Moral concerns over killer drone use generally aren't sustainable in Court.

Reaper pilots who operate near Washington DC, with their drones over Iraq, may fall asleep at the wheel. But they also suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from their first person shooter role over the battlefield.

The Aus army buying killer drones?

Probably to go with their killer planes, killer tanks, killer guns, killer helicopter, ships, submarines etc.

Yes Shadow Minister

All military weapons kill people.

But only drones like the Reaper allow:

- "Both the pilot and operator [to fall] asleep on the job." for hours - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/24/drone-warfare-life-on-the-new-frontline

- and play computer games on the job: pilot vs operators and wider games between Reaper teams - see http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/24/drone-warfare-life-on-the-new-frontline again:

"Most controversially, some operators have described how simple digital games were sometimes smuggled onto the [drone piloting] operating systems at work. The software for Predators and Reapers was supposed to run on closed military systems – but at some point, it was realised that games created using Microsoft Excel could be imported.

“One of my friends, he was brilliant when it came to breaking the rules. He created battleship games, chess games that you could play with another crew,” one former airman said. “You’d pull them up on your headset and you’d be playing against one member of the other crew while the other would typically be the referee.”

Pete

Cheaper than $20 plus Billion for lemon submarines, even the last batch we bought were breaking down a lot.

Hi Philip S

The possible $300 million dollars Defence may be earmarking for several Reapers* is totally unrelated to the submarine buy - of course.

A Reaper buy however may be more related to the failure of Australia's Tiger attack helicopters to be reliable enough for duty. The Tigers were a poor purchase with the US Super Cobra's and Apache's being far better US inter-operable, lower purchase risk and tested weapons.

The failure of Australia's $1 Billion+ Tiger purchase has been a major Defence-DMO-Australian Army stuffup that has never really become public http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocopter_Tiger#Exports .

Also the technological advances in drones have left attack helicopters behind in lower intensity (lower threat to aircraft) warfare in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

* http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/02/25/07/43/raaf-wants-300m-for-attack-drones

Pete

62 countries are now either operating drones or developing them, and Australia, as usual, lags behind everyone else.

Drones are the perfect weapons against terrorists who base themselves in the most lawless and worthless countries on the planet.
In Waziristan, Al Qaida and Taliban terrorists are now hiding and sleeping in caves to escape the drones. And living in a cave is no fun for a proud jihadi seeking a bit of R&R after dodging US Apaches.

The only "moral" argument against usingn drones is that they are effective against the sorts of enemies our home grown educated elites see as third world freedom fighters who are heroically opposing European neo Imperialists.

Their bizarre attitude bring s to mind the quote from British Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson VC, First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy that "Submarines are underhand, unfair, and damned un-English."

But submarines are still here.

Oh, and Peter Coates, the CIA does not operate armed drones. The CIA complained to the US Congress that they would be in breach of their legal charter if they killed people with drones. The US Congress agreed, and armed drones on kill missions are only operated by the US Air Force.

The female Reaper drone (sensors and weapons) operator gives an excellent description - 1 minute 15 seconds in - http://youtu.be/dWEohpF-bOI on how the Reaper drone assists a patrol:

- in warning the patrol when to take cover and

- removing a threat

The CIA, DIA and Joint Special Forces etc are frequently involved in organising and providing briefings for drone missions, receiving real time feeds, telling drone pilots and operators to move "around that hill" or telling the operator to shift an optical sensor in another direction.

When receiving real time video feeds CIA officers may be involved in identifying "a high value target" and, if positive, then telling the weapons' operator to fire.

Its an intelligence and USAF community effort as http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/24/drone-warfare-life-on-the-new-frontline suggests.

The whole arc of the development of military technology across millennia has been geared toward greater and greater standoff capability, it's simple logic, the further you are away from your enemy the more chance you have of surviving. Drones aren't like land mines or nerve gas, their optics are powerful enough that the operators can see what a person on the ground is holding in their hands and the Hellfire missile has a lethal blast radius of 15 metres, that's precision targeting.
As another poster pointed out the Left see drones as an unfair weapon which cowardly White men use to kill brown men, never mind that in a ground war using hand held weapons White men still kill brown men at a rate of about 20-1.

Drones impersonalise war even more and they are a good weapon for Govts to use on their own people when they complain too much about being poor.

There is no real argument anywhere against using drones. If you want to argue about war and killing, but the method doesn't really matter.

If we modified the reapers to allow the (albeit small) pilot to be in the aircraft, would this change anything morally?

Drones also allow a high level of oversight on air operations, on sensitive missions the commanders and lawyers can be right beside the operator if need be, seeing exactly what they see.
I think some people see Western military forces as no better than the people they are fighting but there are rules of engagement by which they have to abide, they can only shoot back if being shot at unless given permission from higher up, and the higher ups do have military lawyers and civilian specialists advising them.

Hi Stezza

Adding a little pilot to a Reaper might make it an Apache Helicopter or an A-10 Warthog. But I don't think it a goer?
---

Hi Jay of Melbourne

The sheer conscious intentionality of drones plays on the minds of the human rights crowd.

