Rethinking the Criterion for Assessing Cia-targeted Killings: Drones, Proportionality andJus Ad Vim

The legal and ethical implications of drone warfare

“…84 There is some evidence that this pays off in more careful discrimination about civilian casualties. 85 The CIA programme, on the other hand, is entirely classified, with almost no data in the public domain about its activities. It remains unclear who is involved in the process of selecting targets and how the chain of command for the CIA drone programme is designed.…”

The Ethics of Realism in Virtual and Augmented Reality

“…The operator, thousands of kilometers away from an intended target, uses an interface to guide a drone which fires a weapon at designated hostile personnel. There is a debate in the military ethics literature about the ethical standing of such strikes (Braun and Brunstetter, 2013), with some arguing that they follow the doctrine of proportionality (since typically there is less "collateral damage") and others arguing that it nevertheless violates the principle of justice of force short of war (jus ad vim). Less dramatically than drone strikes, studies have been done where participants through VR become embodied in, and control in real-time, a remote physical robot.…”

Reflections on War Ethics in the Employment of UAVs

“…Proportionality is the most contentious issue in the moral debate about UAVs, although it is seemingly outlined in the law clearly. The standard of proportionality is delineated in Articles 51(5)(b) and 57(2)( iii) of Additional Protocol I, which proscribe" an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life , injury to civilians, damage to civilian object, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" (Braun and Brunstetter, 2013).…”

“…A good example to illustrate this issue is the comparison study made by Braun and Brunstetter (2013). Considering the difficulty of delineating the tolerant threshold of damage, they choose collateral damage ratio as a proxy for proportionality to compare the proportionality of CIA's drone strikes and U.S. military's strikes.…”