Once a science fiction movie idea, now they are slowly becoming reality; seen more often in everyday life. A drone is an unmanned aircraft or ship guided by remote control or onboard computers. Drones for recreational use are strictly regulated. Unless your drone is less than . 55 grams then it needs to be registered with the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA). The most recent spike of drone usage is because of recreational use. Or in other words for fun and pleasure. People use drones for things like racing, taking pictures of hard to reach places, and for other entertainment.
In fact, drones are so popular that small and large businesses are beginning to take interest in them including the military. The U. S military plans to ruin the innocence of drones and turn them into weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Drones are a valuable resource but risky and unnecessary, and they should not be integrated into the military and/or police systems. The military is using drones as weapons of mass destruction that are kept secret and hard to track unless they are used. The military has created many different types of drones from stealth drones, to all out warfare drones.
Some of their drones such as “the predator” are capable of firing hellfire missiles that have a kill radius of fifty feet and a wound radius of sixtyfive feet. The most recent issue is when the government finally identified a slender winged aircraft spotted in Afghanistan (Weinberger). A picture was released of the aircraft from a French magazine leaving aerospace experts to try and guess what it might be (Weinberger). It was not until a second clear shot of the craft was released that the Air Force finally claimed the drone as its own, giving the formal name of RQ-170 Sentinel (Weinberger).
This was yet another drone that had been made in secret with identification made only because of two lucky shots. The militaries identification of the drone ended up raising a lot more questions than before. Afghanistan having no radar defensive systems would not require such a sophisticated drone (Weinberger). This made some believe that the drone was originally created for a more sophisticated enemy such as China (Weinberger). “On November 3, 2002, the CIA used a drone to fire laser-guided Hellfire missiles at a passenger vehicle traveling in a thinly populated region of Yemen” (O’Connell).
The strike resulted in the killing of six people including an American (O’Connell). The only reason this story got out is because a rapporteur reported the strike as “a clear case of extrajudicial killing” (O’Connell). With the immense amount of destruction the large military drones create they are easy to track even with added stealth, it’s the new class of drones the military is using that concerns citizens. The military is advancing drones that could could destroy what little privacy Americans have.
The Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into the development of tiny drones inspired by biology, each equipped with video and audio equipment that can record sights and sounds” (Researchers). The ideas range from drones that look like common hummingbirds to drones that look identical to maple seeds with their natural helicopter like shape (Researchers). With technology like this there would be no such thing as privacy. It is possible to have a drone fly by your ear and you half heartedly wave it away as if it were a fly, when in reality it’s a micro sized drone spying on you.
The reason why micro-sized drones would be such a problem is because “to a drone everyone’s a suspect because drone technology makes no distinction between the law-abiding individual and the suspect. Everyone gets monitored, photographed, tracked and targeted” (Whitehead). ““Stanford Law’s Ryan Calo notes, under current law,“citizens do not enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in public, nor even on the portions of their property visible from a public vantage”” (Healy). Indeed this is true but if a drone is micro sized or close to it the police force or the military could easily infringe on that law without anyones knowledge.
If this technology was also integrated into the police systems it would completely destroy many of our rights and laws that deal with our privacy like the Fourth Amendment (Prupis). The Fourth Amendment roughly states that the average American is safe from search and seizure beyond reasonable doubt. This is one of an American’s most important amendments and is the subject of many lawsuits. However, how are you supposed to file a lawsuit on something you can’t see and that you don’t know is there? If this still doesn’t seem like such a big idea think about this.
Whether most Americans like to admit it or not they do many illegal things knowingly and unknowingly. Just the idea that when you do whatever it is your doing a drone could be sitting right behind you watching everything. Forget web cameras, you can’t cover up a drone’s camera with some tape. This truly should instill a type of fear that nothing you do is private. The military’s use of drones is unchecked and unreliable. For more than a decade the military has been using drones to assassinate alleged leaders of terrorist groups (Spurlock).
The lack of transparency of America’s foreign drone strike program is what makes the military’s drones use so worrisome . The idea that Americans are getting killed overseas by drones because they may or may not be working with terrorists is a little suspicious, especially since the government rarely releases evidence of this. Whenever the government releases information it is only because they killed someone they weren’t supposed to or because a new lawsuit is filed (Spurlock). The lack of information is a bit scary to think about when an American wants to go to a place where the U.
S doesn’t have such a good relationship like Syria or Afghanistan. The military time and time again has carried out strikes but few other than them know how many because of the complete secrecy of it all. “What’s least defensible is how we respond after killing innocents, presumably by accident. The moral thing would be to acknowledge responsibility; to apologize; to explain how it happened, and what steps are being taken to prevent the same mistake; and to compensate the victims” (Friedersdorf). This is never the case however.
Not only does the military not ever take responsibility for drone strikes they never offer explanations either (Friedersdorf). This means that anyone in your family or someone you know can be killed in some remote part of the world and the U. S would never have to tell you why. The common argument in support of drones is that they save multiple lives that would replace them either doing the reconnaissance or flying the vehicle (Murphy). This is a very good argument though not very realistic. A war cannot be fought, and most definitely not won, with drones alone; no matter how many drones are used or how sophisticated they are Sullivan.
Drones are easily shot down and eventually have to go back to a base or landing station to be repaired. It is often mentioned also that for every hour a drone spends in the sky it has to be repaired when it comes back down the same amount of time. This realistic idea highly contradicts the commonly used argument that one day drones could be on the front line instead of Americans because eventually American soldiers will have to fight. Drones have a very long way to go if the military wants them to be the face of the U. S army and the army needs a lot more money to do so.
Drones are a wondrous invention often capable of doing the unimaginable. The military is always looking for new inventions to improve the U. S’s safety and security. Though the simple fact is if the military is not willing to be responsible then drones cannot be the next big thing. Drones cause immense destruction, completely eradicate your privacy, don’t lead to saved lives, and are unregulated. So unless you want to wonder if you saw a flash of metal or not everytime you look over your shoulder wake up and recognize the changes happening before they become too fast to see.
