WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Defense will conduct 50 percent more unmanned aerial surveillance missions per day in the next four years over actual and potential combat zones ranging from the South China Sea to Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and North Africa.
"What they are doing is trying to decrease the cost of war, and one of the elements they want to get rid of is — people," Pillsbury-Foster said on Tuesday.
The activist noted that placing people in combat zones causes a variety of problems for the Defense Department.
"If they don’t have people in the loop, then people don’t question what they are doing, because a drone doesn’t question."
She also said the cost to use drones as opposed to people in combat zones are significantly smaller.
"If you have a member of the military, they expect to be paid, then they expect to have benefits, and there’s been a whole movement in the military to move toward an automated system of war."
The human element, she summed up, is costly and on some occasions exercises judgment in a situation when the authorities "don’t want there to be judgment."
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Defense Department also plans to grow its capacity to conduct lethal airstrikes by unmanned aircraft.
The United States regularly conducts drone attacks in the Middle East and North Africa against suspected militants. However, the legality of the US drone program has been a point of contention for international lawyers and human rights advocates since its inception.
Data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows that US drone strikes have killed up to 1,000 civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen over the past ten years.
Drone Free Zone is an advocacy group that works to eliminate drones from their use as weapons for war in the United States and overseas, according to its website.
