The Ethics of Drone Warfare

S. Krishnan∗

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or ‘drone’ is

increasingly the weapon of choice in America’s military
operations. Moral ambiguity about US drone policy arises from
the gray area between law enforcement and warfare. The ‘law
enforcement’ approach seeks to foresee threats and retaliate
for attacks. It polices and reacts within the traditional model of
defense and war. On the other hand, a ‘war against terror’ has no
endpoint, and its theatre of operations can be anywhere on earth.
Drones are the equivalent of the robotic armies discussed
in so many science fiction novels. While drones indeed do
a great service and possible justice by protecting the lives
of citizens and preventing unnecessary deaths of thousands
of soldiers, the long-term impact of this approach is not yet
well understood. Popular culture uses terms like “Convenient
Killing”, “Death by Remote Control”, “PlayStation Mentality”
and “Death Machine” to describe drone operations.
UAVs – both weaponised and non-weaponised – are used
for multiple civilian and military purposes. The discussion in

* Dr. Krishnan is Assistant Professor in Seedling School of Lawn and

Governance, Jaipur National University, Rajasthan.
S. Krishnan

this paper refers only to weaponised UAVs used for military

purposes. The military use of drones by the US has been
attracting increasing attention and controversy mostly due
to their use in the “War on Terror.” However, drones are in
use across a number of industrialised and non-industrialised
nations and their proliferation is likely to increase.
The use of drones in warfare has several obvious
advantages. Being unmanned, they involve no direct risk to
pilots compared to manned aerial vehicles. They also have
operational advantages, such as being able to stay airborne in-
theater for long periods of time without requiring refueling or
inducing pilot fatigue. Also, unlike manned aircraft, decisions
regarding the use of their weapons can involve multiple parties
in the chain of command. However, the use of drones has also
raised questions regarding their potential impact on both the
operators and the targeted communities.
Drone operations require flexibility and reach, beyond
the traditional parameters of war. And so, the strongest
ethical argument in the favour of drone strikes boils down to
efficiency. The virtues of US drone policy include precision
targeting, limited collateral damage, and preventing troops
from going into full combat mode and being killed. But each
of these virtues has its limits. We know of targeting errors,
tragic accounts of unintentional killing of innocent bystanders,
and the fear that drones turn foreign public opinion against the
United States. When the stakes are so high, is the efficiency
argument good enough? Of particular ethical concern are
the questions of due process and accountability. Who makes
decisions about who the targets will be and whether to execute
a strike? What is the procedure for those calls, and what is the
degree of oversight? Again, we see blurred lines.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

Early in J.J. Abrams film Star Trek: Into Darkness

(Paramount 2013), Captain Kirk is faced with a moral dilemma.
Should he follow orders and fire a missile into enemy territory
from afar to kill a known terrorist, or should he risk sending his
men into foreign territory to try to capture him? This choice is
no accident. It is an allegory about the morality of the drone
war, and the dilemmas it poses are those we face today. As in
Star Trek, we have this amazing technology that can apparently
be employed with little risk to our own forces, but its improper
use poses an enormous risk to our way of life. How can we
be certain of identifying an appropriate target? Is it enough
to simply trust high government officials? What is the right
way to use such weapons? In what follows, these questions are
illuminated by ethics and the just war tradition, to clearly bring
out what is missing in the US administration’s approach to the
use of drones.
For the US (and other states that have the capability)
drones have become today’s weapon of choice in counter-
terrorism operations. Over the next 40 years or so, they are
expected largely to replace piloted aircraft. In nine years, the
Pentagon has increased its drone fleet 13-fold and the generals
are spending at least roughly USD 5 billion a year adding to it.
The frequency of drone strikes on al Qaeda and other terrorists
that lurk in Pakistan’s tribal areas of the north-west rose under
former US President Barack Obama to one every four days,
compared with one every 40 during George Bush’s Presidency.
In Libya, NATO commanders turned to drones when their fast
jets failed to find and hit Muammar Qaddafi’s mobile rocket
launchers.1

1 “Drones and the man”, The Economist, June 30, 2011, https://www.econom
ist.com/leaders/2011/07/30/drones-and-the-man.

53
S. Krishnan

Impact of Drones on Targeted Societies

Partly due to the classified nature of drone missions, the
reluctance of civilian victims to talk for fear of retribution,
and problems with access to affected areas, there are very
few empirical studies on the impact of drone warfare on
civilians, and most of the information is from reports by
Non-Governmental Organisation and academic legal centers.
Similarly, it is not always clear whether the emotional impact
of drone strikes differs from the impact of manned aircraft.
Increased anxiety and trauma are common responses for
individuals living in warzones. Although speculations for and
against the concern that drone attacks might result in greater
trauma, may be reasonable. However, there is a dearth of sound,
objective empirical research on this issue. This observation is
not intended to minimise the emotional and physical impact on
individuals living in areas under drone surveillance and attack,
but to note the lack of evidence that drones have a unique
impact.

Competing narratives
A key premise supporting the use of drones is that they
are more precise than typical aerial bombings and thus,
cause minimal collateral damage. Yet, there continues to be
disagreement as to how accurate these pinpoint assaults are,
and how many civilians are killed.2 Bureau of Investigative

2 A. R. Deri, “Costless” war: American and Pakistani reactions to the U.S.

Drone war”, Intersect, Volume 5, 2012, pp.1–16; James Cavallaro, et.al.,
“Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US
Drone Practices in Pakistan”, Stanford International Human Rights and
Conflict Resolution Clinic, Stanford Law School; New York: NYU School
of Law, Global Justice Clinic, September 25, 2012, https://law.stanford.edu/
publications/living-under-drones-death-injury-and-trauma-to-civilians-
from-us-drone-practices-in-pakistan/.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

Journalism3 noted that 344 drone strikes have killed between

2562 and 3325 people in Pakistan between 2004 and 2012.
Of these totals, 474 to 881 have been identified as civilians,
including 176 children.4 U.N. Special Rapporteur, Ben
Emmerson projected 450 civilian casualties in Pakistan, Yemen
and Afghanistan.5 Data from the New American Foundation
(2017) suggest that civilians make up approximately 10 per cent
of the casualties in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.6 The
Long War Journal (2017) likewise finds relatively lower rates
of civilian casualties due to drone strikes. However, lack of
clear official delineation on whether drones or manned aircraft
were used in several strikes makes comparisons difficult.7
One of the most salient psychological effects civilians
describe is the pervasive sense of anticipatory apprehension
of impending drone strikes.8 Drones can hover for hours
over targeted areas as part of constant surveillance missions.
Civilians describe feeling severely stressed, depressed,
anxious, and being constantly reminded of deaths in prior

