Targeting Legality: The Armed Drone as a Socio-Technical and Socio-Legal System

Drawing on and providing a synthesis of recent social, political and legal research including our own, in this article we argue that the armed drone should be seen as both a sociotechnical and socio-legal system. Focusing on the United States (US) as one of the pioneers of drone warfare, the world’s primary state user of drones and the country whose drone programmes we know most about, after an introduction setting out our argument in overview, we begin by outlining the growth in drone operations since their first combat use. Noting that it has proven difficult to characterise the exact nature of the armed drone, we outline why we believe they should be viewed as a particular kind of sociotechnical system based on an examination of the social and technical networks that make drone strikes possible. As these are networks in which operational legal advisors play a significant role, we suggest the law needs to be seen as internal to the system rather than an external constraint upon it, something which complicates attempts to regulate drone warfare through legal means. We conclude by arguing that the problem of the armed drone demands new analytical and political responses, potential lines of which we sketch in the article’s final sections. Linking research into the sociotechnical and socio-legal system of drone warfare, we argue, represents a particularly effective way of grappling with the specific challenges the armed drone poses as well as suggesting how collaborations between researchers might work to support international political processes focused on restricting their use.