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I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

theguardian.com

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Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#31

Post by bdg »

ck2 wrote: post #4

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…

As a human analogue to the drones, it is not unrealistic to imagine that phones, shovels, or other objects have been mistaken for guns by an observer in a tense situation (for example: a SWAT raid). Granted, one is clear visual cues that are confused by a human mind in the heat of the moment, while the other is bad quality readings. We're talking about two different implementations of the error.

This drone project could go one of two ways (ending the project is highly unlikely). The first way is upgrading the video quality, but this brings a number of issues with it such as latency (quite important in combat as any on-line gamer will tell you). The second is to provide AI to the drones... which frightens me when we can't get a voice recognition phone system to work. Google cars are just driving now after years of research (not flying, evading, identifying IEDs, identifying shovels, and engaging targets strategically on any given battle zone)... I don't expect the drones to fair better at this task because they're funded by the gov.

The only way the drone program would be pulled for a while is if the back doored encryption protocols were routinely exploited. We won't see an end to drones, or any end to proliferation at home or at war, and I'm skeptical we'll see drones get "better" any time soon.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#32

Post by ppod »

ck2 wrote: post #4

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…

The word 'drone' should be excised from the discussion. Whether the pilot is sitting in a trailer outside LA or in the cockpit has very little to do with morality of the rules of engagement.

The US has been repeatedly killing the wrong people in another country since before the age of robotics. The issue we need to focus on (after the issue of whether we should be fighting the war in the first place), is the rules of engagement.

For example: "Positive identification (PID) is required prior to engagement. PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target."

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/11.htm

How are operators trained to interpret "reasonable certainty"? How do we balance protection of local civilians with protection of US troops and the aims of the war? These issues are old, outside of the context of drones or even aircraft.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#33

Post by reinhardt »

ck2 wrote: post #4

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…

> If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed.

A little perspective could prevent such knee-jerk reactions. The ambiguity of drone targets is still miles ahead from basically blind carpet bombing a whole area that was (and still often is) the rule for the last century or so of modern warfare.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#34

Post by ihsw »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #19
ck2 wrote: post #4

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…

You act as if the alternative to drones (20 year old kids with guns) never kills the wrong person. Yvain's essay asking "what if drones came first" is highly relevant here. http://squid314.livejournal.com/338607.html?thread=9878703

The 'kids' part deserves emphasis. In recent times the military has been lowering its admission standards, and as such all manner of emotionally immature and mentally unstable are being allowed in. This isn't new, but it's been on the rise.

The soldiers we're sending over there aren't trained professionals, they're glorified mall-cops with sub-machine guns. The ones with special training are involved in special operations and they're few and far in-between, and personally I'd prefer we maintain a group of highly specialized individuals rather than an army of meat shields.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#35

Post by atrus »

ck2 wrote: post #4

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…

But the same thing happens with soldiers on the ground too. There confusion and accidents when people are shooting at each other all the time.

That entire article could have easily been replaced with a marines perspective, a bombers perspective, or a sailors perspective.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#36

Post by melling »

ck2 wrote: post #4

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…

There you go again ck2. One of your classic comments.

We used to napalm people. Lots of "wrong people" get killed in all wars. Flying in B-17's and B-52's was pretty ugly too, we just couldn't record the carnage on video. There's probably never going to be a war where innocent people aren't killed. Precision weapons probably kill fewer people but if you want a "clean" war, I don't think that's possible.

The real solution, of course, is to avoid wars, and violence, in general. Supposedly, the world is more peaceful now than ever, even with Syria, the train station suicide bomber is Russia today, etc.

Personally, I don't want to see the US be the world police. There's a high cost in both money and American lives. Still, for the foreseeable future, the world needs to address the problems and try to solve the remaining problems. Otherwise, decades from now, people on HN will be complaining about how future weapon systems are killing innocent people.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#37

Post by ppod »

ppod wrote: post #32
ck2 wrote: post #4

The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon? I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed. Why is is okay to repeatedly kill the wrong person in another country? Can you imagine if that happened even just once in the USA? We need an international ban on armed…

The word 'drone' should be excised from the discussion. Whether the pilot is sitting in a trailer outside LA or in the cockpit has very little to do with morality of the rules of engagement. The US has been repeatedly killing the wrong people in another country since before the age of robotics. The issue we need to focus on (after the issue of whether we should be fighting the war in the first place), is the rules of…

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/26/rules-of-eng...

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#40

Post by salient »

This is only going to get worse if they make drones autonomous, which this TED talk shows they have a lot of reasons for why they will want to make them autonomous, unless there's huge public outcry demanding a ban:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI

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