3 Sarah Leo, "A Picture of War: The CIA's Drone Strikes in Pakistan", Bureau
of Investigative Journalism, 2012, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/
stories/2012-09-10/a-picture-of-war-the-cias-drone-strikes-in-pakistan.
4 Speaker’s Briefing, “Psychological terror? Lessons from Pakistan and
Yemen”, Washington D.C., 2013, https://appgondrones.files.wordpress.
com/2013/03/speakers-briefings-05-03-2013.pdf.
5 “U.N. expert urges U.S. to reveal civilian drone deaths”, The Japan Times,
October 19, 2013, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/10/19/world/
u-n-expert-urges-u-s-to-reveal-civilian-drone-deaths/#.XSLzjugzY2w.
6 New American Foundation, “International Security Data Site”, 2017, http://
securitydata.newamerica.net/.
7 “Pakistan Strikes”, Long War Journal, 2017, http://www. longwarjournal.
org/pakistan-strikes/.
8 “Will I be next? US drone strikes in Pakistan”, Amnesty International,
October 21, 2013, https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/willi-be-next-us-
drone-strikes-in-pakistan/.

55
S. Krishnan

strikes.9 Interviewees also describe reactions reminiscent of

post-traumatic stress such as emotional breakdowns, anger
outbursts, exaggerated startle responses, fleeing indoors and
hiding when seeing or hearing drones, fainting, poor appetite,
psychosomatic symptoms, insomnia, and startled awakening
at night with hallucinations about drones. Patients -particularly
those who are later found to have been victims or had relatives
who were victims of drone strikes- exhibit high rates of
post-traumatic stress symptoms and various psychosomatic
complaints associated with actual strikes and apprehension of
future attacks.
These fears cripple their daily activities, such as leaving
their homes, going for work, attending social functions, and
sending children to school. Dr. Peter Schaapveld, a clinical
and forensic psychologist, reported from Yemen that most
of the people he surveyed manifested clinical levels of Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Children were
particularly affected, and reported nightmares of dead people,
fear of going to sleep, and fears they will be harmed by drones,
he added.10
Unable to predict when, why and where the next strike will
come, they describe helplessness, significant lack of control,
and powerlessness to escape, avoid, or protect themselves
from drone strikes.11 Civilians in targeted areas are poor,
experience travel restrictions by local militias or militaries,
9 Ibid; “The Civilian Impact of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered
Questions”, Center for Civilians in Conflict and Human Rights Clinic,
Columbia Law School, September 11, 2012, http:// civiliansinconflict.org/
uploads/files/publications/The_Civilian_ Impact_of_Drones_w_cover.pdf.
10 “Drones in Yemen causing a ‘psychological emergency’, psychologist
tells MPs”, Reprieve, March 5, 2013, http://www.reprieve. org.uk/
press/2013_03_05_drones_in_yemen_psychological_ emergency/.
11 “The Civilian Impact of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered
Questions”, op.cit.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

live under curfews, or are subjected to a range of other factors

that limit their mobility and ability to flee to safer locations.12
Two aspects that may exacerbate psychological problems
are the US’s reported policy of conducting signature strikes
and double taps. A signature strike, rather than targeting
an individual, is based on analysis of signature behaviour
associated with suspicious or militant activities.13 That these
strikes are not based on a specific militant’s identity serves to
heighten their unpredictability.
Although the definition of who is a combatant and therefore
a legitimate target of strikes is often discussed in the context
of policy and legality, it is also important in understanding the
impact of drone strikes on targeted communities.
In Pakistan, many fighters live among their families or
in joint family compounds. Although they may technically
qualify as combatants, the networks of civilians within which
they are embedded are similarly affected by drone strikes.
Many of the affected communities also have strong cultural
customs regarding hospitality like not denying guests refuge
and food regardless of their background.14 Civilians also
describe feelings of helplessness at being wedged between US
drones and the militants amidst them.15

12 Metin Basoglu, “Drone strikes or mass torture? – A learning theory

analysis”, November 25, 2012, http://metinbasoglu.wordpress.com/2012/
11/25/drone-warfare-or-mass-torture-a-learning-theory-analysis/.
13 “Will I be next? US drone strikes in Pakistan”, op.cit.
14 Palwasha L. Kakar, “Tribal Law of Pashtunwali and Women’s Legislative
Authority”, Afghan Legal History Project Papers Series, Harvard Law
School, Islamic Legal Studies, 2003, http://www.law.harvard.edu/
programs/ilsp/research/kakar.pdf.
15 “Between drones and Al-Qaeda: The civilian cost of US targeted killings in
Yemen”, Human Rights Watch, October, 2013, http://www. hrw.org/sites/
default/files/reports/yemen1013_ForUpload_1.pdf.

57
S. Krishnan

Warfare theorists believe constant drone surveillance sows

distrust and paranoia amongst terrorist groups16, though it appears
this paranoia affects larger communities as well. Civilians may
seek to cope with the ambiguous yet constant possibility of
death by trying to create a system of understanding, such as
explanations for how and why strikes happen. For example,
some communities in Waziristan area of Pakistan believe
the US identifies drone strike targets through chips (small
electronic tracking devices). Many Waziris believe the Pakistani
government and/or the CIA enlists help from local informants
who plant these chips in targets’ homes and cars. Consequently,
community members either fear being marked by a chip, or fear
the Taliban will suspect them of being informants and execute
them. These beliefs appear to fuel suspicion between neighbours
who suspect each other of being informants or see drone strikes
as extracting revenge over a local dispute. Even in absence of
this narrative about chips, when civilians are mistakenly struck,
the fabled precision of drones may lead others to stigmatise
them and suspect them of being related to militants. The victims
then bear the dual burden of being victimised by the drones and
the stigma and pressure to exonerate their name.17
Children are particularly vulnerable to disruptions and
losses caused by war, including loss of homes, injuries from
strikes and subsequent difficulty accessing medical care,
PTSD and other psychological symptoms, and being deprived
of the opportunity to play with friends for fear of assembling
in large groups.18 The loss of a male head of household or a
16 Andrew Callam, “Drone Wars: Armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles”,
International Affairs Review, Volume 18, Number 3, 2010.
17 “The Civilian Impact of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered
Questions”, op.cit.
18 “Drones: No safe place for children”, Reprieve, March, 2013, http://www.
reprieve.org.uk/media/downloads/2013_04_04_PUB_drones_no_safe_
place_for_children.pdf.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

