There's a major dilemma around the emerging use of drones in humanitarian response situations: we don’t think of tracking the movements of displaced civilians in Congo or carrying out building damage assessments in Haiti — we think of military strikes.
Let’s try a little word association game:
I say... “drone.”
You say... “humanitarian assistance.”
No?
You had “highly controversial, sometimes televised means of delivering large amounts of targeted explosive payload at considerable distances, often with significant collateral damage, and generally spurring violent political and/or military reactions”?
Hmmm.