Remote patrolling

The woman walking home through JalalabadA city in northern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan. at midnight barely noticed the two men passing her in a tuk-tukA three-wheeled vehicle often used as a taxi in the developing world.. Nor did she see the strange machine, shaped like a small aeroplane, hovering above her in the night sky. But a moment later, a huge explosion threw her to the ground - and when she staggered to her feet, covered in blood, the tuk-tuk was a smoking wreck lying beside a crater four feet deep.

The two men killed were members of ISIS-KShort for Isis State in Khorasan Province, an area covering parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Turkmenistan.. According to US intelligence, they planned last weekend's suicide bombing at Kabul airport, which killed over 180 people - and were planning further attacks. "'Vaporised' on a tuk-tuk" ran a jubilant headline in the Mail on Sunday, above an article celebrating America's revenge on a group responsible for appalling atrocitiesThey include an attack on a maternity ward in a Kabul hospital, and a car bombing outside a girls' school which killed 90 people, most of them pupils..  

The attack, in which several women and children are reported to have been injured, was carried out by one of the US's grimly named Reaper drones, whose armaments include precision-guided bombs.  Controlled by two "pilots"One flies the drones and fires its missiles, while the other operates the camera and fixes a laser on the target. at an air force base 7,350 miles away in Nevada, it was launched from Qatar six and a half hours before it struck, flying at a top speed of 275 mph.

The two terrorists were probably blown apart without knowing what had hit them. For 30 soldiers killed at an air base in Yemen at the weekend, in an attack though to be organised by Iran, it was a different story.

One survivor explained how they had been standing in a hangar after breakfast when they spotted a drone. "We tried to fire at it and bring it down, but we couldn't hit it," he said. "The craft flew over and headed directly towards the hangar, where it fired two missiles."

Unmanned aircraft capable of surveillance were used by both the US and the USSR during the Cold WarA period of diplomatic conflict between blocs led by the USA and the USSR that lasted from 1947 until 1991, when the USSR collapsed.. Their use in battle was pioneered in 1982 by the Israeli Air Force, which sent them to locate Syrian warships.

The first armed drones were deployed in Afghanistan by the US in 2001; 57 attacks were launched under President Bush. But the number increased enormously - to 542 over eight years - under President Obama, who saw them as a way of hurting the enemy while keeping American troops out of the line of fire.

Though drones are billed as precision weapons, it is thought that around 10% of their victims have been civilians. On Sunday, 10 members of one family, including six children, were killed by a strike on a car parked at their home in Kabul. The US army said that the target was a member of DaeshThe Arabic acronym for ISIS..

Some people believe that drones should not be used in warfare at all. They argue that if you cannot see who is controlling the drone, it is impossible for them to be held to account, so they could attack people indiscriminately.

But others insist that they are not very different from previous long-distance weapons, such as bombers, missiles or even trebuchets.

The UN defines war crimes chiefly as acts which deliberately cause unnecessary suffering, particularly to civilians. That would not include simply using drones.

Should drone killing be a war crime?

Some say no, of course not. Drones are no worse than any other weapons - what matters is how they are used. War is an unfortunate necessity, and it is right that every resource should be used against murderous fanatics like ISIS-K. The killing and maiming of civilian bystanders is tragic, but there has never been a conflict in which the innocent have not suffered.

Others argue that drones as weapons should be totally banned. People engaged in warfare should be faced with the consequences of their actions: if they can attack their enemies from a base thousands of miles away, they will inevitably see their victims as worthless targets in a giant video game. The prospect of autonomous drones attacking people as their algorithms see fit is even more horrific.