The contention that the aggression (if not strictly speaking “wars”) undertaken by the US government take an unacceptable toll on not just the lives of civilians around the world, but on basic human liberties, is surely not much contested at a broad level. In this film, it’s the use of the titular unmanned war craft which structures a story of unseen (and often unacknowledged) conflicts, largely in the border provinces of Pakistan under the guise of targeting Al Qaeda.
The filmmaker interviews compelling and loquacious subjects including a number of former drone pilots, suggesting unsettling links between that programme and modern video gaming (one of these pilots is disarmingly like one’s mental stereotype of the gamer), as well as others working around the industry. A particular highlight is a startlingly ingenuous take on drone warfare from a man who helped to create and market the technology.
Understandably, perhaps, there’s little in the way of corrective voices from the agencies who most rely on drone warfare, so the film’s thesis tends to be a one-way street. Yet it’s terrifying to consider the implications of this impersonal method of warfare—voiced in the film most cogently by a former military adviser to Colin Powell—not just to unnamed Pakistani targets, but to all of us wherever we live, and that’s something the film puts across keenly.
CREDITS
Director Tonje Hessen Schei; Cinematographer Anna Myking; Length 79 minutes. Seen at the Regent Street Cinema, London, Monday 1 June 2015. 
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