Drone precision claims will fail in actual battle conditions

Evidence

Then there is the question of invincibility, the superhuman precision, the omniscience of sensors loaded on pilotless RPVs hooked to computer networks … etc. For those who are impressed by these claims we recommend paying attention to similar claims made in the past. There exists a vast difference between the results obtained under controlled conditions and the actual battle conditions… . The image of pinpoint destruction of individual resistors is a false one… . — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 726

Categorization

• QUESTION: A testable 1973 claim that modern counterinsurgency literature (precision-strike civilian casualties in Pakistan/Yemen) tends to bear out — worth chasing the data.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 726
• XREF: connects to: Drone surveillance cannot reliably distinguish combatants from civilians; Preemptive drone targeting rests on epistemologically fragile predictions; Preemptive drone strikes rest on fragile and therefore dangerous prediction claims. (+3 more)

Related

• Drone surveillance cannot reliably distinguish combatants from civilians (similarity 0.85)
• Preemptive drone strikes rest on fragile and therefore dangerous prediction claims. (similarity 0.84)
• Drones are less precise than rifles and grenades at discriminating targets. (similarity 0.83)
• Preemptive drone targeting rests on epistemologically fragile predictions (similarity 0.82)
• Weapon precision cannot improve the adequacy of target identification. (similarity 0.82)
• The drone should be judged against equivalent tactical weapons, not older bombers (similarity 0.82)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.80)
• Drone advocates came to believe their own claims of negligible collateral damage. (similarity 0.80)
• Drones produce constant terror because targets never know when they are tracked. (similarity 0.80)
• Drone missiles have larger lethal radii than conventional infantry weapons (similarity 0.80)
• Drone targeting hinged on remote visual guesses about sex and combatant status (similarity 0.79)
• Drone targeting decisions rest on probabilistic inference from behavior rather than observed facts. (similarity 0.79)
• Drones are nondiscriminatory because excluding combat erases the combatant-noncombatant distinction. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Drone surveillance cannot reliably distinguish combatants from civilians #complicates (0.60)
• Preemptive drone targeting rests on epistemologically fragile predictions #qualifies (0.60)
• Preemptive drone strikes rest on fragile and therefore dangerous prediction claims. #qualifies (0.60)
• Drones lower political, economic, and ethical costs of war #complicates (0.55)