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US military increasingly using drone missile with flying blades in Syria
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoI'm kind of over the whole "Look, we killed someone far, far, far away for dubious reasons with NEW technology" articles. These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form.
- ravi-delia 6y agoI've pretty much only seen articles like these take a 'warcrimes, but even worse because technology is NEW' stance, which is honestly just as bad but at least gets the harm in it.
- spamizbad 6y agoWe have to fight them over there otherwise the alternative is armed radical militias in our streets (something that we definitely do not have anywhere in America at the moment) /s
- TheDesolate0 6y agoOk, racist.
- wongarsu 6y agoYeah, if we didn't make those people afraid of swift death from the sky they might grow to despise the US and start working to destroy it /s
- t413 6y agoYeah, the headline seems to imply it’s some new ‘big bad’ where the article just slowly exposes that it’s a non-explosive missile. Killing fewer people by not combusting the surrounding area sounds like an improvement.
- danaos 6y agoAnd spending your valuable resources on developing such weapons shows that you're the good guy.
- sneak 6y agoMass murdering fewer people still makes you a mass murderer.
- Koshkin 6y agoKilling one's enemies does not necessarily make one a "murderer."
- approxim8ion 6y agoBy very definition it does.
- wongarsu 6y agoExtrajudicial targeted assassinations are pretty far on the bad side, no matter how few other people get killed in the process. Sure, if you are doing it, killing fewer bystanders is preferable on the surface. But if individual assassinations are less likely to cause an international outcry since fewer people died that likely leads to more assassinations.
- nine_k 6y agoIsn't the US is, like, at war in Syria? Wars being a terrible thing and all, one won't expect a speedy and fair trial on a battlefield.
- ben_w 6y agoI only leaned this a few days ago in another HN thread, but no, the USA has not declared war since 1942: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24567355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24567355
- metadatabad 6y agoIt's the fact that the world is waking up to the realization that terror doesn't affect us in the Western world and only is used as a tool by certain other countries.
- Nightshaxx 6y agoWhile we can debate the level to which America needs to get involved, are you forgetting 911 or any of the other terrorist attacks? It honestly feels downright insulting to the victims of terrorism that you would imply these extremist groups do not threaten your freedom. The article specifically references that these devices used on members of aal-Qaida; the group responsible for 911.
- wongarsu 6y agoThe war on terror has killed easily three orders of magnitude more people than 9/11, and antagonizes the US with the regional population. It's neither proportional nor effective.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoProportional? You think a proportionate response would be a bigger deterrent?
- GordonS 6y agoI'm not the OP, but I fully believe the disproportionate response, including invading an unrelated country in an oil grab, racial profiling, and the continued spread of FUD by politicians and lobbiests designed to sell votes and weapons, has itself created many people who now hate the US. Dropping bombs on civilians all over the world in response to 3k people being killed in a single, highly unusual event, is not going to deter anyone - quite the opposite.
- Nightshaxx 6y agoYou clearly didn't read my comment. It starts with "we can debate the level in which America needs to be involved." I was not interested in getting into whether or not these tactics should be used. My point was the OP said "these people do not pose a threat to my freedom" which is categorically false. Aal-Qaida is a terrorist group that directly caused the deaths of thousands of Americans, ripping them from their loved ones. To make _this specific argument_ against this weapon is just insulting to the victims.
- dagav 6y agoThey don't threaten your freedom, but they threaten the freedom of the people who live in the Middle East
- InitialLastName 6y agoI don't see them drone striking and assassinating the Emirs and Saudi royalty who are responsible much of the "freedom-limiting" activity in the Middle East though.
- dagav 6y agoDo you realize you're defending al-Qaeda?
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoThe terms of "terrorism" and "Al-Qaeda" are so plastic, that no one is going to really pay attention to when the government slings them around. And let's note that the financial nerve center of AQ is the House of Saud, whom we've seemed to avoid Western wrath since 9/11.
- AnHonestComment 6y agoThey’re not making principled arguments — they’re fashionably bullshitting to signal their virtue.
