“Let Robots Do the Dying,” said Simon Ramo, the aerospace pioneer.

The first “robots” that did their dying for us were clunky little tin cans with wings on them. Anti-aircraft gunners would shoot them down during training exercises in WWII. On rare occasions they were sent out on simple attack missions - with no return policy. Their purpose was to explode. 

They had no religion. No after-life virgins. No manna. No soul. No brain, no sense. No consciousness. 

By the time Vietnam War started, they were less clunky, and had a simmering of a personality as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs. 

In Vietnam they also got their first real sense. They could see through a camera lense. They flew thousands of reconnaissance missions in high-risk areas. They got a glimpse of the Tonkin Gulf clash. They marked Agent Orange tracks for the B-52s. They suggested convenient spots for napalm dumps. Eventually they spluttered and crashed. Sometimes they reincarnated in Charlie’s backyard as a modern art installation.

They were commended because “they saved lives.” Friendly lives, that is. 

Remote-control warfare was in. But not huge.

The Yom Kippur War changed things. A heavily damaged Israeli Air Force used the UAVs for the first time to get real-time images of the Syrian air defenses. It saved the war for the Israelis. And it gave the UAVs a sense of notoriety. It was good. But the tin-cans craved for more.

They got it with 9/11. Today, the Drones mark 9/11 as a major anniversary. The War on Terror gave them both a character and a purpose. They were suddenly called Drones. Much nicer than just “UAV.” Pentagon believed in them. The number of U.S. Air Force Predator Drones grew from a dozen to over 7,500 after 2001. 

The drones were delighted with the new promotion. Suddenly they got a serious job in the mountainous, isolated plains of Afghanistan. They got an onboard computer. Radar. Serious goodies in their belly. Four Stinger missiles.  Six Griffin air-to-surface missiles.  Two 100 lb “tank-buster” Hellfire missiles.

The Hellfires were especially bothersome to Afghan shepherds and people who liked to convene in the desert. The tank-busters would shoot marginally past intended targets and into Afghan wedding receptions, car convoys, and religious get-togethers - with laser-accuracy. The target just had to look suspicious from orbit. 

Joystick-happy college grads with MScs in Video Gaming monitored the satellite feeds from underground bunkers in Nevada, navigated the drones towards the suspicious spots, and used the red button on the joystick to turn the suspicious spots into pixelated soup. Unsuspicious soup.

With pizza, Pepsi, the SAT feed, and the Shtick - anything was possible. Masturbation lost it’s grandeur in comparison. 

It was a fight for America’s freedom, 6,370 miles away from America.

Drones became overnight celebrities. The CIA handled their PR and invented catchy slogans, like “zero collateral damage.” 

The first zero collateral damage hit was Bin Laden’s senior lieutenant Mohammed Atef. In November 2001, a Predator drone captured footage of a hotel in Kabul which housed Atef’s crew and their SUVs. Fighter jets were brought in to erase the place, and a drone was used to shoot Hellfire missiles into the ensuing chaos. “Zero collateral damage.”

The drones also took out dozens of suspicious encampments in the desert - thinking Bin Laden might be there. 

In Pakistan, the drones have vaporized over 3,000 suspicious people since 2001, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. 150 of these were named militants. At least 175 were children. 

In Yemen in 2011, one mischievous drone even took out an American citizen,  Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi. There was no jury or deliberation. Just a drone suspicion that Qaed was involved in the bombing of USS Cole. He and his car convoy were vaporized 100 miles east of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. 

Al-Harithi became the first U.S. citizen killed by the U.S. government during the War on Terror. This was another facelift for the drones. They were now allowed to take out Americans. 

2011 also marks another milestone for the Drones. It marks the birth of X-47B, an $831 million concept bird developed by Northrop Grumman. 

She looks like a George Lucas creation. 

She doesn’t need  a remote pilot (sorry, pizza boys in Nevada). She can make her own decisions about who to attack. She can change mission parameters, also without human intervention. If a suspicious wedding reception is joined by a suspicious car convoy, why not take out both.

She is invisible to the radar. She can fuel herself in mid-air. She can land on an aircraft carrier. All by herself. 

She is like the “liberated woman” of the 1970s, after the contraceptive pill became widely available.  She decides who to fuck and when. 

She also has a 4,500 payload capacity. She doesn’t have to take out villages anymore, because she can take out a small city if the situation so demands. 

As an an independent lady, she is the forerunner of a new age of unaccountable warfare, where robots will not only do the dying for us, nor just the killing, but also the decisions on who to kill. She may be the first bird that the generals can point at and say, “it was her,” after the wrong village is taken out.

The Drones have come a long way. They now have a soul, a brain, and a sense. The U.S. Government believes strongly enough in the Drones to deploy them also domestically. Eventually they will not only change the nature of war, but the nature of domestic law enforcement.

Simon Ramo must have known that robots wouldn’t be happy just dying for us, for too long. They want more out of their lives.