Holder2020
| Holder2020 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Holder2020 |
| Author(s) | Alexander Holder |
| Title | The centrality of militarised drone operators in militarised drone operations |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Military, Aircraft |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2020 |
| Language | English |
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| Month | |
| Journal | Ethnographic Studies |
| Volume | |
| Number | 17 |
| Pages | 81-99 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.4050543 |
| ISBN | |
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Abstract
Over the course of the last two decades, militarised drones—known alternatively as ‘remotely piloted aircraft’ (RPA) or ‘un-manned aerial vehicles’ (UAVs)—have come to be the centrepiece of the United States’ (U.S.) post-9/11 military involvements, a signature means by which operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere have been conducted. Over the course of this period, the now-retired General Atomics MQ-1 Predator and its successor the MQ-9 Reaper have come to be defined by two distinct forms of invisibility. They are invisible, in a first sense, to the populations who live below and within their telescopic gaze (See Gregory, 2011; Haraway, 1988), who can neither see the aircraft as they loiter eight thousand metres overhead, nor the pilots who fly them by remote control from half a world away; but they are also invisible, in a second sense, to the people on whose behalf the drone is supposedly deployed. This latter form of invisibility, perhaps better termed ‘in-transparency’, captures the organisational, institutional, and procedural means by which the public have been denied a view of the inner workings of the United States’ militarised drone programmes.
Notes
