Comment by plug | Hacker News Reader

Comment by plug | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not convinced that high tech war machinery precludes collateral damage - to use that stomach-churning phrase.

I appreciate your point on one hand - conventional weapons can be inaccurate and that can result in tragic, horrifying mistakes.

But, I'm not aware of any high tech war technology that explicitly tries to prevent risk of injury to non-combatants. The only thing that stops civilians from being fired on is the person on the other end with their finger on the trigger.

For example, in spite of the technology at hand, drone operators have made decisions based on misinformation or misinterpretation - resulting in the horrific murder of civilians.

A weapon is a weapon, and it can be easily used negligently - or malevolently. The Uragan example you mentioned is at least one of these.

  > A weapon is a weapon, and it can be easily used
  > negligently - or malevolently.

It's plainly obvious that, all other things (like the negligence/malevolence) being equal, some weapons are far more indiscriminate than others.

Something like a guided cruise missile is designed to destroy a single building. There can be operator error, and obviously you could intentionally (malevolently) target a civilian building with one.

But compare that to the technology we had sixty years ago: squadrons of huge bomber planes carrying hundreds of unguided bombs.

One of those things is clearly an order of magnitude less likely to cause unintended collateral damage than the other.

There are certainly downsides to the modern technology. One much-discussed one is that cruise missiles and drones give some countries a god-like ability to reign targeted death on others, without putting their own people at risk. Say what you will about the horrors of WWII bombers dropping bombs on populated cities; at least the countries dropping bombs had some skin in the game.

Overall, though, I'll take it.

Good points. I wonder if the two World Wars are outliers though. I don't know if there was anything comparable before them before - there really hasn't been anything since. Of course the ability to rain thousands of tons of bombs on cities in WWII was due to technological advancement at that time. Thank goodness at least that technology has advanced beyond those horrors.

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