There you go again ck2. One of your classic comments.

We used to napalm people. Lots of "wrong people" get killed in all wars. Flying in B-17's and B-52's was pretty ugly too, we just couldn't record the carnage on video. There's probably never going to be a war where innocent people aren't killed. Precision weapons probably kill fewer people but if you want a "clean" war, I don't think that's possible.

The real solution, of course, is to avoid wars, and violence, in general. Supposedly, the world is more peaceful now than ever, even with Syria, the train station suicide bomber is Russia today, etc.

Personally, I don't want to see the US be the world police. There's a high cost in both money and American lives. Still, for the foreseeable future, the world needs to address the problems and try to solve the remaining problems. Otherwise, decades from now, people on HN will be complaining about how future weapon systems are killing innocent people.

The word 'drone' should be excised from the discussion. Whether the pilot is sitting in a trailer outside LA or in the cockpit has very little to do with morality of the rules of engagement.

The US has been repeatedly killing the wrong people in another country since before the age of robotics. The issue we need to focus on (after the issue of whether we should be fighting the war in the first place), is the rules of engagement.

For example: "Positive identification (PID) is required prior to engagement. PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target."

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/11.htm

How are operators trained to interpret "reasonable certainty"? How do we balance protection of local civilians with protection of US troops and the aims of the war? These issues are old, outside of the context of drones or even aircraft.

You act as if the alternative to drones (20 year old kids with guns) never kills the wrong person.

Yvain's essay asking "what if drones came first" is highly relevant here.

http://squid314.livejournal.com/338607.html?thread=9878703

As a human analogue to the drones, it is not unrealistic to imagine that phones, shovels, or other objects have been mistaken for guns by an observer in a tense situation (for example: a SWAT raid). Granted, one is clear visual cues that are confused by a human mind in the heat of the moment, while the other is bad quality readings. We're talking about two different implementations of the error.

This drone project could go one of two ways (ending the project is highly unlikely). The first way is upgrading the video quality, but this brings a number of issues with it such as latency (quite important in combat as any on-line gamer will tell you). The second is to provide AI to the drones... which frightens me when we can't get a voice recognition phone system to work. Google cars are just driving now after years of research (not flying, evading, identifying IEDs, identifying shovels, and engaging targets strategically on any given battle zone)... I don't expect the drones to fair better at this task because they're funded by the gov.

The only way the drone program would be pulled for a while is if the back doored encryption protocols were routinely exploited. We won't see an end to drones, or any end to proliferation at home or at war, and I'm skeptical we'll see drones get "better" any time soon.

> If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed.

A little perspective could prevent such knee-jerk reactions. The ambiguity of drone targets is still miles ahead from basically blind carpet bombing a whole area that was (and still often is) the rule for the last century or so of modern warfare.

I don't understand how we can have a the technology for a drone but we can't fly it close enough to get a good quality photograph. I am all for limiting casualties for the US, but how is it not a war crime to just kill people without 100% proof they are the enemy?

And seriously, if cell phones are going to 39 megapixels, why can't a drone send back a good photo?

Not to justify any of this business, but why on earth wouldn't they apply 'beyond reasonable doubt' in their own minds when summarily executing somebody in the first place?

But the same thing happens with soldiers on the ground too. There confusion and accidents when people are shooting at each other all the time.

That entire article could have easily been replaced with a marines perspective, a bombers perspective, or a sailors perspective.

>Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA?

Third world lives are cheaper. They are dark skinned and have different customs. They also dont value democracy. It serves them right.

/s

The asymmetry of people getting killed in your country versus people getting killed in enemy countries is as old as human history. The bedrock of international relations is killing people in other countries. That won't change. We won't become a world of pacifists anytime soon.

Given that, do drones make more mistakes than armed soldiers or bomb drops or cruise missiles? That's the relevant question. And there is good reason to believe they do. The drone operator may not have as good a view as a soldier, but also doesn't risk his own life on a false negative.

> The feed is so pixelated,...

I read that but farther down I read "but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end." seems to contradict. I understand what's meant, pixels and detail are different, but it's a poor choice of phrasing.

> If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed.

Mistakes are going to happen whatever you use. It's not clear that sticking better cameras on the things wouldn't give you enough information to make it comparable with other attack vectors.

The problem with this is that it doesn't give any context for the capabilities of other platforms. In reality it is the best we have, by far for attempting to identify friend or foe on the battlefield. When I say by far, I mean it. It is several orders of magnitude better, oh and it has a memory (DVR) so that the users can improve their capabilities.

So the whole things couches it wrong. You could have just as easily have written this:

Despite the feed often being highly pixelated, the video feeds offer far better resolution on suspected enemies than any other method, day or night, often including close quarters combat

We need an international ban on harmed US citizens

I think the innocent victims that we make today will get us on track to developing better drones with more resolution and less errors and doubt.

I imagine a perfect drone without any human controller, doing it's business by AI, actually making the world a better place.

[edit] lots of hate and naive comments. Fact remains that human progress has always come through sacrificing some of us for the greater good. Innocent people have always died and will keep dying until we get to a point where robots take over for us.

I am not being sarcastic. I stand by my opinion.