Drone Warfare: War in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Abstract: In this paper I explore the scopic regime of drone warfare as the production of the image as a site of meaning. The first part of the paper I describe what a drone is, through its technical specifications and through detailed reports on actual drone attacks in the recent ‘War on Terror.’ I highlight some of the contemporary debates surrounding its use and how drone technology has transformed the mechanization of war. In the second part of the paper I relate drone technology to a historical framework, specifically referring to the work of Walter Benjamin and his seminal essay, ”The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” This moves through a discussion of the relationship between vision and war during the First World War and political implications of representations of mechanized warfare during the aesthetic movement of the Futurists. The final section of the paper approaches specific aspects of drone technology that depart from mechanized warfare into a digital realm. These aspects connect to the development of artificial visual intelligence programs and the primacy of visual pattern recognition being increasingly utilized in drone surveillance. I highlight concepts in the work of Paul Virilio in his book, “The Vision Machine” such as telepresence and the industrialization of vision, in examining the contemporary implications of drone technology.