Drone warfare pits unburdened machines against bodies bound by physical limits.

Evidence

Any defense where the permanent physical limitations of the human body or machines physically connected with the human body are pitted against machines limited only by purely mechanical constraints, and yet controlled by a remote director, are doomed. Remote War is a war of human machines against the human body… . … One side loses people; the other side loses toys. All that is left is the shooting and dying … and toys don’t die… . — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 705

Categorization

• QUESTION: Forty years of hindsight: is the ‘doomed defense’ claim still held, or did cheap ground-based defenses (MANPADS, EW) blunt early drones?
• XREF: connects to: Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death; The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed; Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 282 (+3 more)

Related

• Remote-controlled machines were proposed as a third option beyond protected men or autonomous machines (similarity 0.90)
• Drones add the remote control’s range to the weapon’s range. (similarity 0.88)
• Remote weapons make war unilateral with deaths confined to the enemy side (similarity 0.87)
• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones (similarity 0.87)
• Drone war turns strategic evaluation into disconnected body counts. (similarity 0.87)
• The drone made warfare absolutely unilateral, killing without risk of being killed (similarity 0.86)
• Drones multiplied ballistic reach by adding remote-control distance to weapon range (similarity 0.85)
• Unilateral drone warfare collapses war into a one-sided putting-to-death (similarity 0.85)
• Drones resolve the guerrilla problem by depriving insurgents of any target to attack. (similarity 0.85)
• The Pentagon aims for drones to exert lethal force without human control (similarity 0.85)
• Present-day drones combine remote control and autonomous piloting. (similarity 0.84)
• Remote-controlled weapons treat the enemy as dangerous material to be eliminated unilaterally (similarity 0.84)
• Drones evolved from surveillance eyes into lethal hunter-killer weapons. (similarity 0.83)
• Eliminating reciprocal exposure to violence makes drones look like cowardly weapons. (similarity 0.83)
• The drone’s impossibility of capture deliberately converts kill into the only option (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Drone-weaponized remote control radicalizes war into one-sided killing from safe zones #exemplifies (0.55)
• Drones undermine the tacit geographic limits built into the laws of war #expands (0.50) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 851
• Drone warfare replaces combat’s duel with a hunter-prey hide-and-seek structure #complicates (0.35)