Drones: From ‘Precision Warfare’ to Today’s Battlefields

The War & Diplomacy Podcast: From the Centre for War and Diplomacy at Lancaster University

Dr Marco Wyss, Reader in International History and Security at Lancaster University and a Deputy Director of the Centre for War and Diplomacy, is joined by Dr James Rogers, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at SDU and History Hit Warfare podcast host, on the topic of “Drones: From ‘Precision Warfare’ to Today’s Battlefields”. Drone warfare, perceived to be a relatively modern addition to the battlefield, transcends the threats of war on the ground but brings with it new threats to security and the potential for drone genocide. This podcast discusses the prominence of drones on today’s global battlefields, covering topics such as the evolution of drone development and their early practicality, as well as the future of air power and combat. In doing so, it traces the history of drone warfare to the early twentieth century, to the conceptualisation of precision bombing by the US in the First World War.

Dr James Rogers is Associate Fellow within The London School of Economics and Political Science’s foreign policy think tank (LSE IDEAS). He is also currently Special Advisor to the UK Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones, Advisor to the United Nations, a UK MoD Defence Opinion Leader, and NATO Country Director of the NATO SPS funded Vulnerabilities of the Drone Age project. He has previously been a Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford University, Yale University, and the University of Oxford. He is the Co-founder and Co-Convenor of BISA War Studies, the War Studies section of the British International Studies Association. James is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow within the Cornell Tech Policy Lab at Cornell University. His forthcoming publication, Precision: A History of Warfare, with Manchester University Press, is out at the end of 2022.