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Bruce Beckman
CAS 137H
28 October 2015
Military Drones: A Paradigm Shift in Warfare
In 1969 Edwin Starr asked the world in his song War: War, huh yeah, what is it good
for? He then went on to say that it was good for absolutely nothing. War, despite the loss of
life, sadness, and the negative things that surround it, does accomplish something when it is
engaged between two parties. War has been the catalyst for major technological development for
centuries. From the development of tanks in World War One to the pressurized cabins designed
for the bombers of World War Two, war has always been a time when having better technology
could mean the difference between victory or defeat on the fields of battle. Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles or UAVs, commonly referred to as drones are one of the latest innovations to result
from armed conflict, and their use has brought on both a revolution in warfare and a revolution in
thought, establishing a paradigm shift in warfare and how people perceive a modern conflict.
Drones have been in use for military for around a century, however it is only in the last
decade or so that they have become a significant replacement for manned operations. At this
point, the number of estimated deaths from the Obama administrations drone strikes in Pakistan
somewhere between 1,633 and 2,781 is more than four times what it was during the Bush
administration (Bergen and Rowland). Modern use of drones for military purposes from
surveillance to targeted assassinations have dramatically increased in recent years and have
brought with them a host of ethical and societal questions: Should a government have a right to
kill its own citizens? Should person thousands of miles away be allowed to take the life of
another human being? Moral questions that have arisen from the increasing use of drones are
legitimate concerns that have entered many national discourses and affect the way people see
warfare.

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that could be remotely guided were first introduced by the
British Royal Air Force during World War One. Largely ineffective, they did, however, respond
to radio signals (Shaw). In World War Two, the number of deaths made an unmanned aircraft
desirable and innovations were made, however the first modern drones capable of striking a
target did not make an appearance until the 1970s.
Abraham Karem was born in Baghdad, the son of a Jewish merchant. His family moved
to Israel in 1951, and by the 1970s, the young Karem was already building aircraft for the
Israeli Air Force, during which time aviation engineers were attempting to satisfy the
need for real-time intelligence. In 1980 he emigrated from Israel to Los Angeles and
started to build aircraft in his garage. A year later he wheeled out a bizarre, cigar-looking
aircraft called the Albatross that would change the face of warfare forever. (Shaw)
This garage based evolution was the foundation for the modern drones we know today. With the
increased use of drones in the new millennium came increasing questions as to the ethics of their
use as they revolutionized warfare.
Before the United States had started to use drones for targeted assassinations, the Israeli
military had been using them.
Israel has a long history of developing and using unmanned aerial vehicles. According to
the Israeli Air Force (IAF) unmanned drones were first used for surveillance over Egypt
in 1971 in the lead up to the Yom Kippur War, The earliest mention of the use of Israeli
drones for target acquisition was in 1981 in the run up to the 1982 First Lebanon War
where drones were used to locate targets for piloted aircraft to follow and strike with
weapons (Dobbing and Cole).
By the time the Bush administration had taken over, the Israelis had been using drones for
targeted assassinations.
Israeli assassinations had long been criticized by even The United States government. As
The War on Terror began, the use of drones by The United States for targeted assassinations

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increased, and by the time the Obama administration took the reins, other nations such as China
and Iran had developed some degree of unmanned aerial vehicle capable of reconnaissance. In a
world where technology often determines the outcome of warfare, developing a new, and
advanced, technology during a prolonged conflict can end the conflict in your favor or allow for
a greater degree of success. Drones are the perfect example of this change in the practice of
warfare. No longer having to put human lives in danger, drones revolutionized operations
traditionally used for Special Forces and air strikes, where human lives would have been placed
in danger. A nation that is armed with drones capable of eliminating one or a group of enemy
combatants has a completely different mindset when it comes to war compared to an enemy.
Quiet, and often unseen, drones allow a nation to play God in a manner never before seen. They
can strike enemies with impunity, not needing to weigh the consequences of risking human lives.
From the other side, a group being targeted by drones lives in constant fear, as the nearly
imperceptible unmanned attack craft can rain death at any moment.
Drones, however, largely represent a change in the perspective of warfare. Although
drones do alter warfare, the ethical questions associated with their use have created ramifications
that represent a shift from traditional human being fighting another human being in combat.
Iran has also had success in exporting its drones to proxies, such as Hezbollah, where they
mostly play the same ISR role. Hezbollah has experimented with suicidal drones (not quite the
same thing as cruise missiles, but not that far off), and Israel can probably anticipate a more
complex aerial environment in the next Lebanon conflict (Farley). In the hands of an enemy,
drones could be used to indiscriminately target a civilian population, with blame for an
individual responsible near impossible to predict. On the other hand, in the hands of the CIA,
drones have accidentally wiped out groups of civilians due to poor clarity as to whom is being
targeted.

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The perspective on modern warfare has shifted in recent years, with a major question
being the ethics of having automatons carry out missions across the globe, in a manner that some
consider morally dubious. The ability to kill a citizen of ones own nation, without a trial, has
been exercised by The United States and The United Kingdom, in the Middle East in recent years
and has raised numerous new questions as to the validity and ethics of drone use. In the United
States, every citizen is guaranteed the right to a fair trial. Despite this, the Obama Administration
admitted that it used a drone strike to eliminate four U.S. citizens: the Obama Administration
publicly acknowledged for the first time that four Americans were killed in drone strikes since
2009 as part of U.S. counterterrorism activities surrounding al Qaeda (Van Dyke). When the
laws that make up a society are violated by its government, its citizens are often angry and want
their concerns addressed. In the United States, there has been a shift in perspective from the
traditional warfare that preceded drones. The ethics of putting our men and women in uniform at
risk has evolved in the drone era, where the perspective is of a nation that has too much power
and is playing God when it takes the lives of its enemies and when it takes the lives of its citizens
without a trial.
In warfare, changes in have typically resulted in an increase in the number of deaths and
destructive power of a nation. From the invention of the machine gun to the invention of the
nuclear bomb, war has often resulted in major shifts in the number of lives that can be taken in
warfare. Drones seem to promise something better: the ability to eliminate individuals without
risking the lives of both civilians and friendly forces. The reality, however, is far different from
this dream, as drones have been used to attack both citizens of the nation the drone is being
employed by, as well as the accidental killing of civilians. Because of this, drones have created a
significant change in both combat and the way combat is perceived by both the citizens of the
nation that controls and uses the drone, and the people being targeted by drones. So in answer to

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the question: War, huh yeah, what is it good for? it is important to recognize that it does
change both the way people think, and the way people perceive one another.
Word Count: 1422

Works Cited
Bergen, Peter, and Jennifer Rowland. Drone Wars. Washington Quarterly 36.3 (2013): 7-26.
Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

Dobbing, Mary, and Chris Cole. "Israel and the Drone Wars." Israel and the Drone Wars Drone
Wars UK, Jan. 2014. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

"Edwin Starr." - War Lyrics. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

Farley, Robert. "The Five Most Deadly Drone Powers in the World." The National Interest.
Web. 21 Oct. 2015.

Ian G. R. Shaw, Ian G. R. The Rise of the Predator Empire: Tracing the History of U.S.
Drones, Understanding Empire, May 2012. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

Van Dyke, Jere. "Who Were the 4 U.S. Citizens Killed in Drone Strikes?" CBSNews. CBS

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Interactive, Web. 21 Oct. 2015.