When: Wednesday 14th September 2:30 – 4:30 pm
Where: United Reformed Church, Bromley (map)
Speaker: Peter Lee; Professor of Applied Ethics & Director, Security and Risk Research and Innovation, University of Portsmouth
RAF Reaper Force: The Human Dimension of Conducting Remote Air Warfare
Drawing on extensive research with 39 Squadron (RAF) and XIII Squadron (RAF) for his book Reaper Force: Inside Britain’s Drone Wars, Professor Lee will discuss drone warfare from the operators’ perspectives and provide insights into some of the impacts on those involved.
Since the advent of manned air power more than a century ago there has been a steady increase in the physical and psychological distance between crews and their targets. With the advent of remotely piloted air (drone) operations in the twenty-first century, such as RAF Reaper operations, a distance paradox has emerged: while the physical distance between crews and targets has extended to thousands of miles, the visual, emotional and psychological distance to the same targets is closer to that experienced by First World War aircrew. In addition, command elements and support elements such as Intelligence Imagery Analysts see the same intimate live video feeds and photographic images. Drawing on extensive research with 39 Squadron (RAF) and XIII Squadron (RAF) for his book Reaper Force: The Inside Story of Britain’s Drone Wars, Professor Lee will discuss drone warfare from the operators’ perspectives and provide insights into some of the impacts on those involved.
Professor Peter Lee, Professor of Applied Ethics, is the Director, Security and Risk Research and Innovation at the University of Portsmouth. His research spans the ethical and other human aspects of remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS/drones) operations in military, policing and wider security contexts, and the ethics of autonomous weapon systems. His latest research project examined screen-mediated moral injury in RAF Reaper drone crews and in police online investigators in child exploitation units. In 2016 Peter was granted unprecedented research access to the two RAF Reaper (drone) squadrons for his latest book, Reaper Force: Inside Britain’s Drone Wars (Paperback, August 2019). He is currently an Expert Adviser to the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones. He is a member of the MOD AI Ethics Advisory Group. From 2001 to 2008 he served as a Royal Air Force chaplain.