female caregiver often means older children are removed from

school prematurely to assume those roles.19 Some parents have
also stopped sending their children to school for fear over
their safety. As for women, mothers report feeling helpless at
the prospect of their children being recruited by the Taliban,
especially since they have limited ability to leave the house and
thus monitor their children. Because larger decisions are made
by men, they often have no choice if their older male children
or other male relatives bring home Taliban members as guests,
which leaves them caught between concern for family and fear
they will be struck by drones because of guests they did not
invite. Traditionally, women in targeted communities have
limited control over financial resources and difficulty accessing
government resources or income-generating activities.
Customs dictating that widowed women live with other male
family members may leave them especially vulnerable and
prone to harm and exploitation.20 That these issues, however,
may be common to war theaters, not necessarily unique or
more prevalent in areas targeted by drone strikes.

Ethical Aspects
Not everyone feels comfortable with all this. The increasing
deployment of military drones raises a wide variety of important
ethical questions, concerns, and challenges. Critics say the
legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of drones have
been neglected. Some of those concerns may be exaggerated,
but others need to be taken seriously, particularly if, as seems
certain, armies will increasingly fight with machines, not men.

19 Ibid.
20 “Civilian harm and conflict in Northwestern Pakistan”, Center for Civilians
in Conflict, October 20, 2010, https://civiliansinconflict.org/publications/
research/civilian-harm-conflict-northwest-pakistan/.

59
S. Krishnan

What are the moral implications of such asymmetry on

armies that employ drones and the broader questions for war and
a hope for peace in the world? How does this technology impact
counter-insurgency operations or humanitarian interventions?
Does such weaponry run the risk of making war too easy to
wage, tempting policy makers into killing without exploring
other more difficult means to end hostilities?
There are certainly good reasons for using more drones.
Cruise missiles and jet fighters work against fixed targets,
concentrations of forces or heavy weapons on open ground.
They are not as useful, however, in today’s “wars among the
people” fought against insurgents and terrorists. Drones such
as the Predator and the Reaper can loiter, maintaining what one
former CIA Director described as an “unblinking stare” over
a chosen area for up to 18 hours.21 With the drone’s ability
to watch and wait, its “pilot”, often thousands of miles away,
can patiently choose the best moment to fire its missiles, both
increasing the chances of success and minimising the harm to
civilians.
From the start just war theorists have been occupied with
two central questions: when it was appropriate to go to war (jus
ad bellum) and how the war should be fought (jus in bello).
There is already an emphasis on both these questions in Cicero’s
On The Commonwealth, and the theory of jus ad bellum was
already well developed early in the just war tradition.22
The four just war principles (Necessity, Distinction,
Proportionality and Humanity) cited by the US Justice

21 “Drones and the man”, op.cit.

22 Cicero, On the Commonwealth in: Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations Also,
Treatises on the Nature of the Gods, And On the Commonwealth, 2005
and Cicero, 1913, De Officiis, tr. By Walter Miller, Loeb edn., Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, I, xi, 33-36.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

Department’s “white paper”23, echo those cited by President

Obama in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in
2009. “A war can only be considered just if it is waged as a
last resort, in self-defense, if the force used is proportional,
and pains are made to spare civilians from violence wherever
possible,” he said.24
That makes the drone the ideal weapon for tracking down
and killing terrorists, particularly in places like the (erstwhile)
FATA in Pakistan where other options, such as sending in
special forces, are not politically feasible. Claims in Pakistan
that American drone attacks have killed thousands of civilians
are undermined by research carried out by the New America
Foundation, a think-tank, (as reported in July, 2011) suggesting
that in the seven years since 2004, 80 per cent of the fatalities
have been militants. The increasing accuracy of these attacks
and the evidence that they have helped to weaken al Qaeda
encourage some to believe (not least in the White House) that
counter-terrorist campaigns in the future can be waged without
the sacrifice of blood and treasure, that goes with putting
thousands of boots on the ground.
There is also considerable controversy, much of it ethical,
about the use of drones for the “targeted killings” of individuals
outside the context of a conventional war, or an armed conflict
that at least starts as a struggle between two states. Pakistan
is one such example. Drones are ethically interesting, in part,
because the case for drones is often made in moral terms.

23 The memo, or “White Paper”, http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/secti

ons/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf.
24 Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10,
2009, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obam
a-lecture_en.html.

61
S. Krishnan

The development of military technology often poses new

and difficult moral problems, and drones are no exception. In
investigating the ethics of new military technology, it is helpful
to distinguish between two sorts of moral problems it may
create. The first sort, ordinary problems, may be addressed or
resolved by a modification in the way in which the technology is
configured or the military activities involving it are conducted.
The second sort, extraordinary problems, are problems so
severe that they may require that the technology not be used at
all. This is obviously a rough distinction, given that there is no
sharp line between engaging in an activity in a modified way
and not engaging in it at all. Some of the moral problems raised
by drones are ordinary, but some are extraordinary.

Use of Drones in the War on Terror

The United States, and the West in general, is in a global
struggle with Islamic insurgents, a struggle often referred to in
the US as the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Conventional
wars, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, are part of the
GWOT, but much of the GWOT, the more controversial parts,
takes place outside of conventional war. I will use the term
GWOT idiosyncratically to refer to those parts of this struggle
that are outside of a conventional war. One question we need
to consider is whether the GWOT, understood in this way, is a
war at all. The GWOT is an asymmetric conflict. Asymmetric
conflicts, in general, are those in which one of the sides has
great relative advantage over the other. There are many forms
of asymmetry, but the kind I am concerned with is one in
which one side has a great military advantage in terms of its
technology and/or the size of its military forces.25

25 The term asymmetric war is sometimes used in a more limited way, for
example, to refer to the tactical asymmetry of insurgent groups fighting
an established military power in the light of their ability to employ

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

This form of asymmetry characterises most of the wars

fought by the US and other Western powers in the past few
decades. This is even more the case with the GWOT, where the
asymmetry is extreme. Drones are, in fact, especially useful in
fighting such asymmetric wars. Because of their surveillance
capabilities, they are good at tracking and attacking individuals.
Other advanced technologies, such as cruise missiles, are good
at attacking and hitting fixed targets, mainly infrastructure, but
insurgent groups often have little in the way of infrastructure.
Their ability to inflict harm resides in their person, which is
what drones are good at targeting. As the technology of drones
matured during the GWOT, the US has come to rely increasingly
on them to fight its asymmetric battles, and an increasing portion
of US military aviation is devoted to them. The cruise missile
is a paradigmatic weapon of the Cold War, while the drone is a
paradigmatic weapon of the post Cold War world.

