There is a meme doing the rounds that pretty much captures the insanity of our time. It’s a picture divided into four parts, called “Aircraft Carriers of the World”. Three of the images show huge, budget-busting ships of slightly differing design, decks crowded with expensive fighter-bombers; the vessels are labelled “US”, “China” and “Russia”.
The fourth picture shows a truck hurtling across what might be the Russian steppe. Under it is written “Ukraine”.
Drones are not new to combat. The South African Defence Force used motorised, hand-launched reconnaissance gliders in Angola in the 1980s. But it was a US staff officer doing a tour of duty with a UN peacekeeping mission in Hungary in the 1990s who gave the world the Predator — arguably the world’s most famous unmanned aerial vehicle.
As with most things American, the euphemism masks the reality of a weapon, flown by flight-suited technicians sitting in airconditioned trailers oceans away from the battlefield, bringing terror and death from above.
Predators may cost less than training and paying flesh-and-blood humans to fly a multimillion-dollar jet into a hostile environment (and risk a lousy return on investment), but they certainly aren’t cheap.
In keeping with our junk age, however, we now have tiny drones with good-enough cameras and the ability to carry a small explosive payload that can be launched in swarms and sent to commit suicide on their targets.
Last week’s Ukrainian drone attack on Russian airbases is a one-off, a forehead-smacking moment that will be difficult to repeat.
Meanwhile, the bitter fighting in Ukraine continues, and expendable kamikaze drones are in the thick of it. The footage of them chasing terrified soldiers scrambling out of trenches or tanks is a grotesque intersection of cheap tech and callousness. It is simply murder.
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