The military’s ability to kill remotely using drone aircraft carries with it a host of unforeseen consequences. A new military report on an accidental killing in February in Afghanistan, highlights another problem: the hazards of making observations and carrying out attacks if you’re sitting in a video-game-like console thousands of miles away. That’s how the U.S. Predator drones are flown, by pilots at Creech Air Force Base, just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.The report faults, among others, the operators of a Predator drone involved in the attack, which killed 23 innocent civilians, and has led to the opening of an investigation into the Predator operators.It’s not just reminiscent of that maxim about dependence on technology — if all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. It raises the question of how well we know how to use our hammers in the first place, especially when we’re not even holding them. Reports the Times:The incident occurred on the morning of Feb. 21, near the village of Shahidi Hassas in Oruzgan Province, a Taliban-dominated area in southern Afghanistan. An American special operations team was tracking a group of insurgents when a pickup and two SUVs moving through the area began heading in their direction.The Predator operator reported seeing only military-age males in the truck, the report said. The ground commander concurred, the report said, and the special forces team asked for an airstrike. An OH-58D Kiowa helicopter fired Hellfire missiles and rockets, destroying the vehicles and killing 23 civilians. Twelve others were wounded.The report, signed by Maj. Gen. Timothy P. McHale, found that the Predator operators in Nevada, as well as the ground commander in the area, made several grave errors that lead to the airstrikes. The "tragic loss of life," General McHale found, was "compounded" by the failure of the ground commander and others to report in a timely manner that they may have killed civilians."The strike occurred because the ground force commander lacked a clear understanding of who was in the vehicles, the location, direction of travel, and the likely course of action of the vehicles," General McHale wrote.That fatal lack of understanding, General McHale wrote, stemmed from "poorly functioning command posts" in the area that failed to provide the evidence that there were civilians in the trucks. In addition, General McHale blamed the "inaccurate and unprofessional reporting of the Predator crew operating out of Creech AFB, Nevada, which deprived the ground force commander of vital information."Armed with that faulty information, General McHale said, the special forces commander on the ground believed that the vehicles, then seven miles away, contained insurgents who were trying to execute a flanking maneuver in order to reinforce the insurgents that he and his men were tracking.Predator drones contain large and powerful cameras that beam real-time images to their operators. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, Predators and other pilotless aircraft are often used to track and kill suspected insurgents, sometimes with their own missiles.In this case, the Predator operators in Nevada tracked the convoy for three and a half hours but failed to notice any of the women who were riding along, the report said. Americans on the ground did spot two children near the vehicles, the report said, but the Predator operators insisted that the convoy contained only military-age men."Information that the convoy was anything other than an attacking force was ignored or downplayed by the Predator crew," General McHale wrote.
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