Objections to use of Drones

Two of the most commonly heard objections to drones are
more strategic than moral. They are primarily prudential because
they concern not what drones do to their victims, but what they
do to the interests of their users. The fundamental argument
appears to be that the use of drones is counterproductive.
The first objection is that the use of drones by the US
against Islamic insurgents is counterproductive because, as it is
crudely put, drones produce more terrorists than they kill, due to
the animosity they generate in local populations.26 Concerning

unconventional tactics such as guerrilla warfare or terrorism. See Rodin,

David, “The Ethics of Asymmetric War,” in Richard Sorabji and David
Rodin eds., The Ethics of War, Ashgate, Hants, 2006, p. 154.
26 There is some empirical evidence that drone use does increase the number
of insurgents. See Zenko, Micah, “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,”
Council on Foreign Relations Special Report #65, January 2013, https://
www.cfr.org/report/reforming-us-drone-strike-policies.
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S. Krishnan

the civilians killed by drones, “every one of these dead non-

combatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for
revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has
grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.”27
If defeat of the insurgents in Pakistan and elsewhere requires
that their numbers be reduced and that the local population be
turned against them, drone attacks will not succeed.
The second strategic objection is that the development
and use of drones by the US is counterproductive because
it encourages the development of military capabilities and
attitudes among other states that are, in the long run, inimical
to US interests. First, it will lead to the development and
deployment of drones by other states, some of whom will be
opponents of the US. As two journalists note: “With Russia
and China watching, the United States has set an international
precedent for sending drones over borders to kill enemies.”28
Moreover, it is argued that the deployment of drones by
other states, whether friendly to US interests or not, will lead to
a harmful climate of military instability. In addition, the use of
drones by the US for target killings is widely perceived in the
rest of the world as a flouting of international law.29 The role of
international law in the criticism of drone use shall be discussed
later in the article, but the point here is, respect for international
law depends on a sense of reciprocity among states, and the
perception by the rest of the world that the greatest military
power is ignoring international law leading other states to do

27 David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum, “Death From Above,

Outrage Down Below”, The New York Times, May 17, 2009.
28 Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s
Principles and Will,” The New York Times, May 29, 2012.
29 Steven Ratner, “Predator and Prey: Seizing and Killing Suspected Terrorists
Abroad,” Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 15, Number 3, 2007, pp.
251-275.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

so as well, resulting in a sort of international lawlessness that

harms the interests of everyone. The use of drones may make
everyone worse off. We have seen this dynamics before in the
development of nuclear weapons technology during the Cold
War.
To put it briefly, the use of drones creates “blowback” that
does more harm than good to US security. These objections
do have some moral import because, if the use of drones is
counterproductive, it will be a great waste of lives and resources.
Were the GWOT a war in the morally relevant sense, the moral
objections to this waste would be represented by its failure to
satisfy the jus ad bellum principle that a war is just only if it
has a reasonable chance of success.30
Supporters claim that drones are a morally valuable
military technology, and three virtues of drones are often
cited. First, drones have a greater capacity for precision, thus
potentially reducing “collateral damage” and better adhering,
when used in war, to the important in bello principles of
discrimination and proportionality. Bradley Strawser claims
that “UAV technology actually increases a pilot’s ability to
discriminate.”31 Drone operators can observe a potential target
for hours before deciding whether to attack, making them
better able to avoid civilian casualties. Kenneth Anderson
makes a similar point, claiming that drone use allows us to
avoid the “proportionality trap,” a trade-off characteristic of
military actions where attacks that provide greater military

30 David Luban, “What Would Augustine Do?”, Boston Review, July 6, 2012,
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.3/david_luban_obama_drones_just_
war_theory.php.
31 Bradley Jay Strawser, “Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited
Aerial Vehicles,” Journal of Military Ethics, Volume 9, Number 4, 2010,
pp. 342-368.

65
S. Krishnan

advantage also put civilians increasingly at risk and attacks

providing more protection to civilians achieve less military
advantage.32 Drones break this linkage, achieving increased
military advantage while also providing greater protection for
civilians. They are a win-win.
Second, the use of drones poses no risk to the pilots,
allowing military operations to better realise the principle of
force protection. Force protection is not generally recognised as
an in bello principle, but, other things being equal, it certainly is
morally preferable to reduce one’s own combatant casualties.
Strawser also argues that drones have this virtue. He casts it
in terms of what he calls the “principle of unnecessary risk”,
according to which military leaders have a moral obligation
when pursing a legitimate military goal to choose a means, if
available and just, that does not pose a risk to their combatants.33
Third, the use of drones may avoid the need to wage a full-
scale war.34 This is related to the first virtue. Just as it would
be preferable to use drones instead of troops for a particular
mission in a conventional war, so it would be preferable to use
drones instead of fighting a full-scale war involving boots on the
ground, assuming these are exhaustive alternatives. Speaking
of “force-short-of-war,” a category of military force in which
he would presumably include drone use outside of a full-scale
war, Michael Walzer notes that the use of such force avoids the

32 Anderson, Kenneth, “Efficiency in Bello and ad Bellum: Targeted Killings

Through Drone Warfare”, in Claire Finkelstein, et.al., eds., Targeted Killings:
Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, Oxford University Press, 2012,
pp. 374-399.
33 Bradley Jay Strawser, op.cit.
34 Daniel Brunstetter and Megan Braun, “The Implication of Drones on the
Just War Tradition,” Ethics and International Affairs, Volume 25, Number
3, 2011, pp. 337-358.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