The President can sign an "Executive Order - Finding" on (say) al Qaeda commanders to be killed. A general and his legal officer can then OK the killing in real time while the Reaper is over the target.

This is all too considered and intentional for the human rights people who presumably would prefer mass casualties caused by the "fog of war".

A reaper is a weapon that like all other weapons is designed to kill. That the person that pulls the trigger is far away is neither here nor there. Cannons kill people from kilometers away where the person firing has only a calculation of where he is firing, and only sketchy information of whether he hits anyone. A missile is the same again.

The difference is that the person pulling the trigger can differentiate to some degree between targets and civilians.

Should there be moral concerns about civilian jet aircraft, where the pilot is not always flying the plane and even where he is, the robotics are handling complex adjustments and reckonings for him?

Military manned plane or drone there is really little difference. In the manned version, just like the civilian passenger jets, the pilot couldn't fly it without the computer and robotics. The practical difference between drone and 'manned' is where the pilot and crew are sitting. In one case the fuel use is much lower, time aloft longer and the pilot and crew much safer.

Australia needs to preserve its pilots and use them to the utmost effect. Drones are ideal for such large distances.

Most disappointing that no moralising, leftish, human rights types have visited this thread. Obviously the weight of argument in the article and comments was too much for them.

So, in fairness, and in Devil's Advocate, here's an own goal for them http://www.sott.net/article/264247-Global-surveillance-state-Australias-Pine-Gap-drives-US-drone-kills . It includes a cute cartoon to.

The very idea that drones are somehow "immoral" weapons is, frankly, laughable. A quick spin through the history of weaponry-in-war will find the same logic applies to the deployment of the English longbow, the musket and its successor, mustard gas, bombs (as dropped from aircraft), rocket missiles - whether the originally unguided (V1, V2), heat-seeking etc. etc.

Clearly, it is pointless to reclassify these weapons as "retrospectively immoral", without the ability to follow through with some kind of action. Similarly, it is pointless to identify these new iterations of remote warfare as "presently immoral", without the remotest possibility to do anything about them. After all, you cannot un-invent them, therefore they will be used.

Picture the following dialogue in the court of the Dauphin over Christmas dinner in 1415:

Dauphin: Well, I thought it was jolly unfair of Henry to use longbows at Agincourt. We didn't stand a chance - all they had to do was stand there and fire at us.

Gérard Depardieu (in one of his earlier roles) True, true. Let's not allow ourselves to sink to that level - it's un-French

Dauphin: Absolutely. If we can't fight a war with just our stumpy little swords, I'd say that we shouldn't fight at all, nést-ce pas (innit)

GD: [**hic**]

Hi Pericles

Judging by the absence of moralisers on the this thread it could be that OLO's lefties have now learnt to love the Reaper.

Much of the drone's bad press seems to stem from:

- it having the reputation as (publically) an America only weapon.

- as though the US was abusing its military and technical dominance

- as though pilots had to be down, dirty and in danger, over the battlefied, to make it a fair fight

- Pakistan complained

- some wedding parties were sadly obliterated (but that was years ago)

Since then Russia, China, UK and Israel are getting more seriously into armed drone use - making it less an "unfair" American monopoly.

In 'Killer' drones for Australia? Peter Coates comments that "Several Royal Australian Air Force personnel are now being trained in the US to operate Reaper armed drones". RAAF personnel are well aware of the laws of armed conflict and restrictions the use of weapons. I can't see there is much difference between RAAF personnel in an aircraft pushing the "fire" button or on a remote console controlling a UAV: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2013/11/law-and-new-technologies-in-warfare.html

That I did, Tom. That I did.

I see you attended Tandem Thrust on the USS Blue Ridge - with a photo of you in the middle http://www.tomw.net.au/nt/tt97.html.

What men do on a ship stays on the ship, I like to say.

Enough said.

Cheers

Pete

Pete (plantagenet) posted, Friday, 6 March 2015 6:22:25 PM:

> I see you attended Tandem Thrust on the USS Blue Ridge ... http://www.tomw.net.au/nt/tt97.html

Yes, I was a civilian in a borrowed uniform, observing how the US 7th Fleet flagship used the Internet for conducting amphibious operations.

> What men do on a ship stays on the ship ...

The ship was crewed by men *and* women. What they do is hardly secret: after the exercise off Queensland, the ship visited Sydney, so I arranged a talk on-board for the IT industry: http://web.archive.org/web/20051118202932/http://www.acs.org.au/news/usnavy.htm

As Japan develops its hard power doctrine (reformed military policy and alliances) Japan needs to alter its soft power image. Ayako Sono's recent writings advocating racial segregation for immigrants in Japan have not helped things http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21644496-japan-considers-welcoming-more-foreign-workers-its-shores-bestselling-author-calls-their .

Another image problem is that Japan still has a lower caste http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin while the US has improved so much that a black person is its President.

Pete

Whoops!

The above comment "Posted by plantagenet, Sunday, 8 March 2015 11:37:43 AM" was intended as a comment on my previous article "Australia: the future junior ally of Japan" of 5 February 2015 http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17065 .

Pete