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U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

eminetra.co.uk

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Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#191

Post by AlwaysRock »

dTal wrote: post #166
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never malice. Nobody goes, "hey, this compound is 100% only women and children, let's bomb it." Reality: "A patrol nearby said they took fire from the compound at such and such grid coordinates" It gets bombed. Turns out the unit on the ground was mistaken. War is hell. War criminals should be punished. But it's not a war crime to make a mistake. I love seeing these posts because it's clear that almost nobody he…

Nestled in between "malice" and "honest mistake" is "criminal negligence". When you put yourself in that position - when you invade a country - every resulting civilian casualty is on you. You do not have the moral standing to decide what is and is not acceptable "collateral damage". War is hell, but you chose to make war there. The civilians didn't. >the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian ca…

And every time we slaughtered a family in the middle east over the last 20+ years we've given a man or a son or an uncle with no remaining family a reason to hate the US and to revolt against it. There are almost certainly more Taliban and other terrorist group members who have a legitimate reason to dislike the US than there were 20 years ago.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#192

Post by CapricornNoble »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #183
dTal wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nestled in between "malice" and "honest mistake" is "criminal negligence". When you put yourself in that position - when you invade a country - every resulting civilian casualty is on you. You do not have the moral standing to decide what is and is not acceptable "collateral damage". War is hell, but you chose to make war there. The civilians didn't. >the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian ca…

> to phrase it another way, allied forces killed a third as many civilians as the actual Taliban > According to the United Nations, the Taliban and its allies were responsible for 76% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009, 75% in 2010 and 80% in 2011. Interesting. How do you get one third out of those numbers?

>>>How do you get one third out of those numbers?

25% / 75% = 1/3.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#193

Post by queuesorcs »

whydid wrote: post #161
queuesorcs wrote: post #157

As much as I love to check hackernews, I’m not normally able to chime in with relevant information on most topics. I feel like this may be one where I can actually do that though as I’m former military and my job directly related to drones on a daily basis. Depending on what’s asked, I may not be able to answer but I’d love to help by sharing any knowledge or information on the subject that I can as I’ve gained so mu…

How much accountability do remote pilots have for incidents like this? I.e., is there an ammo budget? What happens if a pilot decides to "go GTA" and destroy things for fun?

To be clear and so I’m not misleading, I was neither a pilot or a sensor operator so I cannot guarantee you that there isn’t more to it than what I know. As far as I understood the drone pilot works in conjunction with a sensor operator. Because the drone pilot is an officer he is the one to fire the missile but the sensor operator controls the laser to direct the missile. I would strongly believe that there are other emergency stops available due to my experiences but at the bare minimum, the sensor operator could always direct the missile away and the sensor operator themselves can’t do anything without the pilot actually launching the missile.

Editing to add in that hellfire missiles cannot be redirected once launched.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#194

Post by pjmlp »

Zenst wrote: post #90
pjmlp wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather avoid an Oblivion like future.

Yes, many do seem to worry about AI more than nuclear weapons - more so if they even cross streams so too speak. But I do wonder how much of things are driven by worst case hoilloywood visualsations of things. Certainly the whole cold war and peoples mentalities, was very much media driven from the fear aspect. Will AI share the same and will we get to the stage that we see anti AI groups form and the term and histor…

As the first generation to grow up in freedom after Salazar's dictatorship, having family members fighting in the colonial wars, and knowing enough from PIDE/DGS deeds, I am quite aware how worst cases turn into reality.

I bet HNers with similar life experiences can confirm.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#195

Post by illgenr »

queuesorcs wrote: post #157

As much as I love to check hackernews, I’m not normally able to chime in with relevant information on most topics. I feel like this may be one where I can actually do that though as I’m former military and my job directly related to drones on a daily basis. Depending on what’s asked, I may not be able to answer but I’d love to help by sharing any knowledge or information on the subject that I can as I’ve gained so mu…

Would you still have signed up if you knew then what you know now?