“unpredictable and often catastrophic consequences” of war.35

If a state can avoid a need to go to war by using drones to
obviate the threat it faces, it certainly is a moral benefit to have
drone technology available for that purpose.
These three moral claims about drones represent the idea
that the use of drones is morally preferable to other methods,
such as traditional air strikes or the use of combatants, whether
in special operations or a full-scale war. First, air strikes are
less precise and the use of combatants on the ground generally
leads to a greater number of civilian casualties. “Many military
experts support the government’s claim that using conventional
airstrikes or troops on the ground to attack terrorist compounds
would be likely to kill far more civilians than drones have.”36
Second, of course, boots on the ground, and to a lesser extent
traditional airstrike, puts one’s combatants at risk.
Considering that drone use for targeted killings occurs
outside the context of conventional war, which is morally
unacceptable, this is a claim about the paradigm under which
drone use should be considered, that it should be considered as
policing rather than a war. The GWOT is not a war.
Of course, the response to this theory is that the GWOT is
in fact a war, a “war on terror,” fought on a global battlefield,
so that any drone strike against combatants in this war is
permissible.37 The government asserts that the GWOT is a war:
“The United States is in an armed conflict with al Qaeda and
its associated forces.”38

35 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, (fourth edition), Basic Books, New
York, 2006, p. xiv.
36 Scott Shane, “Report Cites High Civilian Toll in Pakistan Drone Strikes,”
The New York Times (blog), September 25, 2012.
37 Kenneth Anderson, op. cit.
38 Department of Justice White Paper: Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation
Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of

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S. Krishnan

But the question is whether the GWOT is a war at all. The

question of the justice of the war is a different and secondary
question. The GWOT departs from the standard case of war to
such an extent that it is implausible to claim that it is anything
other than war in an analogical sense (as in the “war on
crime”). Crime is not an organisation, and it is without spatial
or temporal bounds, as it occurs everywhere and presumably
will never come to an end.
A number of points support this. First, it is a self-
proclaimed fight not primarily against an organisation, as in
the standard case of war, but against a tactic, that is, terror.39
Perhaps in response to this concern, the Obama Administration
has replaced “GWOT” with the phrase “armed conflict with
al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces.”40 But the new
phrase makes the point that the US sees itself as battling not
a single organisation or even a set of organisations, but, given
the elasticity in the term “associated,” an open-ended list of
organisations, effectively, all alleged practitioners of terror.
Second, the GWOT, unlike a standard case of war, has no
temporal and spatial bounds, as terror will never be completely
eliminated and the struggle against it has no spatial boundaries,
no fixed geographical location.
One other difference between the GWOT and the standard
case of war is that each relates differently to the notion of state
sovereignty. The standard case of war is conceptualised in terms

Al-Qa’ida or an Associated Force, http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/

sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf.
39 Alex Bellamy, “Is the War on Terror Just?” International Relations, Volume
19, Number 3, 2005, pp. 275-296.
40 O’Connell, Mary Ellen, “Lawful Use of Combat Drones,” testimony
before the House of Representatives subcommittee on National Security
and Foreign Affairs, April 28, 2010, http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2010_
hr/042810oconnell.pdf.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

of sovereignty—it is fought to attack sovereignty or to defend

sovereignty. But the GWOT, conceived as a global struggle,
considers sovereignty only from a practical perspective. It sees
itself as attacking terrorists wherever they are, which is always
in some sovereign state, but the sovereignty of that state is
immaterial to the justification for the strike.41 The US may seek
permission from a state for a strike, but it does so merely as a
practical matter to facilitate its activities, not because it has an
obligation to do so.
Drone strikes have occurred in conventional war zones,
for example, in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. But many drone
strikes for targeted killings, over three hundred in the past years,
have occurred elsewhere, in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia,
where the US is not a belligerent in a conventional war.42 This
difference in US policy is marked by the fact that, while drone
strikes in recognised war zones are conducted by the Air
Force, strikes outside recognised war zones are conducted by
the Central Intelligence Agency- CIA, a civilian organisation.43
A commentator notes, “just how radical it is [that] for the first
time in history, a civilian intelligence agency is using robots
to carry out a military mission, selecting people for killing in a
country where the United States is not officially at war.”44 It is

41 William Saletan, “Editors for Predators,” Slate, February 8, 2013, https://

slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/02/drones-law-and-imminent-attacks-
how-the-u-s-redefines-legal-terms-to-justify-targeted-killing.html.
42 Olivia Ward, “‘Earthlings, there is no place to hide’-drone strikes blur the
laws of war”, The Star, February 2, 2013, https://www.thestar.com/news/
world/2013/02/03/earthlings_there_is_no_place_to_hide_drone_strikes_
blur_the_laws_of_war.html.
43 Jane Mayer, “The Predator War,” The New Yorker, October 26, 2009,
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/26/the-predator-war.
44 Scott Shane, “C.I.A. To Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan”,
The New York Times, December 3, 2009, https://www.nytimes.
com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04drones.html?mtrref=www.google.
com&gwh=2BBB0590F9B67917F109223CA91CF4DD&gwt=pay.

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S. Krishnan

odd that, while the US claims that the GWOT is a war, it assigns
the operations of that war to a civilian organisation. As Mary
Ellen O’Connell notes: “Only members of the United States
armed forces have the combatant’s privilege to use lethal force
without facing prosecution. CIA operatives are not trained in
the law of armed conflict.”45 Indeed, in this regard, the US
policy faces a dilemma. Either a targeted killing by drone in
Pakistan, say, is an act of war (as the US claims) or it is not.
If it is an act of war, it is not morally acceptable because the
rules of war require that acts of war be undertaken by military
rather than civilian personnel. If it is not an act of war, then it is
morally unacceptable because it falls under the policing rather
the warring paradigm and does not show the proper respect for
human rights.
In addition to these conceptual and moral objections to
the claim that GWOT is a war in the proper sense, there are
also objections from International Law. These are developed
by Philip Alston.46 He argues that according to International
Humanitarian Law (IHL), there are two conditions that must
be satisfied for hostilities to constitute an armed conflict
(that is, a war). One is that an armed conflict is a struggle
between sufficiently organised and structured “parties.” But
“al Qaeda and other alleged ‘associated’ groups are often only
45 Mary Ellen O’Connell, “Lawful Use.” In dissent, however, Philip Aston,
United Nations Special Rapporteur concerned with targeted killings,
avers that International Humanitarian Law does not prohibit non-military
personnel from engaging in conflict. “Report of the Special Rapporteur
on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Execution: Study on Targeted
Killings,” United Nations Human Rights Council, http://www2.ohchr.org/
english/ bodies/hrcouncil/docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf, paragra
phs 70-71.
46 Altston was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial,
Summary or Arbitrary Executions. “Study on targeted killings”, United
Nations, May 28, 2010, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/
docs/14session/A.HRC.14.24.Add6.pdf.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

