Drones, the Socio-technical Reordering of Contemporary Conflicts and the Imaginary of “Surgical Warfare”
Keywords:
sociotechnical reordaining, war on terror, surgical warfare, dronesAbstract
Over the last 15 years, we have been baring witness to an increase in the use of armed drones in military actions, due to the evolution of the discourse regarding precise, swift operations during the Bush and Obama administrations. The legitimacy of these conflicts is sustained by the imaginary of surgical warfare, defined by the assumption that precision and technical weaponry superiority could “humanize” the so-called War on Terror. However, extrajudicial killings were never considered legitimate, since they occur under controversial and unclear conditions. Thus, by understanding military operations as a sociotechnical system and the development of new technologies, devices and war doctrines as process that re-ordains these operations, this paper seeks to debate the Predator mq-1 drone as a sociopolitical artifact. Our main argument is that during the development of this technology, several institutions, such as the CIA and the us Air Force have shaped the sociotechnical conditions that enabled the legal limits of the war on terror. This would guarantee the suppression of political constraints to the government and the Department of Defense in continuing their actions in foreign lands.
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