Un(wo)manned aerial vehicles: an assessment of how unmanned aerial vehicles influence masculinity in the conflict arena

ABSTRACT

Through the construction of masculinity in the military and technological advancements in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, prevailing gender norms of masculinity are being challenged. This article bridges the gap in studies of military technology and ethical dilemmas in the use of force, stressing the impact of prevailing hyper-masculinization in the future of warfare. To strengthen appreciation of hegemonic masculinity in militaries and emerging technological capabilities on the genderization of war, this article applies literature from a variety of fields, including critical gender studies, robotics and military organizations. While a case can be made that genderization of war is inclined towards feminization of battle ground, a deeper analysis of drones and military technology reveals that a state of hyper-masculinity will be more typical of future of warfare. In evaluating the aspects that drones bring to a conflict, it might initially seem that the technology challenges previously dominant masculinity. However, upon further evaluation, it is apparent that the traits of drones and other emerging military technologies support the masculinities currently present, and make armed conflict increasingly hyper-masculinized.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Aaron Karp and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback and invaluable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sumita Kunashakaran is a graduate from The University of Edinburgh, with Masters in International Relations. She is in the consulting sector and continues her research in UAVs and UAV policy in Singapore.

Notes

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4 Ibid., p. 35.

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8 Woodward, ‘Warrior Heroes’, p. 650.

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27 Martin Crotty, ‘Manly and Moral: The Making of Middle-Class Men in the Australian Public School’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 17, No. 2–3 (2000), pp. 10–30.

28 Ibid., p. 23.

29 Mosher and Tomkins, ‘Scripting the Macho Man’, p. 60.

30 Crotty, ‘Manly and Moral’, p. 24.

31 Claire Duncanson, ‘Forces for Good? Narratives of Military Masculinity in Peacekeeping Operations’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2009), pp. 63–80.

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33 Braswell and Kushner, Suicide, Social Integration and Masculinity, p. 533.

34 Ibid.

35 Richard Godfrey, Simon Lilley and Joanna Brewis, ‘Biceps, Bitches and Borgs: Reading Jarhead's Representation of the Construction of the (Masculine) Military Body’, Organization Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2012), pp. 541–562.

36 Ibid.

37 Woodward, ‘Warrior Heroes’, p. 154.

38 Robert Passikoff, ‘The Few, the Proud, the Marines’, Forbes, 9 November 2014.

39 Woodward, “Warrior Heroes’, p. 643.

40 Arkin, ‘Military Socialization and Masculinity’, p. 160.

41 Duncanson, ‘Forces for Good?', p. 64; Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

42 Stephen M. Whitehead and Frank J. Barrett, The Masculinities Reader (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 73.

43 Barrett, ‘The Organisational Construction of Hegemonic Masculinity’, p. 77.

44 Arkin, ‘Military Socialization and Masculinity’, p. 155.

45 Barrett, ‘The Organisational Construction of Hegemonic Masculinity’, p. 85.

46 Arkin, ‘Military Socialization and Masculinity’, p. 156.

47 Judith Large, ‘Disintegration Conflicts and the Restructuring of Masculinity’, Gender & Development, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997), pp. 23–30.

48 Duncanson, ‘Forces for Good?’, p. 64.

49 Mary Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2014), pp. 48–65.

50 Michael Salter, ‘Toys for the Boys? Drones, Pleasure and Popular Culture in the Militarisation of Policing’, Critical Criminology, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2014), pp. 163–177.

51 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 64.

52 Laura Sjoberg, ‘Introduction to Security Studies: Feminist Contributions’, Security Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2009), pp. 138–213.

53 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 50.

54 Ibid.

55 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 52; Eric E. Edin, ‘Spending on DIME Now-Winning Lasting Peace in Afghanistan’, Strategy Research Project, United States Army Reserve, 2010, p. 2.

56 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 52.

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58 Christopher Coker, ‘Humanising Warfare, or Why Van Creveld May Be Missing the “Big Picture”’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2012), pp. 449–460.

