After reading several rave reviews, I decided to watch the movie, “Eye in the Sky” which essentially centres around the ethical dilemma of the use of drones in modern warfare. Released last September, it features a British military officer (played by Helen Mirren) who, in the process of commanding a joint (British and American) operation to capture some Al-Shabaab terrorists in Nairobi, Kenya, discovered that not only did they have explosives, the insurgents were also preparing two suicide bombers for a fresh attack.
While that changes the dynamics of the operation, the officer would need authorization to equally change the objective so she could kill the terrorists by drone, especially when a British citizen was among them. Meanwhile, an American Reaper Drone controlled from an Air Force Base in Nevada had been providing aerial surveillance on the Nairobi building with the proceedings in the house monitored.
Eventually, the British commander secured the authorization to attack the building but just as the pilots were ready to strike, they ran into another dilemma, this time a moral one: an innocent nine-year old girl had entered the kill zone. The pilots could see the girl selling bread outside the targeted building and were almost certain she would end up as collateral damage if they released the missile. All attempts to use the spy on ground to buy the entire loaves of bread on her counter so she could leave the vicinity failed at about the time the battery of the surveillance video ran flat; and with it, the image from the scene.
