Sharing security in an era of international cooperation: unmanned aerial vehicles and the United States’ Air Force

ABSTRACT

The United States’ Air Force (USAF) has developed and used unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology to monitor and assassinate dangerous terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Currently, there are few countries that possess armed UAV and since the US created much of this technology, the USAF is usually part of the training that automatically accompanies the purchase of its UAVs. The research question this article attempts to answer is, “What is the extent of the United States’ Air Force assistance in the training and proliferation of UAV technology to foreign militaries?”

KEYWORDS:

• United States’ Air Force
• UAV
• United States’ foreign policy
• international cooperation
• drone proliferation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

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30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. In the author’s experience at a Holloman Air Force Base Media Day, experienced USAF pilots were quickly trained and were typically in high-ranking trainer positions after they had been trained on UAV.

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