Human Factors, Ethics and Morality in Killer UAS

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a trial theater for today’s deadliest UAS that are increasing in numbers in the U.S. armed arsenal.  Deployment of UAS into battle fields took place during the Vietnam war to carry out intelligent, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.  The Second Gulf war also saw an intensive use of UAS, however, those systems carried out more sophisticated sensory systems.  Nowadays, the Predator and the Reaper are capable of ISR missions that can last nearly 24 hours each, in addition to carrying out precision strikes.

Cognitive dissonance and moral disengagement

From a pilot’s perspective, flying an UAS half-way across the globe alleviates the most significant part of battle deployment; fear of being killed.  Fear has been a determining factor in the battle field throughout history as battles were lost when panic possessed an army. Another significant factor is resistance to killing; where soldiers are not inclined to actively engage in acts of killing.  In the case of military UAS pilots, they are not subject to fear while performing their combat duties from cubical-like ground control stations (GCS), nor they are directly involved in the consequences of their actions.  There is a high possibility for moral and emotional disengagement from all occurrences on the battlefield associated with cognitive dissonance induced by camouflaging the use of naked force.  One quote of a young pilot from the book Wired for War demonstrates this state of disengagement  “It's like a video game. It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it's fucking cool” (Singer 2009, p. 308–309).  On the other hand, UAS pilots are subject to larger visual exposure to the aftermath of a strike, especially when surveying the operation theater through high resolution cameras.  The views on this matter are subjective and require further research on the long and short term effects to determine the extent of the assumed moral disengagement (Sharkey, 2010).

Targeted killings

Targeted killings as a preemptive action against alleged members of terrorist organizations is another debatable issue.  The decision making process and the intelligence information to coin a decision to target a wanted figure and possibly accept a certain extent of collateral loss of life are questionable and determining criteria are subjective at best (Sharkey, 2010).

Just War

The Just War.  Military operations of UAS raise concerns in regards to their ability to operate in accordance to Jus in Bello.  Their 4-D’s capability also reduce the threshold of Jus Ad Bellum causing nations to wage a war due to an unbalanced views on the repercussions of war (Strawser, 2010).

References

Singer, P. W. (2009). Wired for war: The robotics revolution and conflict in the 21st century. Penguin.
Sharkey, N. (2010). The Moral Case Against Autonomous and Semiautonomous UAVs. In Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (pp. 2919-2932). Springer Netherlands.

Strawser, B. J. (2010). Moral predators: The duty to employ uninhabited aerial vehicles. Journal of Military Ethics, 9(4), 342-368.