Thread by @sfrantzman

Remember those media articles that were basically PR about the Bayraktar drones, even claiming they somehow remade war (even though other countries used drones for years); now with Ethiopia using them, will there be front page stories?

My point is that somehow Ankara got all these major media in the US to “discover” drone warfare, even after the same media called it controversial when the US did it…and make drone strikes seem romantic and new…

Yet I have a feeling that it’s not so glorified when Ethiopia is alleged to do it…so which is it, are Ankara’s drones “re-making” war or just doing what Predators and Reapers and others did before, a bit cheaper though?

For instance these articles and many others that had no critical discussion of Ankara doing armed drone strike assassinations in Syria…claimed this changed the “nature” of war…did they?

There’s not a lot of evidence that they changed the “nature” or remade war even in Ukraine where as far as I can tell they weren’t used much recently. We lack a final and full account of their use anyway.

Of course there is an aside to this, the numerous PR news articles singing the praises of Ankara’s drones…probably has some context in Israel finally admitting that it too has armed drones…and suddenly there weren’t articles about Israel’s glorious drone revolution

When we get back to reality and have reports about the drones used in other places I guess we’ll see if anyone will do a tough piece on Ankara’s drones carrying out strikes in Syria and Ethiopia

After all….when the US used a drone to kill Soleimani it was controversial and the UN and others shouted about it…so we can’t know how drone strikes and use in different places is seen so differently.

I wrote a book about #DroneWars so in my view it’s all interesting and should be weighed appropriately…but my observation is that Ankara got a lot of unnecessary PR for a platform that is only interesting insofar as Ankara is new to the field.