The biggest fear of the mother, friend or any family member of a military man is that they won't come home once their campaign is over...that their loved one will be another death reported by CNN at the end of the day. Thanks to new technology, or rather old technology that has been getting a recent boost, warfare is becoming less and less dependant on people. UAVs have been around since 1917, when Charles Kettering created one for World War I, but only recently has it been used in warfare.
These drones (slang for UAV) have had an interesting history. They have heavily influenced battles in the Persian Gulf War and the Wars on Terror for the United States and have helped many other countries out. The main function of a modern UAV in our current war is surveillance. A drone will be sent out in front of our troops to scope out the area, look for terrorists, look for dangers and see if it is even worth it to go fight. For example, recently, in Sadr City, Lt. Col. Scott Williams sent out a drone ahead of him and his Apache fighters. They analyzed the area and saw that many key terrorists were around, so Williams was getting ready to attack. However, also in the drone video, he saw that there were kids going in and out of the same building. Because of the threat of killing the kids on accident (not because they were kids, but because it would have an effect on Iraqi loyalty), Williams took a different route around the outside and did not succeed in capturing the important terrorists. For functions like this, I think that the drone idea is a very good one, however, I think you know where this is going.
As cheap surveillance drones like the Raven, which costs around $35,000 and is the size of a model airplane, succeeded in their duties, a new idea came to be in the Department of Defense. This idea is known as the Predator, which you may or may not be familiar with. The Predator has dual capabilities. Not only does it have a camera attached to its nose, but it also has bomb-dropping capabilities. In fact, the first time they dropped the bomb from it, not enough people were killed. Because of this, they coated the bomb with a metal sheet that would have the effect of flying razorblades on those around the bomb explosion, guaranteeing death, but still within a small radius. Currently, there is another drone called X-47B which will carry much larger bombs capable of even more extreme devastation. Where does it end is the real question.
There are both pros and cons to this type of warfare. The pros are obvious. If we unman warfare as much as possible, this means that there are going to be more and more soldiers returning home to their families and their lives. This is also beneficial because it reduces the risk of killing civilians by accident, because the drone can scope out the area before an attack.
However, there are cons that may or may not outweigh the pros. A major con is that this will make warfare more accessible. If there are less troops dying at war, there will be less dissent among the people (only those who are opposed to the high prices that cause high taxes will dissent, and those who oppose death as foreign policy). Since there will be less dissent, the Congress and the President can make war with anyone, even though one could argue that we are already doing this. This could have drastic affects on world policy. We, or any other country in the world, would have an extreme possibility of being under constant attack, whether it be from Oceania, Eurasia or Eastasia. Oh shoot, those are the countries from 1984. (Freudian slip?). Thanks and let me know what you think.
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