After mid-2008, the drone program changed quickly into a more conventi — Drones

"While we do not believe that UAV strikes cause disproportionate civilian casualties or turn killing into a "video-game," we are concerned that the availability of lethal UAV technologies has enabled US policies that likely would not have been adopted in the absence of UAVs. In particular, UAVs have enabled the United States to engage in the cross-border use of lethal force against targeted individuals in an unprecedented and expanding way, raising significant strategic, legal and ethical questions."

"The proliferation of military robotics ... is likely inevitable," says Michael Horowitz, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies military technology. "Much better for close allies and partners to get systems from the US and learn to use them responsibly than to build them themselves or buy them from other countries."

"To the best of our knowledge the US executive branch has yet to engage in a serious cost-benefit analysis of targeted UAV strikes as a routine counterterrorism tool."

"It is not clear where the White House will come out," Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, tells me. "The nonproliferation folks, centered at [the State Department], do not support liberalized armed drone exports," he wrote over email. "On the other side are [Defense department] folks, and some State regional bureaus, who want to export this capacity to allies, like Turkey, and non-allies like Singapore, as part of building partnership capacity."

"“Drone strikes outside a declared war by a state on the territory of another state without the consent of the latter or of the UN Security Council constitute a violation of international law and of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of that country.”"

"I think it’s a good program and I don’t disagree with the basic policy that the Obama administration is pursuing now in that regards."