Common Defense Quarterly Article on Drones

The Summer 2012 issue of Common Defense Quarterly is running my article, "MQ-9 Reaper: Not the 'Revolution in Warfare' You've Been Told." To sum it up, I conclude "The proclamation of drones, such as Reaper, to be the future of warfare, a revolutionary transformation, is an empty, data free proclamation. The MQ-9 neither saves money nor improves performance compared to analogous, even primitive, aircraft. Such equipment only has a future in a defense system that prefers to degrade combat performance while increasing cost."

To see the article and its data and arguments, follow the link to find the complete magazine. The article starts on page 27.

If you want to review still more data, references, and of my analysis, find a five part series I wrote for Time's Battleland blog.