I suspect it might in two ways - (1) desensitising the soldier to the effects of the 'game' using what is in effect a video type console and (2) logistically it would be more difficult to isolate innocent civilians if it is not clear where they are located.

That is the whole village could be obliterated instead of hostile targets.

The counter-argument to that might be that if a particular target has been isolated - say a compound (pinpointed via satellite) harbouring terrorist leaders - it may be easier to manage an incursion from afar with minimal risk to 'your side'. The difficulty comes when the target is identified within a civilian area.
Posted by pelican, Sunday, 28 June 2009 2:20:42 PM
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