U.S. Air Force Captain Keric D. Clanahan has written a paper on the legal and policy controversies surrounding the Air Force’s use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), more commonly known as drones. Specifically, Clanahan examines the kinds of tasks contractors are performing in the Air Force’s drone program and discusses whether these tasks should be entrusted to contractors. Drones have profoundly changed the nature of warfare in the last few years. The drone program greatly depends on private contractors, from drone manufacturer General Atomics to the hundreds of employees of companies like SAIC and BAE Systems who help the Air Force conduct drone missions. According to Clanahan, the U.S. military’s fleet of drones has grown from 167 in 2002 to over 7,000 in 2011, and the Air Force plans to acquire hundreds more over the next few years at a total cost that will exceed $20 billion. Clanahan argues that government personnel should perform many of the roles necessary to sustain the drone program because they are inherently governmental functions, or functions which must be performed by federal civilian or military employees. Clanahan is somewhat vague about whether contractors in the program are performing or have performed inherently governmental functions, […]
Drones: Unmanned, but Inherently Governmental?
Drones: Unmanned, but Inherently Governmental?
Asteptam opiniile si intrebarile dv.