<story><title>I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ck2</author><text>&lt;i&gt;The feed is so pixelated, what if it&amp;#x27;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&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed.&lt;p&gt;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?&lt;p&gt;We need an international ban on armed drones before it is too late.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>melling</author><text>There you go again ck2.  One of your classic comments.&lt;p&gt;We used to napalm people. Lots of &amp;quot;wrong people&amp;quot; get killed in all wars. Flying in B-17&amp;#x27;s and B-52&amp;#x27;s was pretty ugly too, we just couldn&amp;#x27;t record the carnage on video.  There&amp;#x27;s probably never going to be a war where innocent people aren&amp;#x27;t killed. Precision weapons probably kill fewer people but if you want a &amp;quot;clean&amp;quot; war, I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s possible.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don&amp;#x27;t want to see the US be the world police.  There&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ck2</author><text>&lt;i&gt;The feed is so pixelated, what if it&amp;#x27;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&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;If this question even comes up once, drones should never, ever be armed.&lt;p&gt;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?&lt;p&gt;We need an international ban on armed drones before it is too late.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ppod</author><text>The word &amp;#x27;drone&amp;#x27; 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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;For example: &amp;quot;Positive identification (PID) is required prior to engagement. PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/11.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hrw.org&amp;#x2F;reports&amp;#x2F;2003&amp;#x2F;usa1203&amp;#x2F;11.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;How are operators trained to interpret &amp;quot;reasonable certainty&amp;quot;? 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.</text></comment>