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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war. We could not and would not deploy manned aircraft to do these jobs.

We do not deploy F-35s to assassinate people in Pakistan. But we've been deploying drones there since 2004. Note that a key issue here is that the drone strikes aren't even military actions: They're controlled by the CIA.

There is no technical difference with drones, the issue is entirely in how they are used. This is what makes your arguments about the weaponry being the same mostly irrelevant.

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> No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war.

The US hasn't been officialy "at war" in a long time. I think the last one was World War II.

> We do not deploy F-35s to assassinate people in Pakistan.

Of course not: F-35s are more expensive to operate and I'm not sure they've even attained the level of readiness to attempt such a mission.

>The US hasn't been officialy "at war" in a long time. I think the last one was World War II.

If you believe that then how you call the military operations in recent years and present?

Also if there is no war then people that are killed are just murders/assassinations this murders makes the scientists not want to get involved

>>> No, the primary difference is that we deploy drones in areas we are not engaged in warfare, and to assassinate various individuals in foreign countries where we are not at war.

>> The US hasn't been officialy "at war" in a long time. I think the last one was World War II.

> If you believe that then how you call the military operations in recent years and present?

Wars, for the most part.

So you’re not really arguing the point at all. The drone program is an assassination program which is fundamentally different than somemething like the f-35.

> The drone program is an assassination program which is fundamentally different than somemething like the f-35.

My point is there's no meaningful difference between dropping a JDAM on a particular target with an F-35 or dropping a JDAM on the same target with a drone.

Either way, you dropped a JDAM on a target. Doing it with a drone doesn't magically make the result worse or different somehow.

The point is these aren't even military operations, I am fairly confident it'd be literally illegal for the Air Force to assassinate people in the manner we've been using our drone program.

> The point is these aren't even military operations

I disagree. I would call operations conducted with military equipment and with the participation of military personnel (e.g. USAF pilots) military operations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan

"under the operational control of the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division". Feel free to click in and read what SAD does, these are assassinations, not military actions. Remember that military actions are something a government does officially, and assassinations are something denied and covered up for over a decade.

The same Wikipedia article states:

"The drones are flown by United States Air Force pilots located at an unnamed base in the United States. US Department of Defense armed drones, which also sometimes take part in strikes on terrorist targets, are flown by US Air Force pilots located at Creech Air Force Base and Holloman Air Force Base."

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