this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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which one? drone strikes were a big thing under the obama administration. It was targeting combatants in Afghanistan, ordinarily though. I don't recall a Reaper taking out a political rival of his.
There was at least one that targeted an American born citizen who had defected to some terror organization. US law MIGHT argue he should have been arrested and tried unless he was engaging in active combat at the time. I'm not a lawyer. I just know there were some gray areas with drone use.
as much as i detest mechanized warfare, if dude actually defected to the enemy side and was acting in a combat role (not a medic or other non-com role), then he would have been a legal target.
that being said, drones are a slippery slope to completely removing the human decision making in pulling the trigger to kill someone. eventually, they will have automated targeting on those things, then they'll implement automatic decision making, then they'll implement automatic killing of the target that the drone itself decided was a legitimate target. the problem here is, what are we going to train those drones with? How can we be sure that everyone it kills is actually a combatant?
There's ALREADY auto-targeting. Check out the Phalanx.