loosely linked, if at all,” so they “cannot constitute a ‘party’

as required by IHL—although they can be criminals.”47 The
other condition is that there must be a minimum threshold of
intensity and extent to the violence perpetrated by each party,
and it is questionable whether the violence perpetrated by al
Qaeda and associates rises to the level essential for an armed
clash to exist. Alston thus concludes that taken cumulatively,
these reasons make it challenging for the US to demonstrate
that it is at war with the terrorists.
Furthermore, the victims of targeted killings are dispatched
without any judicial determination of guilt for alleged harmful
conduct. These strikes must be governed by international
human rights law. If targeted killings by drone were considered
under the warring paradigm, they might be justified by the
status of the victims as combatants under jus in bello or IHL.
But without war, just war theory can do no justificatory work.
War may legitimate military violence, but outside the context
of a war, military violence is simply violence, and lacking in
moral justification. Terrorism is not warfare but crime, and its
perpetrators should be treated as criminals, not combatants.
This means that they cannot be subject to targeted killing. Under
the human rights paradigm, these killings are extrajudicial and
amount to assassination.
Describing himself as an ex-CIA official, Phillip Mudd
writing in Newsweek acknowledges there are ethical issues
arising from the use of drones but argues that in relation to war
zones they are “misdirected”.48 In war zones, he writes, drones

47 See also Craig Martin, “Going Medieval: Targeted Killing, Self-Defense

and the jus Ad Bellum Regime,” in Claire Finkelstein, et.al., eds., Targeted
Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, OUP, 2012, pp. 223-
252.
48 “The Morality of Drone Warfare”, Global Research, August 19, 2012,
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-morality-of-drone-warfare/32412.

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S. Krishnan

are just another “delivery tool” to apply lethal force, like a rifle
or a piece of artillery. The point he clearly misses though is that
unlike the rifleman or tank driver, the drone operator is sitting
safely thousands of miles away, and it is this very distance–
both physical and psychological – that is a key ethical issue.
Those who defend drone strikes outside conventional wars
have an added argument to justify these strikes. They claim
that the strikes are an exercise of a right of national self-
defense. For example, the US claims: “Targeting a member of
an enemy force who poses an imminent threat of violent attack
to the United States is not unlawful. It is a lawful act of self-
defense.”49 This claim is interesting because it offers what is
in effect a third way to justify drones strikes, an effort to deny
that the paradigms of policing and warring are exhaustive. In
this spirit, defenders of drones have appealed to a principle of
national self-defense. This principle can be seen as a hybrid
between the two paradigms. Like the warring paradigm, it
permits the killing of individuals without judicial process, and
like the policing paradigm, it is not inconsistent with human
rights.
The national self-defense justification is based on a domestic
analogy with individual self-defense, but the government’s
understanding of it may be based on confusion between the
just war categories of jus ad bellum and jus in bello.50 The
initiation of war under jus ad bellum can be justified on the

49 Department of Justice White Paper, “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation

Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of
Al-Qa’ida or An Associated Force”, November 8, 2011, https://fas.org/irp/
eprint/doj-lethal.pdf.
50 Gregory S. McNeal, “Six Key Points Regarding the DOJ Targeted Killing
White Paper,” Forbes, February 5, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/
gregorymcneal/2013/02/05/six-key-points-regarding-the-doj-targeted-
killing-white-paper/.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

basis of national self-defense. But once war is underway and

jus in bello becomes relevant, the killing of enemy combatants
is justified not on the grounds of self-defense (which would be
a matter of conduct), but simply because they are combatants
(a matter of status). This confusion can be seen when the
government justifies targeted killings as based on the inherent
right to national self-defense recognised in international law
(for example, U.N. Charter Article 51). But Article 51 in a
matter of jus ad bellum concerning the justification of going
to war, not an in bello justification of killing individuals. If
the national self-defense justification is to succeed, it must
be seen as independent of an in bello justification, since the
military's struggle with the insurgents is not a war. Were it not
independent, it would not be a third way. But there is some
indication that the government perceives the two justifications
as independent, like when it speaks of a drone strike as “a lethal
operation against an enemy leader undertaken in national self-
defense or during an armed conflict.”51
In any case, the applicability of a principle of self-defense
requires a showing of imminence and necessity. In domestic
society, one can take the life of another in self-defense only
if that person poses an immediate risk to one’s own life
(imminence) that cannot be avoided in other ways (necessity).
So understood, national self-defense fails as a justification
for the targeted killings. The claim would have to be that the
victims of targeted killings pose an imminent risk of attack
against the US, which is implausible. Indeed, the government
claims that it is justified in killing “an operational leader”
who presents “an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against
the United States.” But how does it understand such attacks as

51 Taking the “or” as exclusive. Department of Justice White Paper; emphasis

added. See also Carig Martin, op. cit., pp. 225-26.

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S. Krishnan

imminent? Defense against the insurgents “demands a broader

concept of imminence” because the targets are “continually
planning terror attacks” and there may be “only a limited
window of opportunity” in which they can be attacked.52 But
this is an unacceptable expansion of the notion of imminence,
which completely strips it of its role in providing a self-defense
justification. It is like the purported justification for preventive
war at the ad bellum level that because we expect some state to
attack us in the indefinite future, we are justified in striking it
now. David Cole notes that “the administration has reportedly
defined ‘imminent’ capaciously, reasoning that because al
Qaeda and its affiliates want to strike us whenever they get
the chance, they always pose an imminent threat,” but this
“effectively eliminates the requirement altogether.”53
If drones make war easier, then some wars that would be
fought with drones, would not be fought otherwise. Call this
category the drone-only wars. The claim that drones make
war too easy thus underlines the argument that is overall not
morally preferable that the drone-only wars be fought.
But what about humanitarian interventions? It is a good
thing to fight a justified humanitarian intervention, but these
wars are more likely to be drone-only wars because the state
fighting them is less likely to see its fundamental interests
at stake. (Think of the absence of humanitarian intervention
in the case of Rwanda.) Christopher Kutz, in an apparent
endorsement of Anderson’s point, argues that military actions
of “other-defense,” that is, humanitarian interventions, does
not require that the combatants in this war be exposed to

