A man is sitting on his porch before he suddenly geysers upward, somersaulting through the air like a discarded plaything. A work truck is cruising across the Gaza Strip at fifty-miles-an-hour and then is suddenly crushed like a coke can and engulfed in flames. Scores of mass-produced Turkish drones flood the Armenian sky, raining death on soldiers before they even knew what hit them, the only warning a low, mechanical hissing sound. This is drone warfare. This is the future of war – a frightening, science-fiction future that is bursting from the pages of our literature into the real world. Tens of thousands of drones watch everything we do; many models can fly for more than twenty-four hours, a ceaseless, lidless eye. Men half-a-world away kill other men with devastating firepower. In Ukraine, soldiers adapt commercially-built drones to serve as mobile killing machines, while their operators sit in a basement scores of miles away, almost completely safe from immediate retaliation. In this episode is the future of combat, the future of intelligence-gathering, and the future of the invasion of human privacy. George Orwell’s 1984 was a tea party compared to the world we are creating for our children. There is an eye in the sky controlled by anonymous, bored pilots. There is an eye in the sky watching you. There is an eye in the sky that can kill you with the press of a button. 

This is the story of drone warfare. 

It’s all free and it’s all here on Battlecast – the world’s foremost podcast on war and its socio-political impact. 

Download episode 92 here: download link

Maps and Images:

Extensive maps and images are posted to the historical atlas of drone warfare located here

Music Source:

Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio /// website: karlcasey.bandcamp.com

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