Catlin Bender Source 1

What effects, emotionally and mentally, do RPAs (Remotely Piloted Aircraft) have on their pilots?

Miller, Greg. "Drone Wars." Science 336.6083 (2012): 842-843. Academic Search Complete. Web. 1 Mar. 2015

This article focused on the increased use of drones in American military. Towards the end, the article honed in on the risks of PTSD and the differences of combat versus being in an air conditioned room. Drones are used for tactical, bombings, and surveillance reasons. Pilots of the drones are able to be with their families at night and work during the day taking in surveillance of targets. Drones are able to hover for hours to wait for the preferred time to bomb a targeted area to reduce the number of civilian causalities. But the number of causalities are still higher than preferred and officials try to waive off the numbers by not requiring checks of accurate numbers of civilians killed. Pilots of these air-crafts follow through on their orders and do not make fight or flight decisions like other soldiers in the field. But these pilots do experience stress, the stress being from routine shifts and long hours.
Does this source make an argument?

I did not know much of the military using drones to replace troops in our targeted places. This article is letting me get my toes wet on understanding what drones do, what they replace, and how they affect the basis of our war. I know understand how drones can be beneficial for letting our troops come home and be based primarily in front of computer screens to analyze data that the drone receives. This makes me think more on what are drones mostly used for: surveillance or bombing areas? I agree that the risks of PTSD are lower in pilots of RPAs than soldiers that face combat. I am taken aback that officials just wave off civilian causalities and only see the perspective that their mission was completed. This article vaguely begins to answer my overall question what problems RPAs cause for their pilots and if they are beneficial towards the U.S. in war. I would back this article's validity with other articles that say the same thing to reference them. I did not realize when they bomb a set target location that they may kill a large amount of civilians to accomplish their end goal to complete their mission.

My new question that I want to answer is if so many civilians are killed in these air strikes, are the use of drones worth it? Is the end mission worth it after all the innocent lives that are taken? To answer my overall question of if drones are beneficial or not, answering the smaller ethical questions to lead to my opinion of my big question.

Try to make your summary a bit clearer and more specific.  Also, I think it would be useful to question your assumptions about the piece.  On the issue of drones, it seems necessary at this point to ask: would it actually be better to go back to the way things used to be?  Does it seem like in-field combat is more or less harmful than drone warfare?  What are the issues here?  What needs to be kept in stasis?  You're asking good questions but there is room to think more critically about the claims made by the source.