52 Department of Justice White Paper, op.cit.

53 David Cole, “Obama and Terror: the Hovering Questions,” The New
York Review of Books, July 12, 2012, and David Cole, “How We Made
Killing Easy,” NYR Blog, June 2, 2013, http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/
nyrblog/2013/feb/06/drones-killing-made-easy/.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

risk.54 There are two responses to this view. First, not all wars
claimed to be humanitarian are just wars. Some wars fought
by powerful states are disingenuously given a humanitarian
rationale or are overall unjust despite having a humanitarian
rationale (as with the 2003 Iraq War). (A humanitarian
intervention, like any war, is unjust in case it fails to satisfy
the criteria of jus ad bellum.) Nor can a state’s belief that its
war is humanitarian guarantee that it is so. Second, justified
humanitarian interventions fought exclusively by drones are
less likely to succeed in their humanitarian purpose. Again,
Kosovo is an example. It is generally acknowledged that more
Kosovars would have been saved from Serb forces had NATO
fought the war with troops on the ground. Overall, the value
of restraining powerful states from fighting drone-only wars
outweighs the risk that some of these would be just wars.
A stronger point may be made about riskless humanitarian
intervention: it may be an incoherent notion. “Riskless
war in pursuit of human rights is,” Kahn argues, “a moral
contradiction.”55 This is because the moral message of riskless
humanitarian war is that the lives of combatants of the
intervening state “are of greater value than the lives of those
who might benefit from these interventions,” which creates
“an incompatibility between the morality of the ends, which
are universal, and the morality of the means,” which favor one
group over another.”56

54 Christopher Kutz, “Drones, Democracy, and the Future of War,” unpublished

MS.
55 Paul W. Kahn, “War and Sacrifice in Kosovo”, Philosophy and Public
Policy Quarterly, Spring-Summer, Volume 19, Number 2/3, pp 1-6, 1999,
http://www.puaf.umd.edu/IPPP/spring_summer99/kosovo.htm.
56 Ibid.

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S. Krishnan

Drones and the Paradox of Military Ethics

The paradox of military ethics is that ethics is the safest
where risking life is part of taking military action. Putting one’s
own safety on the line for a cause inoculates the military from
a large part of recklessness and corrupt manipulation in the use
of deadly force that might otherwise plague its missions. This
is especially the case with the most globally powerful military
forces, which tend to be employed in interventionist missions
across the world. The use of drones is arguably one of the
most effective ways to reduce the risk to own soldiers, while
at the same time providing substantially increased operational
possibilities for clandestine attacks, assassinations, or selective
strikes for which neither accountability, nor visibility or
detectability (as with the use of substantial conventional
forces) are a concern.
The dissident US former drone operator Brandon Bryant
described how drones conducting strikes in the Middle East
were operated from over 10,000 kilometres away in Las Vegas,
Nevada.57 He explained how civilians, as well as ‘friendlies’
were killed by drones with no investigation ever having been
launched. In fact, Bryant stated, quite starkly, that the only
situations in which investigations into drone operations took
place were ones where the aircraft were ‘crashed’ and lost. He
described how the drone he had helped operate had killed a
child and then ‘maintained target’ with the pilot laconically
dismissing his shock. The human cost, including the killing of
civilians and third parties, is treated as an acceptable part of
engaging in drone warfare.
On a practical level, descriptions like Bryant’s illustrate
why robotised violence conducted by the military, especially
when it takes place outside the framework of full-fledged war,

57 Interview with Brandon Bryant, Drone Operator, on August 27, 2018.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

undermines military morality. Soldiers engage in actions which

are enormously disproportionate in various ways. They are not
only disproportionate in the technological capabilities of the
sides in conflict, or in their strategies or daily tactics; they are
also disproportionate in the moral dimensions which define the
side’s identities in the conflict and their modes of engagement
in the field. The conflict in the Middle East illustrates just how
dramatic this moral and psychological disproportionality is.
According to Bryant, tens of thousands of drone missions are
flown every month in the Middle East, and civilian casualties
rarely get reported by the military.58 He claims that the only
situations where civilian casualties are reported in the media
are those where there is ‘unquestionable evidence from third
parties’, and this is only a small fraction of the civilian deaths
inflicted by drone strikes.
The moral disproportion between drone operators and
soldiers who fought on the ground on the other side in the
Middle East in 2015 and 2016 is stark.
Whatever their values and beliefs, those on the ground – ,
whether they fought for the legal government in Syria or for
their renegade Islamic communities against the government – ,
engaged in conventional warfare where they put their existence
on the line for their beliefs. This alone gave them a moral stance
within the conflict. The reason why one of the parties in the
conflict, the Islamic Caliphate, was stigmatised, not just by the
world at large but also by the other parties in the same conflict,
was that it drastically breached the conventional moral rules of
conventional warfare by killing civilians, beheading hostages
and instilling terror in civilian communities. It is this moral
reason that primarily explains why the Islamic State has been
targeted by the civilised countries, and these actions have been

58 Ibid.

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S. Krishnan

accepted and supported by civilised populations, including

those in Syria itself, as well as in Iraq and in Libya. Finally,
these morally appalling crimes, which so drastically violate
the conventional values of armed conflict, have caused global
outrage against the very beliefs and ways of life of those who
represent the Islamic State. It seems, on a different level but no
less dramatically, that the use of drones in the Middle Eastern
conflict has been as morally disproportionate to what the other
parties have done on the ground as have been the actions of the
Islamic State.
While drone operators did not personally decapitate
anyone, they conducted aerial operations which left children
and civilians torn into pieces without so much as blinking, by
clicking a computer mouse. They engaged in what Bryant calls
cowardly operations with no real sense of moral responsibility
for the consequences and with no real personal identification
with the values in the name of which such operations were
launched. It is apparently possible for a socially problematic
person, even for a child molester, to work as a drone operator,
alongside with ‘proper’ air force personnel such as Bryant.
However, a child molester would likely find it extremely
difficult, if not impossible, much less desirable, to become a
Marine or find themselves in a personnel carrier somewhere
in the Middle East. There are multiple reasons for this which
hardly require elaboration here. However, individuals with
such personal credentials can, and have been, recruited as
drone operators, and the reason is principled: the nature of
the ‘cowardly’ strikes does not require morally integrated
individuals to conduct them.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

