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ID: 167081

Battlefield Responses to New Technologies: Views from the Ground on Unmanned Aircraft / Macdonald, Julia

Macdonald, Julia	Journal Article
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How do individuals on the battlefield respond to the introduction of new technologies? How will unmanned and increasingly autonomous technologies be received by ground combat personnel? In this paper we explore tactical-level perceptions of one particular technology—armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—by conducting a survey experiment of ground fires controllers. Our findings reveal that these personnel have strong behavioral reactions to the introduction of unmanned technology. Especially in situations with high risk to ground troops, we find a strong preference for manned aircraft with implications for the future use of UAVs and human–machine relationships in war. These results suggest the need to incorporate behavioral variables into future studies of military adoption and innovation and indicate that the future adoption of unmanned systems may be just as much about the “warm fuzzy” of trust as confidence in unmanned capabilities.

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UAV ; Unmanned Aircraft ; New Technologies

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ID: 169183

How Dangerous Was Kargil? Nuclear Crises in Comparative Perspective / Bell, Mark S; Macdonald, Julia

Bell, Mark S	Journal Article
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Nuclear Crises ; Kargi

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ID: 152116

Presidential risk orientation and force employment decisions : the case of unmanned weaponry / Macdonald, Julia ; Schneider, Jacquelyn

Julia Macdonald, Jacquelyn Schneider	Journal Article
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In this article, we explore how presidential risk orientations affect force employment decisions through an analysis of the use of unmanned weaponry during the Bush and Obama administrations. We hypothesize that the conception of risk plays an integral part in this choice of weaponry. In order to examine our hypothesis, we utilize the verbs-in-context system of operational code analysis to quantify the risk propensities of President Bush and President Obama during the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2013. At the aggregate level, we find that the two presidents exhibit unique interpretations of risk with respect to manned versus unmanned weaponry. We further disaggregate our data to examine whether these preferences are fixed or fluctuate with situational changes. We find that President Bush’s risk calculations are influenced by a number of situational variables, highlighting the importance of changing decision contexts in explaining risk behaviors. President Obama’s risk calculations, on the other hand, remain constant over time lending credence to the importance of overall risk propensity in determining risk-taking behaviors. Our findings indicate that risk is an important variable in explaining the means of force employed during conflict, and that the source of this behavior can vary by leader.

Key Words

Use of force ; International Security ; Military Power ; Psychology

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