59 Duncanson, ‘Forces for Good?’, p. 59.

60 Sumita Kunashakaran, ‘Literature Review: The Feminist Perspectives of Women in the Perpetration of Rape as a Weapon of War’, in International Security (University of Edinburgh, 2014) (unpublished), p. 3.

61 Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and beyond (London: Zed Books, 2013); Nicole Detraz, ‘Gender in Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding’, in International Security and Gender (ed.), (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 38–60, 64–93; Paul Kirby, ‘How Is Rape a Weapon of War? Feminist International Relations, Modes of Critical Explanation and the Study of Wartime Sexual Violence’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2012), pp. 797–821; Annick T.R. Wibben, Feminist Security Studies (New York, NY: Routledge).

62 Sjoberg, ‘Introduction to Security Studies’, p. 896.

63 Donna Haraway, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York, NY: Routledge), pp. 149–181.

64 Celia Roberts, ‘Relating Simply?’, Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 23, No. 55 (2008), pp. 75–86.

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66 Sauer and Schornig, ‘Killer Drones’, p. 369.

67 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 50; Shepherd, ‘Veiled references’, p. 26.

68 George W. Bush, ‘President Unveils “Most Wanted” Terrorists’ [website], The White House, 2001a.

69 Ibid., ‘Define Spirit of America’ [website], The White House, 2001b.

70 Ibid., ‘International Campaign against Terror Grows’ [website], The White House, 2001c.

71 Ibid., ‘Honoring the Victim of the Incidents on Tuesday September 11 2001’ [website], 2001d; Shepherd, ‘Veiled References”, p. 26.

72 Sauer and Schornig, ‘Killer Drones’, p. 369.

73 Manjikian, ‘Becoming unmanned’, p. 50.

74 Cole and Wright, ‘What Are Drones?’, p. 3.

75 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 58.

76 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 50.

77 Ibid.

78 Ian Roderick, ‘Considering the Fetish Value of EOD Robots: How Robots Save Lives and Sell War’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2010), pp. 235–253.

79 Manjikian, ‘Becoming Unmanned’, p. 50.

80 Ibid.

81 Laura D. Kaplan, ‘Woman as Caretaker: An Archetype That Supports Patriarchal Militarism’, Hypatia, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1994), pp. 123–133.

82 Alison J. Williams, ‘Enabling Persistent Presence? Performing the Embodied Geopolitics of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Assemblage’, Political Geography, No. 30 (2011), pp. 381–390; Caroline Holmqvist, ‘Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2013), pp. 1–18.

83 Tim Blackmore, War x: Human Extensions in Battlespace (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Peter W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009); Williams, ‘Enabling Persistent Presence?’, p. 385.

84 Thomas Harding, ‘British Troops to Be Trained on X-box and Playstation Games Consoles’, The Telegraph, 2008, p. 1; Thomas Harding, ‘MoD “Slow to Appreciate” Potential of Drone Aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan, MPs Say’, The Telegraph, 2008.

85 Max Boot, ‘The Paradox of Military Technology’, The New Atlantis, A Journal of Technology & Society (2006), pp. 13–31.

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103 Singer, Wired for War, p. 327.

104 Strawser, Moral Predators, p. 352.

105 Ibid.

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109 Ibid.

110 Ibid.

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112 Ibid.

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115 Cheri Kramer, ‘The Legality of Targeted Drone Attacks as U.S. Policy’, Santa Clara Journal of International Law, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2011), pp. 375–398, 381–382.

116 Orr, ‘Unmanned, Unprecedented, and Unresolved’, p. 736.

117 Paust, ‘Self-defence targeting of non-state actors and permissibility of U.S use of drones in Pakistan’, p. 259.

118 Sean D. Murphy, ‘The International Legality of U.S. Military Cross-border Operations from Afghanistan into Pakistan’, Legal Studies Research Paper, George Washington University Law School, 2009 p. 15.

