Technology creates opportunities, but it can also create ethical situations as well. Today in modern warfare, drones have become the ultimate surveillance weapon. Drones have proven to be valuable tools abroad and can carry out targeted killings of U.S. enemies without risking U.S. lives. Conventional warfare has become too outdated to effectively fight highly mobile, shadowy terrorist networks, and drones represent the future of warfare. For the correct use of these drones, I believe they should be used for foreign intelligence gathering, domestic use in a much more limited capacity, and border control.
Since first developing prototype drones during World War I, the U.S has incorporated unmanned aircrafts into its military activity. As time and technology increased, so did the drones. By the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S Air Force was using drones to fly thousands of reconnaissance missions. During the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. began using unmanned aircraft and unarmed drones to track the movements of Al Qaeda forces operating in Afghanistan. In the past decade, these drones have skyrocketed in military use. "In 2001, the U.S. military possessed about 50 aerial drones; by 2011, it had approximately 7,000. Drone technology has progressed to the point where unmanned aircraft can identify and differentiate among objects from high altitudes, a capability that makes the vehicle valuable both for surveillance missions and targeted killings (Drones). It is very clear that President Obama prefers using these drones over sending in U.S soldiers. According to Foreign Affairs, in its first two years the Obama administration quadrupled the number of drone strikes authorized during the entire tenure of the Bush administration. Lastly, Such drones, for example, monitored the Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden, the head of the Islamist terrorist network Al Qaeda, was hiding before he was killed by U.
