Nicole Foss: Modern warfare has left the US behind

Drones have been a major game-changer in modern warfare. There’s been an arms race in the Ukraine war, and drones have been at the centre of it, with electromic jamming, then fibre-optic drones, then netting over roads used for logistics, and vehicles with cages to protect them from drone attack. Tanks with no anti-drone protection, such as those used by the US, are now obsolete. Both Russia and Ukraine are now setting up separate branches of their militaries to focus on drone warfare. Russia aims to have 210,000 drone operators over 1000 units embedded with each other branch of the military in the not too distant future.

Damien Grant: Buckle up, the future is going to be magical and terrifying

Predictions are tricky. In 1943 the chairman of IBM speculated the world would have a demand for, maybe, five computers. Al Gore declared there would be no snow on Mt Kilimanjaro by 2016. Thomas Edison famously stated that the “…baby of the 21st century will be rocked in a steel cradle”. The inventor of the light bulb didn’t foresee the rise of plastics.

I have a fraction of the insight of these great minds and insufficient wisdom or humility to prevent me from joining them in making absurdly incorrect predictions. Buckle up.

Ron Smith: Droning On

In a widely-publicised report (‘Living Under Drones’), academics from Stanford Law School and the New York University School of Law, have recently cast fresh doubt on the moral/legal status of the continuing use by the United States of unmanned aerial vehicles.  As is all too familiar in these cases, the conclusions and claims of the authors have been uncritically accepted in media reports.  This is a pity, since the agendas of those involved, and defects of the methodology of the report, are very obvious.  There are some important issues regarding the strategic importance/significance of the use of drone-strike capability in modern irregular warfare, and how traditional just war concepts may be applied to drone use.  Regrettably, the Stanford/New York collaboration makes little contribution to this debate.  Instead, it palliates extreme left wing and broadly anti-American interests.  The extent to which some American academics will do this never ceases to amaze!

 The main conclusions of the report are based on interviews conducted in Pakistan with 130 people who were survivors or witnesses of drone attacks, or relatives of victims of such attacks.  Specifically who might be interviewed was suggested by a local human rights organisation, the ‘Foundation for Fundamental Rights’, which had been set up in early 2011 to campaign against drone attacks.  Am I the only person that thinks that this is not a reliable research methodology?