Waubonsee Community College

Killing by remote control, the ethics of an unmanned military, edited by Bradley Jay Strawser

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-259) and index

index present

non fiction

Killing by remote control

bibliography

826121169

edited by Bradley Jay Strawser

the ethics of an unmanned military

The increased military employment of remotely operated aerial vehicles, also known as drones, has raised a wide variety of important ethical questions, concerns, and challenges. Many of these have not yet received the serious scholarly examination such worries rightly demand. This volume attempts to fill that gap through sustained analysis of a wide range of specific moral issues that arise from this new form of killing by remote control. Many, for example, are troubled by the impact that killing through the mediated mechanisms of a drone half a world away has on the pilots who fly them. What happens to concepts such as bravery and courage when a war-fighter controlling a drone is never exposed to any physical danger? This dramatic shift in risk also creates conditions of extreme asymmetry between those who wage war and those they fight. What are the moral implications of such asymmetry on the military that employs such drones and the broader questions for war and a hope for peace in the world going forward? How does this technology impact the likely successes of counter-insurgency operations or humanitarian interventions? Does not such weaponry run the risk of making war too easy to wage and tempt policy makers into killing when other more difficult means should be undertaken? Killing By Remote Control directly engages all of these issues. Some essays discuss the just war tradition and explore whether the rise of drones necessitates a shift in the ways we think about the ethics of war in the broadest sense. Others scrutinize more specific uses of drones, such as their present use in what are known as "targeted killing" by the United States. The book similarly tackles the looming prospect of autonomous drones and the many serious moral misgivings such a future portends

Part I. Just war theory and the permissibility to kill by remote control : Introduction: The moral landscape of unmanned weapons / Bradley Jay Strawser -- Just war theory and remote military technology: a primer / Matthew W. Hallgarth -- Distinguishing drones: an exchange / Asa Kasher and Avery Plaw -- Part II. The ethics of drone employment : Drones and targeted killing: angels or assassins? / David Whetham -- War without virtue? / Robert Sparrow -- Robot guardians: teleoperated combat vehicles in humanitarian military intervention / Zack Beauchamp and Julian Savulescu -- Counting the dead: the proportionality of predation in Pakistan / Avery Plaw -- The Wizard of Oz goes to war: unmanned systems in counterinsurgency / Rebecca J. Johnson -- Killing them safely: extreme asymmetry and its discontents / Uwe Steinhoff -- Part III. Autonomous drones and the future of unmanned weaponry : Engineering, ethics & industry: the moral challenges of lethal autonomy / George R. Lucas, Jr -- Autonomous weapons pose no moral problem / Stephen Kershnar