USING RISK THEORIES TO UNDERSTAND THE DISPLACEMENT OF POLITICAL AND MILITARY RISK IN LETHAL DRONE USE BY THE US AND UK

具体研究问题1。政府在多大程度上部署武装无人机作为降低政治风险的手段？2.在军事干预的战略、行动和战术层面，风险如何分布？3.平民如何受到无人机使用造成的流离失所风险的影响？自世纪初出现以来，无人驾驶飞机已经为国际安全领域带来了新的能力和对战争和军事干预的新理解。应用范围从中央情报局在巴基斯坦、也门和索马里非常规使用“捕食者”和“收割者”无人机，到英国在阿富汗、伊拉克和叙利亚部署“收割者”无人机担任常规军事角色。此外，无人机还对多个概念领域和学术领域产生了影响：文化、身份、政治暴力、伦理、地缘政治等（斯坦福大学和纽约大学，2012; Galliott，2012; Sauer和Schörnig，2012; Baggiarini，2015;威廉姆斯，2015）。无人机现在被明确用于“最大限度地减少我们投入战斗的部队的风险”（国防部，2013：2-8）。该项目旨在研究部署致命无人机作为风险缓解的道德和社会层面。具体而言，使用无人驾驶飞机在多大程度上减轻了使用者在政治和军事领域的风险，同时增加了发生无人驾驶飞机袭击地区平民所面临的风险程度。对开源政府、联合国和非政府组织政策声明、关键演讲和议会辩论的话语分析将用于两个案例研究中风险理论的应用和评估：中情局非常规无人机使用和英国皇家空军常规无人机使用。这项研究的结果将有助于从风险的角度更广泛地了解致命无人机使用的道德和社会后果。反过来，这将使未来有关部署武器化无人机的政策决策能够进行更全面和细致入微的风险计算。

Specific research questions1. To what extent do governments deploy armed drones as a means of reducing political risk?2. How is risk distributed across the strategic, operational and tactical levels of military interventions?3. How are civilians affected by displaced risk from drone use? Background and rationale for the studyWeaponised drones have introduced new capabilities and new understandings of war and military intervention to the international security domain since their advent in the early twenty-first century. Applications extend from the CIA's unconventional use of Predator and Reaper drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia to the UK's deployment of Reaper drones in conventional military roles in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Furthermore, drones have had an impact across multiple conceptual domains and academic landscapes: culture, identity, political violence, ethics, geopolitics and more (Stanford and NYU, 2012; Galliott, 2012; Sauer and Schörnig, 2012; Baggiarini, 2015; Williams, 2015). Drones are now explicitly used to 'minimise the risk to the forces we commit to battle' (Ministry of Defence, 2013: 2-8). This project seeks to research the ethical and social dimensions of the deployment of lethal drones as risk mitigation. Specifically, the extent to which use of drones mitigate risk in the political and military domains of the user, while increasing the degree of risk experienced by civilians in areas where drone strikes occur. Discourse analysis of open source government, UN and NGO policy statements, key speeches, and parliamentary debates will be used in the application and assessment of theories of risk across two case studies: CIA unconventional drone use and RAF conventional drone use. Findings from this research will help to provide a broader understanding of the ethical and social consequences of lethal drone use from a risk perspective. This, in turn, will enable more comprehensive and nuanced risk calculations in future policy decisions regarding the deployment of weaponised drones.