Arguments against Drone Warfare with a Focus on the Immorality of Remote Control Killing and “Deadly Surveillance”

Drone warfare, particularly in the form of targeted killing, has serious legal, moral, and political costs so that a case can be made for an international treaty prohibiting this type of warfare. However, the case would be stronger if it could be shown that killing by drones is inherently immoral. From this angle I explore the moral significance of two features of this technology of killing: the killing is done by remote control with the operators geographically far away from the target zone and the killing is typically the outcome of a long process of surveillance. I argue that remote control killing as such might not be inherently wrong but poses the risks of globalizing conflict and prioritizing troop protection above civilian safety, while the “deadly surveillance” aspect of drone killing makes it most clearly intrinsically wrong. Weaponized unmanned (or uninhabited) vehicles (UAVs) or drones, such as the Predator and the later Reaper with its greater payload, have been used by the United States in conventional war situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, but their most controversial purpose has been their use in the targeted killing of suspected militants (“terrorists”) outside declared or legally recognized war zones, such as in Pakistan and Yemen. I will initially focus on the CIA-led drone campaign in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan, as it was stepped up by the Obama administration in 2009, peaked in 2010 with 128 confirmed strikes and 755 to 1,108 humans killed, including 89–197 civilians, and as it continued in 2015 with thirteen strikes 1 I draw in this introductory section as well as in the next two sections some material from my “Drone Warfare and Just War Theory.” (through September 1) and sixty-two to eighty-five humans killed, including two to five civilians (after a reprieve during most of 2014). I will show in somewhat synoptic manner that this drone campaign points to a variety of political, moral, and legal costs so that a case can be made for an international ban on weaponized drones, including their development into autonomous lethal UAVs or killer robots. The case for an international treaty banning all weaponized UAVs, however, would gain in strength if it could be shown that this technology of killing is inherently immoral. To address this issue, we must ask what sets this technology of killing apart from other broadly accepted means of long-range killing. Compared to pilots with conventional aircrafts striking targets, drone pilots fly their airplane by remote control via satellite link and are typically thousands of miles away from the flying and target zone, enabling them to kill in a completely risk-free manner (i.e., the “fighting” is one-directional). The UAV name “Reaper” captures this aspect of drone killing since the reaper as the symbol and agent of death cannot be killed. Even the teams that launch and recover UAVs run few risks since their work can be done hundreds of miles from the strike zone. Compared to operators of cruise missiles (say, launched from sea platforms), drone pilots, and their supporting sensor operators who control the drone cameras, as well as their supporting data analysts, are able to watch their targets in detail over long stretches of time, are able to kill with a much shorter strike time so that a last moment assessment of the intended targets is possible, and are able to watch in detail the results of their strikes. The name of the UAV “Predator” captures quite well this particular blending of surveillance and killing. The “Predator” began its life in the mid-1990s as a surveillance plane in the Balkan wars; it had superior capabilities to eye its “prey” for many hours at a time, but the “kill” had to come from ground forces, conventional planes, or ship-launched missiles. It was not until after 9/11 that the Predator became retrofitted with Hellfire missiles and truly began to live up to its name and became a superior “man hunter.” 2 All of my drone strike figures are obtained from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, “Get the Data.” The Bush administration executed fifty-one drone strikes in Pakistan, the Obama administration 370, as of September 1, 2015. The ranges in the number of total deaths and the number of civilian deaths reflect variations in the casualty counts in credible reports of individual strikes and imprecise language of characterizing the casualties used in these reports. 3 The image of the (grim) reaper has been popular with military forces from the United States and other countries, appearing, for example, frequently on military badges, but the agent of death was intimidating and merciless, not invincible. Cf. Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 91ff. Chamayou is one of the very few critics of drone warfare who emphasizes the deadly surveillance dimension of weaponized UAVs, and I have profited from his work in writing the final version of this paper. 4 See Singer, Wired For War, 34–35. My discussion of the inherent immorality of drone killing will first examine several arguments to the effect that remote-control killing as risk-free killing is inherently wrong. I find these arguments to be largely inadequate and maintain that the more important issue is that drone operators live in a “separate world” from their targets. Killing from outside the geographical zone of one’s adversaries may not be intrinsically wrong, but, among other problems, it tends to turn the whole world into a conflict zone and involves a wrong prioritizing of troop protection above civilian protection. Next, I will argue that the “deadly surveillance” aspect of drone killing, which has received much less attention than the remote control aspect, is inherently immoral. More specifically, I will argue that the detailed observation of the targeted individual as a person rather than as a threat, as is typical in the process leading up to drone killing, makes this killing immoral. Looking toward the future, it seems that the drone as a “deadly surveillance” system will become a fearful instrument of control. In conclusion, I will discuss the significance of the “deadly surveillance” dimension of drone warfare in making the case for an international ban on weaponized UAVs and lethal robots.