July 8, 200916 yr From Ares UAVs Cruel as Landmines Says Senior British Judge Posted by Christina Mackenzie at 7/8/2009 12:25 PM CDT A senior British judge, Lord Bingham, says that the use of UAVs as weapons is "cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance", Robert Verkaik, legal editor of Britain's daily The Independent reported earlier this week. Lord Bingham, who was until last year the senior law lord, said in an interview with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, that drones could be compared with cluster bombs and landmines. "Are there, for example, and this goes to conflict, not post-conflict situations, weapons that ought to be outlawed? From time to time in the history of international law various weapons have been thought to be so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance. I think cluster bombs and landmines are the most recent examples. "It may be - I'm not expressing a view - that unmanned drones that fall on a house full of civilians is a weapon the international community should decide should not be used." In May the United States admitted that 26 civilians had been killed in a series of UAV attacks. Afghan officials put the death toll at 140. Last week Israel was accused of using missile-firing UAVs to kill at least 29 Palestinian civilians. But Israel refuses to confirm or deny that its UAVs carry weapons, the Independent said. Despite having advanced surveillance equipment, drone operators failed to exercise proper caution "as required by the laws of war" in verifying their targets were combatants, said Human Rights Watch, the New York-based monitoring group, in a 39-page report. It described six alleged strikes by remote-controlled aircraft. The Predator UAV, and its successor, the Raptor, was first used in 1995. It can be deployed for reconnaissance and missile attack. The air-strike version is armed with two Hellfire missiles and has been deployed over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq and Yemen, Verkaik writes. He adds that an estimated 300 people have been killed in at least 30 drone strikes since August 2008.
July 8, 200916 yr imho there is no comparison between UAVs and land mines with the restriction that the UAVs have some form of positive human control, target approval, etc. My beef with landmines isn't that they kill, it is that they don't give up at the end of the conflict and aren't easily swept. If 95% of the mines would self destruct when given the end of war signal or effectively turn dead after a set number of days I wouldn't have a problem with them. War is war and people are going to die, it is the post-war continuance of death that bothers me with mines and cluster bombs. I'm also not expecting perfection (see 95% above, not 100%) even though I would strive for perfection. Anyway, within my set of criteria there, current UAVs don't fit the category of "cruel as landmines."
July 8, 200916 yr Author I think perhaps, with all due respect to Lord Bingham, that he probably misunderstands the manner in which UAVs work. I'm guessing he thinks "unmanned" means completely robotic, but that's a WAG on my part. If I'm wrong, then I must disagree with his Lordship just as you do, Tony.
July 8, 200916 yr I wonder what His Lordship will say when someone clues him in that manned aircraft also occasionally fall on houses full of civilians? For multiple meanings of "fall on," at that.
August 2, 200916 yr I wonder what His Lordship will say when someone clues him in that manned aircraft also occasionally fall on houses full of civilians? For multiple meanings of "fall on," at that. Quite. Like that MiG-23 in Belgium two decades back. The problem is targeting, not intrinsic to the weapon.
September 10, 200916 yr I wonder what His Lordship will say when someone clues him in that manned aircraft also occasionally fall on houses full of civilians? For multiple meanings of "fall on," at that. Quite. Like that MiG-23 in Belgium two decades back. The problem is targeting, not intrinsic to the weapon. ok , i have to ask, what was a mig 23 doing flying around in belgium in 1989? i missed this story.......
September 10, 200916 yr Author ok , i have to ask, what was a mig 23 doing flying around in belgium in 1989? i missed this story....... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash
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