Why drones are bad

Through using remotely-controlled aircraft to take out bad guys far away from our shores, we are told, we are keeping the public as well as our armed forces safe. The reality, however, is that drones are liable to increase insecurity, not reduce it. Politicians know that the public do not like to see young men and women sent overseas to fight in wars which often have remote and unclear aims. Potential TV footage of grieving families awaiting funeral corteges has been a definite restraint on political leaders weighing up the option of military intervention.

Despite claims of the defence industry and advocates of drone warfare, it is simply not possible to know precisely what is happening on the ground from thousands of miles away. While the UK claims, for example, that only one civilian was killed in the thousands of British air and drone strikes in Iraq and Syria, journalist and casualty recording organisations have reported thousands of deaths in Coalition airstrikes.

It is also hard not to connect the awful terrorist attacks that have taken place here in the UK and in Europe to these military interventions. While the public as well as senior military and security officials understand that there is a clear link between military intervention and terror attacks at home, politicians continue to baulk at the connection.

There is a danger that you shift the way an enemy target you and looks for vulnerabilities, and that is where we find ourselves. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of armed drones has been their use by the United States, Israel and the UK for targeted killing.

Legal scholars define targeted killing as the deliberate, premeditated killing of selected individuals by a state who are not in their custody. Where International Humanitarian Law the Laws of War applies, targeted killing of combatants may be legal. Outside of IHL situations, International Human Rights Law applies and lethal force may only be used when absolutely necessary to save human life that is in imminent danger.

Despite what we might think, the risk around the proliferation of drones is more about the way they change how spaces feel than about privacy, he says. Perhaps the most problematic use of a drone is as a tool for suppression, Dr Richardson says. Just the fear of being watched can be enough to deter people from public participation, he says. The fear of being watched can deter people from public participation and activism. While we might be okay with some aspects of police drone usage, it could become a slippery slope, he says.

Now is the time to introduce clear safeguards and accountability to prevent unwanted surveillance in the future, he says. Skip to main content. Pretty much every law-making country agrees on this one fact. Drones can also cause injury when they come into contact with people, property, or wildlife during their flight. They can also cause injury if the worst were to happen, and the drone were to drop out of the sky and land on a person.

It seems like the eyes are a particularly vulnerable area to drone injuries since the propeller can slice them open and cause significant damage should the propeller come into contact with the surface of the eye. In my other article — can a drone cut your finger off?

Videos from experiments I go through all of the video evidence of drone injuries and damage to soft parts of your body. In short, there is plenty of evidence that a drone can cause significant damage to the soft parts of your body which is most likely your hand or finger. There have been a number of experiments with commercial and professional drones but none of them have been able to take off a finger.

Researchers from Aalborg University in Denmark have been testing the damage caused by a range of propellers. They have been using them to cause a range of damage to pork as it is one of the closest things to human muscle and skin. They also took the propellers to other materials like glass and cars too… all in the name of science! The researchers strapped a large slab of pork to the end of a ramp.

The ramp was used to fire the blades towards the meat and contained the blades spinning at precisely controlled RPMs. The actual catapult is nearly three meters long and built of aluminum.

The slide is pulled by an electric motor. It can accelerate a 1-kilogram drone up to 15 meters per second and the collision is filmed with a high-speed camera with over frames per second. The force of impact is measured over time as this is important for the extent of the injury. Once the researchers get more experienced, the plan is to upgrade the catapult for larger drones and higher speeds. The scientists discovered that plastic blades shatter pretty much on impact while carbon fibre blades known for their strength can do a lot more damage.

These were only the beginnings of a research study and they are planning on working more with hospitals as drone injuries become a more common occurrence. In my personal experience with drone injuries, my finger was caught in a Mavic air drone propeller when I was attempting to catch my drone during landing:. Because drones are relatively light is unlikely to cause significant damage to anything like a car or a house.

However, if the drone was to get close to an aerial, or other extraneous part of a house it could damage that component beyond the point of repair. Even though the blades are relatively light, when they are spinning at a very high number of revolutions per minute they can easily cause damage to property.

Also, a drone falling out of the sky uncontrolled at a weight of greater than 2. Lastly, one of the bad things about any new consumer product is the amount of waste generated when demand for an electronic product increases. Each year, up to Without proper recycling there is no doubt that e-waste can contribute to a significant amount of landfill — and landfill which has the potential to be highly toxic.

In many parts of the world there is a lack of recycling infrastructure to handle electronic waste in general.