- InitialLastName 6y agoI'm proposing talking about these issues in terms of the actual (largely commercial, on both sides) interests involved, instead of amorphous terms like "protecting our freedom". In the name of protecting "freedom", the United States has propped up totalitarian and brutally oppressive regimes in countries all over the world. Maybe it's time they start using a different buzzword to describe their goals. IF the US does that right, they might even get the chance to stop arming, training and empowering the next generation's enemies.
- liability 6y ago
- formercoder 6y agoMaybe you are only under the impression that your freedom is not threatened due to the legions of people working in the background to secure it.
- non-entity 6y agoYeah because those "legions of people" surely haven't done more to erode our freedoms over the past decades than some militants in the thord world.
- formercoder 6y agoThis is similar to the prevention paradox with COVID. We will never know what inaction would have brought.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoNot really. I'm a black person in the US. Historically, the people "threatening" our freedom have always been in the US. It's never been the Soviets, never been the VietCong, never been the Sandinistas, never been Al-Qaeda or anyone the US has chosen to go to war with. As Jay-Z said: "Bin Laden been happening in Manhattan Crack was anthrax back then, back when Police was Al'Qaeda to black men"
- rayiner 6y agoThey’re certainly bothering people and threatening peoples’ freedom. Thanks to the export of fundamentalist Islam from certain countries, my home country of Bangladesh is a more dangerous place today then when we left 30 years ago. (And it was under a military dictatorship then!) Unsurprisingly, we take harsh measures to crack down on fundamentalism, including banning Islamist parties and executing terrorists: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48154781 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48154781 (noting that British-Bangladeshi teenager who left to join ISIS would be executed if she went back to Bangladesh). And it’s not just in Bangladesh or Pakistan—while America has been fortunate to be spared from a major terrorist attack since 9/11, our European allies deal with them routinely. To a great extent, the United States is subsidizing the cost of fighting terrorism for all of these countries. After all, in Syria, which is the subject of the article, we got dragged into the conflict by our middle eastern allies. Now, it’s fair to say that none of this is America’s problem. And I probably agree with you. But there is a risk we wake up 30 years from now and huge swaths of the world have been taken over by fundamentalist ideologies that are very hostile to us. We should think a bit about what that world would look like and whether it’s desirable. Americans take for granted that we live in a world shaped by American norms. 160 constitutions around the world are based directly or indirectly in our own. (Bangladesh’s constitution begins with “we the people” just like the United States’.) The Star Trek version of the future (“America in Space”) comes about because of our willingness to invest in the security and economic and social development of the world. And maybe we’ve done enough, and maybe it’s time to let others lead. I’m pretty sympathetic to the arguments that it’s time to turn our focus inward, and we’re doing more harm than good. But the analysis is much bigger than whether certain specific people are attacking US soil at this very moment.
- liability 6y agoIf radicalization in these countries works anything like it does in the west, then the missiles would be more effective at preventing radicalization if pointed at social media tech executives.
- adamsea 6y agoThe particular missiles discussed in the article are killing high-value leaders, etc. So not so much about stopping radicalization as wearing an existing organization. But yeah, I’m sympathetic to your overall point, for sure.
- throw51319 6y agoPretty naive to not understand the concept of allowing these terrorists to operate abroad allows them to more easily coordinate and carry-out attacks in the US, but especially in Europe.
- jeanvalmarc 6y ago> These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form. As a counterargument, you can't know that. It seems like this argument could be restated as "I don't trust the US government to dispassionately determine who is a threat and even if they were a threat I am not in favor of killing people as a response." Which seems fair but the world is a complicated place and there are justifiable uses of drone strikes.
- buran77 6y ago> the world is a complicated place and there are justifiable uses of drone strikes Herein lies the problem, different people and groups see different actions as justifiable or not. Drone striking the hell out of a country half way around the world has very debatable justifications. And what throws a lot of shade on the justification is when the country doing the bombing goes on to ally itself with with countries that are, from the point of view of the justification, no better or worse than the one being bombed.
- jimbob45 6y agoThat same argument could have been used to justify staying out of WW2. Even if Hitler was guaranteed to stay out of US affairs post-war, the fact remains that joining sooner would have resulted in millions of Europeans keeping their lives. Same here. Prematurely joining conflicts now allows us to save scores of lives abroad (at least in theory).