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#196

Post by arminiusreturns »

wayoutthere wrote: post #87
ricardobeat wrote: post #71

Having watched a few documentaries on the war, from multiple periods, my first thought was “who did they target with these drone strikes?” seeing as they usually had no idea who or where the enemy was. The answer is much worse than I could imagine: “a guy with a radio … which is reasonable grounds for suspicion”. Nothing accidental about it. These should be considered war crimes.

We need to seriously examine our own morality for allowing these ghouls to basically genocide brown people. We are absolutely the baddies; between Iraq, Afghanistan and our air strikes on Syria, Libya, and Yemen during the same period killed 1 million civilians . We’re within an order of magnitude of the Holocaust, and we all just pretend everything is ok. I really don’t know why there aren’t more discussions of how…

It's not about morality per se, and rather about understanding the people, organizations, and mechanisms that allowed it to happen. Afghanistan wasn't my war (Iraq), but I've spent most of my lifes free time since I got my brain back (left the military) tackling this topic.

I think it was Ge. Wesley Clark or maybe Col. Wilkerson who said something to the effect of "There was a policy coup, some very hard nosed people took over and never informed the rest of us".

Its true, there was a policy coup, but I've traced it much further back. Besides the JFK episode, the biggest one was Woodrow Wilson and his handlers.

A good examination of these things though is uncomfortable and difficult even for those of us with a passion for truth, but the public doesn't want to hear about it. The elite don't want to discuss it (often because they make money off it). The media wont discuss it because it is controlled by the same people that pushed us into war.

I keep coming back to the media angle, and I also think thats one of the reasons for the increasing attacks on the freedom of the internet; essentially the oligarchs finally understood that as the last bastion of anarchistic freedom of thought, it was their primary threat.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#197

Post by uCantCauseUCant »

soren_dahl wrote: post #120
adjkant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From another comment chain (credit to @belter), this seems like the original source: https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/inside-america-fa... Comment chain (along with archive link for EU access): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28299929

> This site isn't currently available in the EU but i'm in the UK!!1ones

No, you are not. You are in Great Britain, the greatest empire that ever was, lately a little run down maybe, hit by hard times, but still full of potential, just you all wait, when the times come around and im young and in shape again, just you wait youngsters, this hood, this ball of dirt will be ours again. Rule Britannia, britannia drool the waves..

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#198

Post by robertlagrant »

whydid wrote: post #161
queuesorcs wrote: post #157

As much as I love to check hackernews, I’m not normally able to chime in with relevant information on most topics. I feel like this may be one where I can actually do that though as I’m former military and my job directly related to drones on a daily basis. Depending on what’s asked, I may not be able to answer but I’d love to help by sharing any knowledge or information on the subject that I can as I’ve gained so mu…

How much accountability do remote pilots have for incidents like this? I.e., is there an ammo budget? What happens if a pilot decides to "go GTA" and destroy things for fun?

> "go GTA"

Is this an actual thing people think drone operators do? Surely the same that would happen to any military personnel who did the same with their weapons, except with a drone there's perfect camera footage to evidence it as well.

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#199

Post by uCantCauseUCant »

merpnderp wrote: post #163
marcus_holmes wrote: post #148

A Hellfire missile apparently costs $150K [0]. Given that it's apparently OK to launch one of these at a single suspected enemy informant, couldn't we have saved a lot of time, money and lives by just bribing the entire population of Afghanistan to not do things that the West doesn't like? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire

Infrastructure and industry were the solution to Afghanistan. A tribe which owns a large share in the local mining operation is a tribe which does its best to keep the peace. The US could have built a lot of roads and propped up a lot of barely profitable enterprises with the money spent on all those military operations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Re: U.S. drone pilot leaks footage reveals accidental killing of children and adults

#200

Post by rscoots »

sp332 wrote: post #184
rscoots wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then the US declared every man with a walkie-talkie was a legitimate target. Anywhere I can find info on this?

https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/news/inside-america-fa... This link was posted in another thread and seems to be the source that broke the news today.

Yea but you said the US "declared" "every" person w/ a radio a "target".

This story doesn't show any of the 3 words I put in quotes.

Edit: can I get an explainer on the downvotes to both my comments?

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