Drones save lives

When I was chief of operations in Iraq in 2004/2005 for the entire Coalition force and the nascent Iraqi Army, ethics was always at the forefront of my mind. I devoted a considerable amount of discussion to this topic in my book Running the War in Iraq. Not only do we need to be serious about the ethics of going to war, but we also have to then conduct that war in an ethical manner.

So I have been amused to say the least as I read the current debate about ‘drone wars’.

As chief of operations in Iraq, I controlled the process known as ‘time-sensitive targeting’ at the theatre/strategic level on behalf of the US Commanding General and the US Secretary of Defence. Drones (technically, Remotely Piloted Vehicles – an important distinction with ethical implications) were used by the Coalition at every level of combat in Iraq, but those I controlled were the top level.

In the main, the platform we used was the first-generation Predator, armed with Hellfire missiles and (later) GPS-guided bombs. The period 2004/2005 was the start of the widespread use of drones in combat, but the process for authorising their use, incorporating a wide range of checks and balances, was very well developed because we and our allies had been making ethical decisions about the use of weapons in war for generations.

I sense that the ethical debate around the use of drones by the US to strike targets in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia is being driven by confusion as to what the real issue is. Specifically, there is constant confusion between the act of killing and the means of killing.

One of the major themes of thousands of years of warfare has been the constant desire to increase the distance between combatants. Short swords gave way to long swords and pikes. Slings gave way to arrows and catapults. Artillery, with its range in tens of kilometres has, since its inception, been the biggest killer on any battlefield. Today, advanced artillery can fire special shells that act like drones more than 100 kilometres. And of course the remoteness from their targets of manned strike aircraft has been a reality for 100 years.

I don’t subscribe to the view that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’, but there is a resonance here with the drones debate. The drone is merely a carrier of weapons, exactly as the artillery shell is a carrier of high explosive. A drone is a very effective carrier, and it can take its weapons a long way and use them with great accuracy. But it is still just a vehicle controlled remotely by humans.

The crux of the drone/ethics debate is about who you target and why. It should not be about the drone itself. There is no military drone I am aware of that even approaches a reasonable form of autonomy. On the contrary there is a very large number of humans in the decision-making loop. (If you really want to understand the human-controlled checks and balances that are in place, then my account of the use of drones in Iraq is worth a read.) If drones had not been invented, then manned aircraft would be delivering those weapons. Indeed, in Iraq, when drones were not available or had inappropriate weapons, I regularly used manned aircraft.

It is the case that some drone strikes have been unwise or ill-directed. Nevertheless, the fact remains that their use is not against international law (despite frequent claims to the contrary). Moreover, even though a strike may kill innocents as well as our declared enemies, that in itself is not against international law (noting that commanders go to great lengths to avoid such tragic outcomes).

Most importantly, drone strikes carried out with precision and from a distance can save lives: the lives of the soldiers we send into battle on our behalf and the lives of the population within which our enemies choose to fight.

Drones have an extraordinary potential for good, in both the military and civilian domains. We must not let confused thinking persuade us to throw out the drone with the dishwater.