Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Abstract A variety of ethical objections have been raised against the military employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs, drones). Some of these objections are technological concerns over UAVs abilities' to function on par with their inhabited counterparts. This paper sets such concerns aside and instead focuses on supposed objections to the use of UAVs in principle. I examine several such objections currently on offer and show them all to be wanting. Indeed, I argue that we have a duty to protect an agent engaged in a justified act from harm to the greatest extent possible, so long as that protection does not interfere with the agent's ability to act justly. UAVs afford precisely such protection. Therefore, we are obligated to employ UAV weapon systems if it can be shown that their use does not significantly reduce a warfighter's operational capability. Of course, if a given military action is unjustified to begin with, then carrying out that act via UAVs is wrong, just as it would be with any weapon. But the point of this paper is to show that there is nothing wrong in principle with using a UAV and that, other things being equal, using such technology is, in fact, obligatory. Keywords: RiskUAVsdronesprotectionjust war theory Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Jeff McMahan, Martin Cook, Uwe Steinhoff, Avery Plaw, Paul Bloomfield, Shawn Kaplan, Andrew Ely, Alexis Elder, Donald Joy, Matt Hallgarth, John Sherman, Casey Johnson, Abbilynn Strawser, and Bill Rhodes for helpful discussions, comments, and editorial advice on this paper throughout its various stages. Special thanks are owed to Stephen Kershnar, in particular, for his thorough criticism and help. Thanks as well to an anonymous reviewer for the Journal of Military Ethics for his or her very helpful comments. Thanks are also due to the participants at the 2010 International Society of Military Ethics Conference and the participants of the 7th Global Conference on War and Peace where some early sections of this paper were presented. Finally, the author is indebted to the members of the UConn Ethics Summer Reading Group for a thorough discussion of the paper. Notes 1. And there are other locations where it is presumed (although not verified) that lethal UAV employment has taken place, such as in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces. In this paper I will refer to these remotely controlled weapon systems primarily as UAVs (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles) and occasionally as drones. UAVs that are used for lethal combat purposes are sometimes referred UCAVs (Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles), but I will not use that locution here. See below for further clarification of these terms and some important distinctions. For a far more in-depth classification of various types and kinds of remote weapon systems see Sparrow (Citation2009). 2. Singer (Citation2009) gained wide press and much of his work discusses these ethical concerns over drones. Recent events such as the potential jus in bello violations wrought by Predator drones in Afghanistan – have received international media attention. Various human rights watchdog groups raised alarm over recent Israeli strikes in Gaza using the Predator platform supposedly against noncombatants. In the past year alone, publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Scientific American, the New York Times, and media outlets such as National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Systems, have all had substantial reports and several highly critical opinion pieces on the use of UAVs. Additionally, there are many in the United States military community itself who do not question the efficacy of UAV usage but rather have principled worries concerning their use such as those mentioned above. It is currently a 'hot topic' at professional military ethics and development conferences. 3. Occasionally, such aircraft are instead referred to as Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs). This is especially the case in present U