Grave Consequences
The prospect of totally autonomous drones would radically
alter the complex processes and decisions behind military
killings. But legal and ethical responsibility does not somehow
just disappear if you remove human oversight. Instead,
responsibility will increasingly fall on other people, including
artificial intelligence scientists.
The legal implications of these developments are already
becoming evident. Under current international humanitarian
law, “dual-use” facilities – those which develop products for
both civilian and military application – can be attacked in the
right circumstances. For example, in the 1999 Kosovo War,
the Pancevo oil refinery was attacked because it could fuel
Yugoslav tanks as well as fuel civilian cars.
With an autonomous drone weapon system, certain lines of
computer code would almost certainly be classed as dual-use.
Companies like Google, its employees or its systems, could
become liable to attack from an enemy state. For example,
if Google’s Project Maven image recognition AI software is
incorporated into an American military autonomous drone,
Google could find itself implicated in the drone “killing”
business, as might every other civilian contributor to such
lethal autonomous systems.
Ethically, there are even darker issues still. The whole point
of the self-learning algorithms – programs that independently
learn from whatever data they can collect – that the technology
uses is that they become better at whatever task they are given.
If a lethal autonomous drone is to get better at its job through
self-learning, someone will need to decide on an acceptable
stage of development – how much it still has to learn – at which
it can be deployed. In militarised machine learning, that means

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S. Krishnan

political, military and industry leaders will have to specify how

many civilian deaths will count as acceptable as the technology
is refined.
If machines are left to decide who dies, especially on a
grand scale, then what we are witnessing is extermination. Any
government or military that unleashed such forces would violate
whatever values it claimed to be defending. In comparison, a
drone pilot wrestling with a “kill or no kill” decision becomes
the last vestige of humanity in the often-inhuman business of
war.

Policy Recommendations
Drones present, in terms of the difficulties they have in
satisfying the principles of jus in bello and their tendency to
make possible riskless war, what was referred to earlier as
extraordinary moral problems. Ordinary moral problems can
be resolved by tweaking the technology or altering how it is
used, but extraordinary moral problems are difficult to resolve
in this way. Their solution may require that the technology be
abandoned. The first two objections reveal the ordinary moral
problems that drone use gives rise to. These problems could
be largely avoided by using drones in a different way. But the
last three objections reveal that drone use has moral problems
that are extraordinary, problems effectively inherent in the
technology, problems that are not subject to easy correction by
attempts to limit their use to acceptable forms.
What practical and feasible policy commendations follow
from our conclusions about drone technology? First, any
solution must be systemic. The problems cannot be corrected
unilaterally, by requiring, say, that military commanders
deliberately expose their combatants to unnecessary risk in
order to avoid a situation of extreme asymmetry. Kahn notes:

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

“Military forces cannot be asked to assume unnecessary risks.

. . . Indeed, it would be immoral for the military leadership not
to try to minimise the risk of injury to its own forces.”59 The
imperative for force protection must be able to operate for each
side within an overall scheme that attempts to deal with the
moral problems that drones raise.
Consider a comparison between drones and other military
technologies that pose extraordinary moral problems. The
prime examples are weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Some have drawn comparisons between drone technology and
nuclear weapons. David Remnick notes: “We are in the same
position now, with drones that we were with nuclear weapons in
1945. For the moment we are the only ones with this technology
that is going to change the morality, psychology, and strategic
thinking of warfare for years to come.”60 This brings out some
similarities between the two technologies, especially the fact
that both were initially in the possession of the US alone, as
well as the resulting concern by the US to keep them out of
the hands of other states. But in other ways, especially in their
physical impact, the technologies could not be more different.61
The same holds for a comparison of drones and the other two
forms of WMD, chemical and biological weapons.
But these comparisons allow us to explain more clearly
what an extraordinary moral problem is. Such a problem
exists for a technology not when it is impossible to use it in
a morally acceptable way, but when, were it used, it is very

59 Paul Kahn, “Paradox of Riskless War,” Philosophy and Public Policy

Quarterly, Volume 22, Number 3, 2002, p. 7.
60 Remnick, David, quoted in David Carr, “Debating Drones, in the Open,”
The New York Times, February 10, 2013.
61 There is, of course, a certain irony in finding a comparison between the
most indiscriminate technology and the technology claimed to be the most
discriminate.

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S. Krishnan

likely to end up being used in a morally unacceptable way.

WMD can all be used in morally acceptable “counterforce”
ways. Nuclear and chemical weapons could be used against
isolated military targets with little or no civilian damage. This
could presumably also be the case with biological weapons, if
the pathogens in question were designed not to be infectious.
The reason there are efforts to ban them, in the light of the in
bello principles of discrimination and proportionality, is the
recognition that if they existed, they would not be limited to
the morally acceptable uses, either because these uses are less
effective militarily or due to the likelihood of escalation to
morally unacceptable uses.62 This is also the case with drones.
While they can be used in morally acceptable ways (such as
tactically in a larger conventional war), usage is unlikely to
remain so limited. The tendency to use them for GWOT-style
military violence or in wars of extreme asymmetry would be
irresistible.
An effort to ban such weapons is morally more urgent for
WMDs than for drones is because of the greater destructiveness
of WMD, but the moral need for a ban is present for drones as
well. A more apt comparison, in terms of destructive capabilities,
would be between drone technology and the technologies
of anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions. Each of
these technologies can be used in morally acceptable ways.
Anti-personnel mines can be used in areas of combat where
civilians are not present and can be configured to deactivate
by the time that civilians are likely to repopulate those areas.
Cluster munitions could be used when only combatants are
present and could be configured so that all of the bomblets
explode on impact. But the strong likelihood is that their use

62 Nuclear weapons have been only partially banned through the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, but they represent a special case.

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Ethics of Drone Warfare

would not be limited to these morally acceptable forms, and

they thus pose extraordinary moral problems. In recognition
of this, they have been banned under international law, by the
1997 Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines and the
2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
But a similar convention on drones is quite unlikely. First,
drones are such an integral part of US military capacity and
planning that there is little chance the US would give them
up. Second, several other powers are well on their way to
having a full-fledged drone program of their own. Third,
any convention would apply only to attack drones, leaving
surveillance drones unaffected, but the line between the two
would be difficult to police. The only way we are likely to
resolve the extraordinary moral problems posed by drones is to
hasten the future toward which they push us, a future in which
warring has been replaced by policing and where anti-criminal
force is exercised by a legitimate global authority. That such a
future is unlikely, and indeed has serious moral problems of its
own, will leave drones and other robotic military technology as
a continuing moral problem.

83