Whose drone is it and what are they firing on?
I am not old enough to have gone through the nuclear air raid drills of the 1950’s in school. But I wonder if the children in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Yemen have been introduced to such safety programs. Whereas the United States was never attacked by the evil U.S.S.R, there are children in these country who have witnessed, and been killed, by our aerial drone attacks.
Kinder, gentler war fare
Drones have evolved so quickly, in such secrecy and now with such lethal ferocity, that perhaps the international community has been caught off guard to this 21st century war machine. Virtually immune to air space and borders, drones represent the new hi-tech global assassination machines. Certainly, this is the kinder gentler face of war fare when contrasted to mass annihilation from a nuclear bomb.
Does silence imply consent?
While Pakistan protests the violation of their sovereignty every time a U.S. drone takes out an Al Qaeda officer, the rest of the nations seem profoundly quiet on the topic. Russia and China condemn an as yet unfunded ballistic missile shield in Europe, but nary a peep from these countries on flying assassination planes known as drones.
I can only attribute the lack vocal concern on the part of our world neighbors as either tacit approval of our drone strikes or they don’t want to be restricted in their own drone programs. Within two years I speculate that you will see Russia use drones to strike at their rebellious Caucasus and China in their regions protesting for independence. How Israel might use their drone capacity is anyone’s guess.
Drones are far easier to build than nuclear bomb
At this point, I am more concerned about a rogue nation or even a terrorist organization acquiring a drone to make a strike on one of our oil pipe lines or bridges. Drones don’t have to launch Hell Fire missiles, they can be the missile. With the capture of America’s RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone by Iran the technological hurdles to creating a drone by terrorist supporting nations has been lowered.
Drones don’t bluff
All through the last half of the 20th century all we heard was nuclear détente. Nations in the nuclear club, particularly the U.S. and Russia, were working on treaties and agreements to limit nuclear weapons. Whereas a nuclear arsenal was and is used as a deterrent to invasion, drones have been deployed as the actual aerial invasion in defense of U.S. security. The precedence has been set: a nation can use unmanned aerial drones to invade another countries airspace, one they are not at war with, and kill people they feel threatened by. Every country will have its own moral justification for this act of undeclared war.
My suggestion to the world; we need a summit and ultimately negotiations on the use and deployment of drones forces that each country is developing. Right now the U.S. is the big man on campus with our technological advantage and experience with drone war fare. But as we saw with the development of nuclear weapons, the rest of the world is not far behind.
Switchblade Drones, the new hobby type plane with killer explosives. These could certainly take out a pipeline.