Warrior turns killer in the age of non-contact wars

A characteristic of contemporary wars is that the ethics of fighting are increasingly receding to the background.

- Shashank Ranjan

During the initial days of the ongoing war in West Asia, the world was shocked by a US missile strike on a school in Iran that killed more than 150 children.Earlier in Gaza, operations by Israel Defence Forces, while targeting Hamas terrorists, often caused disproportionate casualties, mostly innocent civilians. These casualties largely occurred as a result of mistaken identity by Al-driven smart munitions. How many of the close-to-72,000 killed in Gaza so far fell prey to such reasons is hard to say with certainty, but whatever the toll, it would surely be disturbing.

The principles of discrimination and proportionality are assumed to guide the conduct of war. As per these principles, it is unethical to target civilians, with a caveat that there may be unintentional deaths in crossfire. The acceptance of collateral damage was to be constrained by the principle of proportionality, i.e., whether civilian casualties were commensurate with the achieved military gains.

Wars now are characterised by precision strikes that are undertaken from long standoff distances. The combatants of opposing militaries rarely come in contact. The kinetic variety of the non-contact wars (NCW) is waged by employing technology-enabled long-range weapons and munitions like missiles, rockets and drones. One of the major incentives of NCW is reduction in its own casualty rates.