Tonight we will talk about the future of war, rather than the past. By all accounts from the battlefields of Ukraine and elsewhere, unmanned aircraft have transformed modern warfare. Once expensive, highly specialized weapons used primarily for surveillance and targeted killings, drones have become inexpensive, widely available tools of war. They locate the enemy, strike targets large and small, and do so from long distances.
Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a conversation with two leading experts on drone warfare: Brett Velicovich, a former U.S. Army special operations intelligence analyst and author of Drone Warrior, and Erik Lin-Greenberg, an MIT political scientist and author of The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft.
Velicovich takes us inside America’s secretive drone campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where intelligence teams tracked terrorist leaders and helped direct lethal strikes. Lin-Greenberg offers a broader perspective on how drones are changing military strategy, international relations, and the political calculations behind decisions to use force.
Together, we’ll explore the remarkable evolution of drone technology, its role in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and what it means for the future of American military power. We’ll also consider the difficult questions raised by remote warfare: Who decides when to kill? How does distance change the experience of combat? Do drones protect soldiers and civilians, or make wars easier to start and harder to end?
