Is Remote Warfare Moral?: Weighing Issues of Life and Death from 7,000 Miles

by Joseph O Chapa

Overview

America is at an important turning point. Remote warfare is not just a mainstay of post–9/11 wars, it is a harbinger of what lies ahead—a future of high-tech, artificial intelligence–enabled, and autonomous weapons systems that raise a host of new ethical questions. Most fundamentally, is remote warfare moral? And if so, why?
 
Joseph O. Chapa, with unique credentials as Air Force officer, Predator pilot, and doctorate in moral philosophy, serves as our guide to understanding this future, able to engage in both the language of military operations and the language of moral philosophy.
 
Through gripping accounts of remote pilots making life-and-death decisions and analysis of high-profile cases such as the killing of Iranian high government official General Qasem Soleimani, Chapa examines remote warfare within the context of the just war tradition, virtue, moral psychology, and moral responsibility. He develops the principles we should use to evaluate its morality, especially as pilots apply human judgment in morally complex combat situations. Moving on to the bigger picture, he examines how the morality of human decisions in remote war is situated within the broader moral context of US foreign policy and the future of warfare.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541774469
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	07/05/2022
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Joseph O. Chapa is a US Air Force officer and holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Oxford. He has served as a Predator pilot and instructor of philosophy at the Air Force Academy. Dr. Chapa has published on military ethics in academic journals including Social Theory and Practice and The Journal of Military Ethics, and in online venues such as War on the Rocks and The Strategy Bridge. He currently leads the Artificial Intelligence Cross-Functional Team in Air Force Futures and serves as the Department of the Air Force's chief responsible AI ethics officer.
 

Table of Contents

Introduction: Killing from 7,000 Miles 1

1 The Predator Paradigm 23

2 Riskless Warfare? 55

3 The Morality and Psychology of Remote Warfare 85

4 Good Guys and Bad Guys: When Is Killing Justified? 109

5 Human Judgment and Remote Warfare 135

6 It's "Hard Work to Be Excellent": Remote Warrior Virtue 155

7 What Comes Next? 179

Acknowledgments 197

Notes 201

References 233

Index 255

Editorial Reviews

05/09/2022

Philosopher and U.S. Air Force officer Chapa debuts with a nuanced if somewhat self-serving consideration of the ethical questions raised by the use of armed, remotely piloted aircraft. He pushes back against the notion that remote warfare is not “real warfare,” pointing out that previous technological innovations, including the advent of submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles, have similarly “challenged standing conceptions and demanded that military operators, strategists, and policy makers modify old ways of thinking.” He also claims that the concept of warfare as a “duel” between enemies who risk their lives on a field of battle is misleading; disputes the idea that drone pilots and crew members adopt a “PlayStation mentality” when operating their aircraft; and claims that while instances of PTSD among drone pilots “are not nearly as common as the Hollywood accounts would have us all believe,” the prevalence of “moral injury,” which is caused by “witness or participat in an event that transgresses deeply held beliefs about humanity,” needs further study. Chapa’s firsthand experience gives his philosophical conclusions weight, but he shies away from some of the bigger questions he raises about remote warfare, including whether it will encourage leaders to engage in “more wars more often.” The result is a well-informed study whose takeaways feel preordained. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Chapa’s firsthand experience gives his philosophical conclusions weight… a well-informed study.”—Publishers Weekly

“[E]ven those who have already made up their minds about the morality of war will find a challenging examination of questions to which we are still developing answers…A hard-nosed look at the morality of drone warfare from a writer who has seen it close-up.”—Kirkus

“Chapa integrates a mastery of moral philosophy and psychology with his warfighting expertise to fill an important lacuna in the literature addressing the morality of drone strikes.”—Journal of Military Ethics

From the Publisher

2022-05-05
An exploration of the morality of armed drones by an Air Force officer who has piloted Predator strikes and instructed other service members in their use.

Chapa, the Air Force’s chief artificial intelligence ethics officer, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford, is concerned with the ethics of a war fighter who takes enemy lives without being exposed to danger. It is a common conception that “war is defined by the courage of, risk to, and potential sacrifice by combatants.” By this criterion, how can someone who strikes down an opponent from thousands of miles away be a legitimate warrior rather than an assassin? “Though war ought to remain a dreadful last resort,” writes the author, “remote weapons threaten to make warfare commonplace.” Chapa focuses on the “humanity” of drone crews, who are faced with life-and-death decisions on an almost daily basis. He divides the ethical considerations into the strategic—on the level of national policy—and the tactical, involving individual crew members. He traces a significant change in the former to the aftermath of 9/11, when the focus of policy changed from state-level actors to individual terrorists and their leaders. Such counterterrorism missions were not suited to heavy bombers or artillery barrages. The rise of the Predator drone (and subsequent drone models) was the direct result of a war that didn’t take place on a traditional battlefield. Chapa presents a number of stories of drone pilots who disobey orders, noting, for example, a child in the field of fire or unusual behavior on the parts of people in nearby areas. Though general readers may find Chapa’s account dry and occasionally abstract, even those who have already made up their minds about the morality of war will find a challenging examination of questions to which we are still developing answers.

A hard-nosed look at the morality of drone warfare from a writer who has seen it close-up.

Kirkus Reviews