- tafox 6y agoNazi Germany declared war on the US first.
- ls612 6y agoEven if they hadn’t we still would have declared war on them. It only moved up the timetable slightly.
- fuoqi 6y agoI would say that the recent interventions in Libya, Syria, Iraq have only destabilized the region, thus resulting in a huge loss of live and miserable living conditions for citizens of affected countries, which in turn supports and revitalizes radical Islam organizations and further destabilizes situation in Europe, which has to be on the receiving end for refuges created by those interventions.
- mhh__ 6y agoHow far do you take that line of thinking? Should the US have entered the second world war in Europe?
- dfsegoat 6y ago> These folks halfway across the world aren't bothering, nor do they actually threaten my freedom in any way shape or form. Rest assured, there are people who wake up every single day plotting how they can kill Americans or Westerners, or training to do so. This may be the West / USA's fault - but it's where we find ourselves, regardless. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_State_list_of_Foreign_Terrorist_Organizations#Groups_designated_as_FTOs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_St...
- GordonS 6y agoGiven the many articles about new and exciting ways to kill brown people from halfway across the world at the touch of a button, I'd wager there are just as many Americans who wake up every single day plotting how they can sell their newest killing machines to the US gov in the name of stopping terrorism etc.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hirundo 6y agoHow long until the US is subject to this kind of targeted assassination? It doesn't seem that this tech is so inaccessible to state actors with billions to invest. There are sufficient such enemies. Is the Secret Service really confident that it can protect its charges from this kind of attack? I think they'll find that a drone missile can also be a boomerang. EDIT: The objections to this scenario are taking it more literally than I was. I was thinking of a few dozen launched together from a yacht or freighter or enemy safe house in a nearby suburb. That's a lot easier than reproducing the US global operation. There was a similar sequence near the beginning of Olympus has Fallen.
- Pfhreak 6y agoImperialism and extrajudicial killing is only bad when other people do it, obviously. /s
- renewiltord 6y agoThere is no _bad_ on this scale. There is only "aligned with our objectives" and "not aligned with our objectives". And we short-hand the latter with "bad" and the former with "good" to create the propaganda association of ethics. So yes, I would gladly repeat your comment unironically. I think this is sound. Pax Americana is part of the foundation for massive human progress. It has led to a Golden Age the like of which has never been seen before.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoI mean, I don't know if this would be the tech leap that does it. This is spending millions of dollars to stab someone from a chair a continent away. I think we were probably at the "this is going to backfire" moment with the first round of drones. I doubt that this ability to now ostensibly limit civilian casualties weighs heavily on those who would perform an attack such as you're imaging.
- int_19h 6y agoA state actor with billions of dollars to invest would just use a regular missile. But not against another state actor with billions of dollars to invest into anti-air defense. The only reason why these are used in places like Syria or Yemen is because there's nobody there with the capacity to reliably shoot down drones and/or warplanes.
- TheDesolate0 6y agoBecause, you know, we are the Nazis now.
- yters 6y agoif ISIS get stronger they'll carry out more terrorist attcks over, ratcheting up the lethality why not take them out overseas first? they've declared war so are lawful combatants
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fuoqi 6y agoIt's interesting how public has forgotten that ISIS is no longer any different from your usual terrorist organization with cellular structure, which is actively eradicated by both Syrian government and Kurds. So what mandate US forces have in Syria for their military activity? Not only they occupy some strategic land (Al-Tanf), but also actively kill military forces of the internationally recognized government (you can call it a dictatorship, evil to the core, etc., but it does not change the fact) inside Syrian borders without declaring a war on it. But luckily for the public in his utter unprofessionalism Trump was pretty honest about it: https://www.newsweek.com/syria-trump-stealing-oil-us-confirms-deal-1526589 https://www.newsweek.com/syria-trump-stealing-oil-us-confirm...
- duxup 6y agoI wonder what the relevance of a government is if they're internationally recognized, but don't actually control their own territory. Who operates where and does what has always been more fluid than just 'well they're internationally recognized'.
