Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

eminetra.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 273 posts

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

#241

Post by dilippkumar »

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…

Given this is HN -

What did you see in your time in the military regarding drones and drone operations that don't have good equivalents in the civilian world (and that isn't classified and has real civilian world uses)?

Similarly, what does the civilian world do better?

Anything you wish someone would build to make life easier?

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

#242

Post by watwut »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #137
dmos62 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checkout Ben Anderson's 2 part ~30 minute report from Afghanistan for Vice from around 10 years ago [0][1]. He was embedded with British troops and ANA during a patrol with a lot of gun fights. The British strafed an empty field, almost bombed themselves twice and once an Apache launched a Hellfire missile into a compound with British and ANA troops in it and hit a building where a family with small children were hid…

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…

> Nobody goes, "hey, this compound is 100% only women and children, let's bomb it."

Actually, people do. That happens fairly regularly in conflicts. Civilians are often a target by policy. Plus, by neglect - superiors not caring what this or that sociopath does.

In Afghanistan case, there was period when per policy anyone with walkie talkie counted as valid target. Phones did not worked. So there is fair chance some attacks hit civilians and it was policy.

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

#244

Post by watwut »

fallingknife wrote: post #124
pjc50 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another 10 years would not have installed the turbine. > complete failure of leadership in rebuilding Afghanistan Agree. It's been a bipartisan failure with the aid of the media for two decades. But it's also an extremely hard problem, and it ties into an area that America is particularly bad at: state capacity. You can't build a government by being anti-government. > and in communicating to the public that you can't…

You could just support a bunch of preexisting local warlords instead of trying to build a national army. A lot of them probably don't like the Taliban any more than we do.

That is basically what happened and why army never had trus of many Afghans. It contained local warlords responsible for past atrocities and cruelty.

Some of these were barely better then Taliban.

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

#245

Post by watwut »

iJohnDoe wrote: post #231

Think about this for a second. Your family is walking into Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods and all get killed by a missile from the sky. Or you send your children off to school and the school gets accidentally hit by a missile. Killed in an instant and the family of those victims listed above have no idea why and have zero recourse. If this started happening on US soil on a daily basis, I wonder if more people would care…

To be fair, civilians have no way to defend themselves against any even semi organized army.

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

#246

Post by sangnoir »

loonster wrote: post #229
queuesorcs wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to preface this with the fact that a few specific incidents left me disillusioned with the military and that I don’t think people really understand just how horrible war is. That being said I wouldn’t change the decisions I made. I truly believe the work that I did was a net positive and that my work contributed to saving the lives of both military members and civilians. Unfortunately not everything goes perfe…

Back when I enlisted, I decided that I would rather live with the regrets of joining than the regrets of not joining.

If you may indulge me as someone who's not martially minded, may you please give a few examples of what could be the regrets of not joining?

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

#247

Post by sangnoir »

inglor_cz wrote: post #91
SandunGunn wrote: post #67

An old soldiers take: https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_gallimore_why_it_matters_ho... In summary drones make it to easy for the countries like the UK and the US to kill with no risk to their own service men. The missiles are not magic, there will be collateral damage. Solders on the ground could mitigate this

"kill with no risk to their own service men" Reducing the risk to your own troops is a fundamental concern of most armies out there and has been for millennia. Robot warfare is a logical endpoint of such development. I cannot see anyone opting out of this race and remaining militarily relevant.

> Robot warfare is a logical endpoint of such development

Robot vs. Robot is unlikely to settle wars - we may as well play chess rather than wage war and humans have too much bloodlust to solve differences that way. What is likely to happen is having country A's robots in country B's homeland killing humans, while battling country B's robots in A's homeland. What constitutes a "war front" will be really confusing when the next war between great powers comes.

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

#248

Post by rscoots »

detaro wrote: post #226
rscoots wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The US did not make any sort of declaration 2. Not everyone with a walkie talkie will have this new guideline applied to them. Even just going off the article, someone with a radio could be treated with suspicion by these new guidelines, as they could be a spotter. 3. They are not defacto a "target" as described above^, although that is what the poster claimed. The poster's statement was hyperbole to the point of…

they said "a legitimate target", not "everyone was targeted".

That's not the US military's position and the linked article doesn't even make that claim.

(Had to wait since I was silently barred from posting due to 'karma'/downvotes. Not a great algo for public discussion imo, although I acknowledge this thread is now in the weeds. At the very least it should be made public and obvious that I cannot reply.)

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

#249

Post by consumer451 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #210
voakbasda wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “war on terror” was not meant to stop terrorism. It was meant to fan the flames and give the US an endless war that can be fought for generations. And it worked.

Source please.

> Source please.

Maybe not a bullseye, but these are the folks behind "the war on terror." They had a plan for the war prior to 9/11.

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

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

#250

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

leesalminen wrote: post #234
tablespoon wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Framed another way “plain old common sense” could be better worded as “using critical thinking to form an opinion about the root cause of a geopolitical clusterfuck”. Except that the opinion is question was not formed by critical thinking. > If people who have an opinion that differs from “sources” is now a Qanon believer then we’re in for a very rocky road ahead. It’s almost like we’re only allowed to have same op…

> That's the kind of claim you need evidence for Where exactly would such “evidence” come from? Do you think the CEO of Raytheon would ever utter such a statement even if it were 100% true? > Furthermore, even if it is true, it doesn't support the original outlandish claim that "The 'war on terror' was not meant to stop terrorism. It was meant to fan the flames and give the US an endless war that can be fought for ge…

You're still making a very big claim without evidence.

Isn't that often the thing with conspiracy theorists? They always have a reason why they don't have evidence and somehow that means they can claim anything that they want.

Post reply on HN