ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding the moral imperative to use the best technology available to ensure force protection, discrimination, proportionality, and other worthy aims, common arguments for the strategic use of lethal UAVs can go ethically astray in various ways. Among these false turns are misguided analogies; temptations motivated not by logic or ethics but rather by the desire for cheap, anonymous, or deniable means of battlefield success; and a paradoxical mastery of technology that potentially undercuts the moral mastery of the battlefield. None of these moral mistakes is unique to combat involving UAVs or other autonomous systems, but a new era of relatively cheap, deniable means of attack heightens the urgency of ethical reflection on why, not just how, we choose to kill in war.
