Has technological progress made war more humane?: Precision Guided Munitions and the Monopoly of Discrimination

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Sociology - War and Peace, Military, University of Manchester (Political Science), language: English, abstract: The following paper will examine one of the more recently militarily implemented technological advances, namely precision guided munitions (PGMs), which have become an integral part of the strategy of today’s undisputed technological forerunner in military hardware, the U.S. Armed Forces. This technology uses both high-end military technology as well as civilian technology, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) to navigate by. One of the aims of this paper is to show how these changes in technology is an indicator of a more humane focus on our soldier, i.e. a decreasing willingness to put these soldiers’ life on the line. It will be argued that the use of such weaponry as PGMs, seemingly, in a techno-fetishist way, has made war more humane, but that the rhetoric surrounding them also has had the effect of privileging the wielders of these in a highly asymmetrical way.