Amitai Etzioni, Military Review (USA)
Unmanned aviation systems, popularly known as drones, are playing an increased role in armed conflicts. (...) If the American military continues to move away from deploying conventional forces on the ground (in Iraq and Afghanistan) to a "light footprint" strategy of "offshore balancing" (as employed in Libya), drones are likely to play an even more important role in future armed conflicts. Like other new armaments (e.g., long-range cruise missiles and high-altitude carpet bombing) the growing use of drones has triggered a considerable debate over the moral and legal grounds on which they are used. This debate is next reviewed.