119 Wali Aslam, ‘A Critical Evaluation of American Drone strikes in Pakistan: Legality, Legitimacy and Prudence’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2011), pp. 313–329.

120 Singer, Wired for War, p. 432.

121 Ibid.

122 Ibid.

123 Hastings, ‘The Rise of the Killer drones’, p. 4.

124 Ibid.

125 Strawser, ‘Moral Predators’, p. 351.

126 Ibid.

127 Daniel Brunstetter, Jus ad vim and the Just War Tradition (International Studies Association, 2012), pp. 1–30, (unpublished).

128 Ibid.

129 Abizer Aunali, ‘RAF Are “Comfortable” with Civilian Deaths’, English Islam Times, 2011, p. 4

130 Sterio, ‘The United States’ Use of Drones in the War on Terror’, p. 23.

131 The Economist, ‘Flight of the Drones’, 2011.

132 Wyn Q. Bowen, ‘The Dimensions of Asymmetric Warfare’, in Andrew Dorman, Mike Smith and Matthew Uttley (eds), The Changing Face of Military Power (New York, NY: Palgrave), pp. 15–43.

133 Ibid.

134 Alex Scott-Samuel, ‘Patriarchy, Masculinities and Health Inequalities’, Health Policy and Public Health, Vol. 23, No. 2 (2008), pp. 159–160.

135 Aaron M. Johnson and Sidney Axinn, ‘The Morality of Autonomous Robots’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2013), pp. 129–141.

136 Peter M. Asaro, ‘What Should We Want from a Robot Ethic?’, International Review of Information Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 12 (2006), pp. 9–16.

137 Johnson and Axinn, ‘The Morality of Autonomous Robots’, p. 137, emphasis in the original.

138 Ibid.

139 UCMJ, n.d., ‘Uniform Code of Military Justice’ [website], Uniform Code of Military Justice.

140 Robert Sparrow, ‘Killer Robots’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2007), pp. 62–77.

141 Ibid.

142 Asaro, ‘How Just Could a Robot War Be?’, p. 60.

143 Ibid.

144 Asaro, ‘How Just Could a Robot War Be?”, p. 4; Sauer and Schornig, ‘Killer Drones’, p. 369.

145 Samantha Dean, ‘How Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Attempt to Replace the Irreplaceable Soldier: Analysis of the Current and Future Uses of Military Smart Systems’, Sullivan Files, 2011, pp. 1–9.

146 Ibid.

147 John Pike in John Horgan, ‘The Drones Come Home’, National Geographic, 2010.

148 Jon Cartwright, ‘Rise of the Robots and the Future of War’, The Guardian, 2010.

149 Ibid.

150 BAE Systems, n.d. ‘Taranis’ [website].

151 Cartwright, ‘Rise of the Robots and the Future of War’.

152 DARPA, n.d. ‘Tactical Technology Office’ [website].

153 Cole and Wright, ‘What Are drones?’.

154 James Abatti, Small Power: The Role of Micro and Small UAVs in the Future (Alabama: Center for Strategy and Technology, Air War college, Air University, 2005), pp. 175–176.

155 Dean, ‘How Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Attempt to Replace the Irreplaceable Soldier’, p. 5.

156 Ibid.

157 Abatti, ‘Small Power’, p. 172.

158 Johnson and Axinn, “The Morality of Autonomous Robots’, p. 139.

159 Singer, Wired for War, pp. 23–25.

160 Dean, ‘How Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Attempt to Replace the Irreplaceable Soldier’, p. 6.

161 Singer, ‘Wired for War’, pp. 23–25.

162 Singer, ‘Wired for War’, pp. 207–208.

163 Dean, ‘How Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Attempt to Replace the Irreplaceable Soldier’, p. 8.

164 Cody Delistraty, ‘31 Albert Camus Quotes That Show the Beautiful Paradoxes and Complexities of Life’, Thought Catalog, 2013.