Laurie Calhoun's Blog, page 17

Israel’s Compact Kamikaze Drones: Strategic Ineptitude or Simple Insanity?

    Israel has developed and is selling the new Hero-30 drone, which weighs in at a mere 7lbs and can be used to kill a target with less collateral damage than the more prevalent Predator and Reaper drones. The larger drones deliver Hellfire missiles to destroy entire groups of people in “crowd killing” and “signature […]

Slippery slopes and the case of Mohammed Emwazi

You know that the war on terrorism is waning in popularity when the summary execution without trial of a single young British man believed to be an executioner makes all of the major headlines, even as the reports are qualified with terms indicating their complete lack of ‘near certainty‘ that the strike destroyed the intended […]

Radio One Dunedin Broadcast: Abe Gray and Lawrence Hamilton interview Laurie Calhoun about the book

Many people do not understand why drone killing is supposed to be problematic. In this interview with Abe Gray and Lawrence Hamilton at Radio One Dunedin, a good sampling of topics arising out of the use of lethal drones is discussed. The 35 minute radio broadcast offers an introduction to the moral, political, legal, and […]

Why does Italy Need 156 Hellfire Missiles? Or: Lethal Creep 5.0

The latest beneficiary of DARPA’s ingeniousness and US taxpayer largesse appears to be the government of Italy, which has been clamoring for lethal drones since 2012, and was recently reported to be next in line to receive a cache of some of the latest and greatest implements of homicide developed by the United States. These munitions […]

Navigating the Christine Fair-Glenn Greenwald “Debate” on Al Jazeera, or: Why I Wrote We Kill Because We Can

Having seen so many mentions of the recent exchange between Christine Fair, an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University, and Glenn Greenwald, the founder of The Intercept, I decided to give it a listen. To be honest, most of the broadcast struck me as more of a pissing contest than a debate. The […]

Shaker Aamer and the Spectre of “Kill Don’t Capture” Drone Policy

There has been an exciting flurry of activism surrounding the impending release of Shaker Aamer, a former British resident mistakenly imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay way back in 2001 and detained ever since, even after having been cleared for release years ago and on multiple occasions. Vigils have been held in the hopes that the US and British […]