NAVAL DRONES

Well known authors and national security analysts Peter W. Singer and August Cole have together launched their inaugural novel, Ghost Fleet . The book contains all the components one would expect from a high tech future-war thriller: major power conflict, cyber militias, and biotech-enhanced warriors, to name a few highlights. And drones...lots of them.  Unmanned naval systems in particular, play key roles throughout the book's action sequences. Some of the unmanned systems are already deployed, some are currently in development, and a few exist only in the authors' minds, but all appear to be technically feasible at some point in the near future. A Littoral Combat Ship features prominently early in the plot. The LCS serves as a mothership for the  Fire Scout UAVs and a REMUS AUV which the crew creatively uses as an offensive weapon. An embarked SAFFiR robot helps LCS sailors with damage control during a combat scene. Several platforms in use today are adapted for new ...

It’s not often that a book review coincides with current events. Books, particularly nonfiction, are usually written and published months, if not years after an event has occurred. That’s because good nonfiction is written in retrospect: writers have spent some time absorbing their subject, researching and analyzing the facts; authors are hesitant to be rash in judgment or thought. However, there are exceptions. Some pieces of nonfiction, particularly journalists’ works, are appropriate now — not later. Andrew Cockburn’s new book,  Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins , is one of them.  Cockburn’s book is timely.  In just the past few weeks there has been a flood of  reporting from media outlets  stating  that a drone strike killed an American and an Italian hostage when targeting a group of Al-Qaeda members operating near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, questions about drone strikes, the debate about targeted killing, and th...