The impact of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles on our society Essay

The impact of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles on our society - Essay Example The possibilities of building systems that openly endanger societies all over the world are at least as huge as the possibility of applying this technology for constructive intentions or for the greater good. This essay presents an analysis of the positive and negative impacts of UAVs on societies and warfare. The Costs and Benefits of Unmanned Systems The design, construction, and use of UAVs will transform national security policy and society significantly. As more and more societies begin to use more automated processes, movement into areas affecting national security policy will certainly take place. The likelihood of building remotely operated, armed UAVs no longer sounds unbelievable. As expected, the development of UAVs would radically transform air battle. UAVs offer numerous advantages over manned structures, such as preventing human casualties, enabling flight control, and being more affordable or cost-effective (Bone & Bolkcom 2004, 10). UAVs enable a range of military and civilian operations not possible beforehand with manned systems and enable these operations to be carried out without risking the lives of the pilots, who operate at distant control centers. In counterinsurgency combat, the primary advantage of UAVs is an enhanced capacity to locate, deal with, and terminate enemies, while reducing civilian fatalities. Usually, UAVs would monitor a suspect and send the coordinates to a control station, where staffs would discuss with senior officials and look at maps in order to track civilian networks or buildings. After the discussion, the control station would dispatch directives to an airborne vehicle (Owen & Mueller 2007, 49). Moreover, as P.W. Singer observes, using UAVs give pilots the opportunity to engage in further risks with their vehicles, like hanging around longer and flying closer to the ground, hence resulting in a more precise attack. UAVs hence help commanding officers prevent civilian casualties during their attacks—an imp ortant factor in counterinsurgency combat (Callam 2010, 3). Unmanned aerial vehicles have further strengthened and sped up the evolving characteristic of warfare, and have been promoted for civilian uses such as search and rescue, wider security, and in observation of disaster-prone territories. Advancements in technology currently allow combatants to employ UAVs to deal with opponents from distant locations such as the Middle East. It also enables search and rescue attempts to be carried out in isolated locations or inaccessible ruins via the application of search and rescue automatons (Valavanis et al. 2009, 452). These automated machines have kept humans from entering dangerous situations. In a nutshell, the benefits of employing UAVs in comparison to using a manned system, are UAVs do not include, or require, a trained pilot aboard; lessen the exposure hazard to the pilot; can go into places that are hostile to humans; can remain airborne for more than 24 hours, conducting an ac curate, constant monitoring of a territory (e.g. conducting thermal or visual scan of an area, conducting a geological scan, etc.); and can be designed to accomplish operations independently even without communication with its operator (Callam 2010, 2). But UAVs are not completely blemish-free. The use of UAVs has also received several criticisms. Several learned observers argue that the application of