- fuoqi 6y agoThe biggest reason why they do not control the territory is the US and Turkey military presence in the region (with some active interventions from time to time), effectively it's a military occupation, but with extra steps. After Trump declared that US troops will be withdrawn and they will not defend Kurds against Turkish forces, the government has easily reclaimed control over the large area with a very limited fighting.
- duxup 6y agoI would go a little farther back and say the biggest reason was the Civil War... after that things played out.
- fuoqi 6y agoYes, but let's not be naive. The forces which were opposing the Asad regime were actively supported by Gulf states with political backing from the US and Europe (and quite probably with some intelligence officers coordinating situation on the ground), which led to the hot civil war together with the failing of the Syrian government.
- nimish 6y agoIt's not clear to me why we're focusing on killing people in Syria. What are we gaining from doing this?
- vsareto 6y agoR&D and political power I guess
- Rebelgecko 6y agoFirstly there's the vengeance aspect. Al Qaeda did 9/11, along with many other terror attacks against the US. Hurras al-din has also given support to ISIS, who destabilized a good chunk of the middle east. It's a bad look since a lot of Americans died to effect regime change in Iraq. If Iraq ends up turning into a full-blown theocracy, it makes our efforts there seem even more wasteful. According to the Russians, he was trying to gather supplies to make illegal chemical weapons but definitely take that with a grain of salt. Supposedly this helps US goals in Syria, but TBH I'm not really sure what the US goals are. I suspect that both our current and previous president would have a hard time articulating goals that are consistent with their actions in Syria
- fuoqi 6y ago>Al Qaeda did 9/11, along with many other terror attacks against the US. This statement is funny because the US support of "moderates" has resulted in military support of the Al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda wing in Syria (they have tried to rebrand themselves, but only blind will not recognize in them a radical islamist organization).
- catsdanxe 6y agoIt's also funny because Al Qaeda was a front for the people that actually did 9/11.
- fuoqi 6y agoAnd Osama bin Laden was a "freedom fighter" in the eyes of the West once. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anti-soviet-warrior-puts-his-army-on-the-road-to-peace-the-saudi-businessman-who-recruited-mujahedin-1465715.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/anti-soviet-warrior...
- bregma 6y agoI guess like depleted uranium bullets is a useful way to re-purpose a byproduct of nuclear weapons production, flinging blades at an enemy is a good way to re-purpose decommissioned servers. I can only imagine the military uses for all the severed cable ties.
- Justsignedup 6y agotl;dr this is a gruesome but targeted missile that doesn't explode and thus reducing collateral damage. Overall a good thing. Overall wars are terrible and so are "police actions" that we often do. So my opinion is still that we need to figure out how to combat misinformation, propaganda, and radicalism rather than figuring out better/more efficient ways to kill each other. But that requires going after both social media companies, and stabilizing governments by providing spreading of wealth in poor countries, and relief to natural disasters.
- aphextron 6y ago> Overall a good thing. I wouldn't be so sure. The ultimate issue here is the casual use of cold blooded extrajudicial assassination via drone. Anything which makes the decision to do that easier is a net negative. The whole reason we got to the point of regularly doing this over the last 20 years is because the technological means to do so have become commoditized and extremely "hands off". Colatteral damage is not what we should be worried about, but whether the act is even just in the first place. These are not battlefield commanders engaged in tactical decision making against our front line troops we're killing. They are strategic level beaureaucrats. The argument that this is just warfare doesn't apply. And if those people we were targeting had the means to do this to our own military officials driving down the street in Washington, we'd be hauling them into war crime tribunals.
- csours 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsDjpKr2Mk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsDjpKr2Mk The world is grey, Jack. - Clear and Present Danger Was WWII a more acceptable war because one side was clearly more morally reprehensible? Even then, it seems to often be a difference in degree, not in kind. Please do not take this as an excuse or lessening of severity for any group.
- ahupp 6y agoThe Drive has a series of detailed articles about this kind of missle: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31409/everything-we-know-about-americas-sword-blade-hellfire-missile-and-its-latest-target https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31409/everything-we-kn...
- Simulacra 6y agoSeems like a win-win. Remove a threat, while limiting civilian and surrounding damage.
- zalkota 6y agoThis is amazing, no splash damage.