Human history of battle is still overwhelmingly characterized by face-face battle with swords and other close-contact weapons. The use of guns and other distance weapons are only very recent history over the entire span. As far as the warrior thing goes (you mentioned it), is that a title that has a currency requirement? What if a former combat pilot (former warrior) moves to a UAS assignment, does he lose the warrior status? Should he consider himself a former warrior? Should we even consider any of ourselves warriors? While I don't agree with them, there are many soldiers who scoff at the idea of any USAF pilots calling themselves wariors due to their relative separation from the enemy.

What level of risk constitutes appropriate risk? Does the B-52 crew that launches the ALCM from outside of the AOR meet the criteria? It can be argued that they really haven't assumed any additional risk over a local sortie, and may not even be at as much risk as they would on an LFE such as Red Flag. How about the take-off and landing element of the UAS that is forward-deployed, do they meet the criteria? What about the UAS crew that is in Vegas now, but was forward-deployed a month ago - they were at risk? How about the crew that launched this weapon YouTube - F-15E Destroys Iraqi Fansong Radar, are they unethical, they were presumably well outside the range of the SAM that was attacked - did they meet the risk threshold? They were in Iraq north of the 36th parallel (I was there) so there was some risk, but not from that particular SAM site, although there was largely ineffective AAA. What about an F-22 shooting down a MiG-21 - I'd say the risk was limited in that scenario? How about an F-15 shooting down a hijacked B-777? If you try to minimize risk, are you at risk of crossing the line to being unethical?

I am not a fan of the reliance on the UAS, but I am of the opinion that as long as we have them we need to man them with the most qualified people we can. I have my reasons to dislike where this UAS thing is going (over-reliance on technology, too great a temptation for command and control to be too directive in the execution of the mission, movement away from centralized command/decentralized execution, etc), but ethics? Considering that the role of the USAF is to be an instrument of destruction in the application of national interest, I'd have to say the subjective use of level of risk to determine ethicality is interesting.

Nations have always used technology to dominate the battlefield and maximize the efficiency of the application of force. I don't think that any of the requirements ever made mention of risk. While we may lament the transition of the nature of combat we are witnessing (some have already been doing that since the introduction of IED's, others have even been doing that since the introduction of air-air and surface-air guided missiles), calling it unethical may be a bit extreme.

Fletch - I don't want to rehash the entire 13 pages of the other thread - but I think sending recent UPT grads to this assignment is only a minor, minor improvement over sending non-rated officers and is still not acceptable. As I said, we need ISR asset commanders, and recent UPT grads have neither the experience, SA, nor decision-making skills required in that role.