What one Predator drone pilot described of his experience fighting in the Iraq war while never leaving Nevada: 'You're going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants. Then you get in the car and you drive home, and within 20 minutes you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.'
P. W. SingerIt is utterly inappropriate for the president Donald Trump to be weighing in the design and acquisitions process of carrier ships at this level. Had a Democratic president done this kind of micromanagement, all the more so in public, Republican defense wonks would have been apoplectic. Instead ... crickets.
P. W. SingerChina is working on a similar system for its future carriers. Donald Trump may want to go back to 1920s-level technology, but the rest of the world isn't.
P. W. SingerThe best way to create cost overruns in any military acquisition is to change course midstream. That is exactly what Donald Trump wants to do here.
P. W. SingerRobots are emotionless, so they don't get upset if their buddy is killed, they don't commit crimes of rage and revenge. But ... they see an 80-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair the same way they see a T80 tank; they're both just a series of zeros and ones.
P. W. SingerDrons change the way politicians think about war. You already have society's barriers against war dropping, and now you have a technology that takes the barriers to the ground. We can carry it out without having to deal with some of the consequences of sending our sons and daughters into harm's way.
P. W. Singer