In his discussion paper The Drone Debate: Sudden Bullet or Slow Boomerang? Roderic Alley, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies, examines the substantial and controversial issues surrounding the use of drones for military purposes.
He scans the breadth of the legal debate over the use of drones in relation to international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and examines questions of accountability, ethics and the possibility of controls on the use of drones.
Overall, Dr Alley notes that the world “will have to grapple with how best to reconcile the uses of this particular technological innovation within existing, but as yet undetermined rules and restraints”.
The discussion paper is available on the Centre for Strategic Studies website
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/hppi/centres/strategic-studies/documents/DP1413OnlineVersion.pdf.