"Deterring such drone-based attacks will depend on the ability of the United States and other governments to accurately detect and attribute them. Technical experts and intelligence analysts disagree about the extent to which this will be possible, but the difficulties lie in the challenges of detecting drones (they emit small radar, thermal, and electron signatures, and can fly low), determining who controlled it (they can be programmed to fly to a preset GPS coordinate), or assigning ownership to a downed system (they can be composed of commercial, off-the-shelf components)."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Since when is the intelligence agency supposed to be an air force of drones that goes around killing people? I believe that it has to be the Department of Defense."
"After mid-2008, the drone program changed quickly into a more conventional, if unacknowledged, air war. In the three months between August and October, drones struck North and South Waziristan at least twenty times—more strikes than in the previous four years."
"I think it is entirely sensible. Whether it is foreign citizens who are involved with Al Qaeda or American citizens, we are in a war. They have attacked us. We have a congressional authorization to use military force in response. And that’s what’s at stake here."