Drones are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that operate through advanced technologies such as, satellite video communication, radar surveillance of the ground below, avoidance technology, and some aspects of artificial intelligence. Drones can be aerial, land, or sea vehicles and are used for a wide range of peaceful purposes like delivering medical supplies to remote locations, spotting rustling, mapping uncharted territory, detecting forest fires, and inspecting high, difficult to access places.

They are also used for military purposes, including gather intelligence and surveillance, and, controversially, targeted assassination. Drones can undertake work that would be more dangerous and expensive than sending in ground troops or piloted aircraft. The text focusses on the United States and the United Kingdom being two countries that have drones in warfare, with the US armed General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper being the most prominent vehicle.

Surveillance drones were tested in World War I and used on a large scale during the Vietnam War. They contributed greatly to the first Gulf War in 1990/1991, and the United States developed the remotely controlled combat UAV or armed drone in conjunction with satellite technology. The first successful attack by an American UAV was in October 2001 in Afghanistan. Now, drones fly high above a target area and identify through human intelligence, observation, patterns of behaviour, people, buildings, or vehicles on the ground and then launch a missile to destroy them. The exact number of drones held by countries is difficult to ascertain as much of the data is classified.

The use of drone warfare as a counter-terrorism tactic has been the subject of much debate. Supporters argue that drone strikes have been successful in killing high-value targets and disrupting terrorist operations, while opponents claim that they cause civilian casualties and fuel anti-American or British sentiment. The process by which targets are chosen is not widely understood, and there is little information available about the legal and moral implications of drone strikes.

One very controversial character is the use of meta data, such as regular phone calls or, in one instance, male youths doing jumping jacks in a compound. When challenged about this at a debate at Johns Hopkins University in 2014, a General, Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, replied that this was ‘absolutely correct’, and asserting, ‘we
kill people based on metadata.’

Some experts argue that drone warfare creates unintended consequences that exacerbate the very problems it aims to solve. Australian author David Kilcullen claims that drone strikes in Pakistan have killed more civilians than high-level Al Qaeda targets, creating ‘accidental guerrillas’ who become radicalized because they feel threatened by drone attacks. Other experts, such as Georgetown University professor Daniel Byman, claim that drones have been effective in disrupting terrorist networks and denying them safe havens.

The host governments of countries where drone strikes occur, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Iraq, have a complex relationship with the United States, which conducts most drone strikes. While these governments publicly criticize drone strikes, they may also approve of some of them, especially if they target militants who threaten the host government.

Drone strikes are controversial because they are carried out in countries with which the United States or the UK is not at war, and because the process of selecting targets is opaque.

Already though killer drones are becoming a less frequently used method of conducting war. The proliferation in drones is more likely to be in surveillance and possibly suicide drones. We will be able to judge this at the end of the Russian – Ukrainian war.