IS REMOTE WARFARE MORAL?

An exploration of the morality of armed drones by an Air Force officer who has piloted Predator strikes and instructed other service members in their use.

Chapa, the Air Force’s chief artificial intelligence ethics officer, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford, is concerned with the ethics of a war fighter who takes enemy lives without being exposed to danger. It is a common conception that “war is defined by the courage of, risk to, and potential sacrifice by combatants.” By this criterion, how can someone who strikes down an opponent from thousands of miles away be a legitimate warrior rather than an assassin? “Though war ought to remain a dreadful last resort,” writes the author, “remote weapons threaten to make warfare commonplace.” Chapa focuses on the “humanity” of drone crews, who are faced with life-and-death decisions on an almost daily basis. He divides the ethical considerations into the strategic—on the level of national policy—and the tactical, involving individual crew members. He traces a significant change in the former to the aftermath of 9/11, when the focus of policy changed from state-level actors to individual terrorists and their leaders. Such counterterrorism missions were not suited to heavy bombers or artillery barrages. The rise of the Predator drone (and subsequent drone models) was the direct result of a war that didn’t take place on a traditional battlefield. Chapa presents a number of stories of drone pilots who disobey orders, noting, for example, a child in the field of fire or unusual behavior on the parts of people in nearby areas. Though general readers may find Chapa’s account dry and occasionally abstract, even those who have already made up their minds about the morality of war will find a challenging examination of questions to which we are still developing answers.

A hard-nosed look at the morality of drone warfare from a writer who has seen it close-up.