Remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) were used initially for surveillance but, increasingly and cost-effectively, are of value when armed with guided weapons for precise targeting.

Apparently, ‘drone’ is a pejorative term. For generations there have been aviation lawyers — but perhaps then few would wish to be known as drone lawyers.

Anyone joining the U.S. Air Force now is said to be more likely to be trained to fly drones, with the general name of ‘RPA crew member’, than to pilot a traditional aircraft.

Wider questions arise from this development: when killing the enemy can seem palpably risk-free and tantamount to playing a violent video game, what constitutes warfare?

What is the effect of remote combat on individual soldiers? What are the unforeseen repercussions that could affect us all?

Wayne Phelps, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps and commander of an active RPA unit, considers these questions and others as part of the ethics of remote military engagement.

Perhaps the real issue for the colonel is the discovery that he and his unit with advanced technology found themselves at the cusp of the old and the new, with inherent and perplexing issues.

First, remoteness from immediate personal danger separated the modern “warrior”, to use the colonel’s frequent term of art, as was the case with combat in comparatively recent wars such as in Korea.

Secondly, the aspect of bespoke killing or individual killing is now a matter for examination in contrasts to the industrial or blanket processes of saturation bombing of the Second World War.

Finally, the discovery of a dissonance between reality, life and death as it occurs, and the immersive world of videos games.

This book is not a study of a theoretician or moral philosopher speculating as to what the options may or may not be possible in these modern and immediate circumstances.

The avalanche of acronyms, second nature to the colonel, makes some of the text difficult to follow, and the constant references to military personnel as “warriors” does seem to be rather bold.

For all that, a new dimension to war has produced a new set of problems particularly in finding the correct people to perform the necessary tasks, and retain their health and sanity.

These last comments make this work, peripheral as it might seem to the concerns of corporate managers, an important example of inherent recruitment problems for very sensitive employment.

The job-specific difficulties affecting the availability of staff to carry out the tasks amount, it would seem, to two identifiable attributes of the job on offer.

First, the task of the RPA pilot is not that of video game player, but that pejorative suggestion amounts to an insult that hits home for those in post of contemplating an application.

Secondly, the successful RPA pilot lives at home, commutes to work, sits online and directs live firing at the presumed enemy and engages in constant surveillance or kills large numbers of them, and goes home.

This arrangement of the practice of war is not an approach to combat that might have been thought possible in the past, or is even assumed widely now to be the reality.

The advocacy of the colonel is a somewhat repetitive about the moral implications and the novelty and effectiveness of a modern means of overcoming an enemy but it is probably correct that submariners in the 1900s had similar doubts.

This summary of implications of RPA duties reflects the duty any armed forces officer to have concern for the best interests of those under immediate command, mixed with an incredulity at finding oneself in a new era of warfare.

The colonel has produced some work of insight for senior managers elsewhere faced with new occupations, changing employment conditions, and a demanding public.

On Killing Remotely: The Psychology of Killing with Drones by Lt. Col. Wayne Phelps. Published by Little, Brown & Company, 2021, 368pp, £22.