Automated warfare sounds great: no casualties, pin-point strikes, long-ranger reach. But, of course, war is about human beings and human beings are never machines. PW Singer:
…there are all sorts of unpredictable effects, both short- and long-term, from using these systems. They are incredibly useful in carrying out precise, pinpoint strikes, without exposing soldiers to risk. So they negate many of an insurgent’s asymmetric advantages. But, when I went around interviewing people from the Middle East, for example, I also saw that there was a huge blowback effect from these technologies. As one news editor there put it to me [just after the 2006 war with Israel] while a drone buzzed overhead, "just another sign of cold-hearted, cruel Israelis and Americans, who are also cowards because they send out machines to fight us…. They don’t want to fight us like real men, but are afraid to fight. So we just have to kill a few of their soldiers to defeat them." Yikes.
The Dish 