RPA veteran Wayne Phelps offers insights into the growing mystery of drone sightings over the state of New Jersey, and discusses technical, legal & psychological factors driving the current rash of reported sightings.

Lt. Col. Wayne Phelps (ret.) is the author of "On Killing Remotely: The Psychology Of Killing With Drones", which explores human decision-making in a future dominated by Artificial Intelligence & automation.

Wayne Phelps is a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel and author of “On Killing Remotely: The Psychology of Killing with Drones”, available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L4LNL7R/.

During his military career, Wayne deployed five times, including two deployments to Afghanistan and two deployments to Iraq. He was amongst the first conventional troops on the ground in Pakistan after 9/11. He also participated in the initial invasion into Iraq in 2003 and the troop surge into Afghanistan in 2010. He commanded units at every level from Platoon to Squadron, served as an instructor at the Marine Corps’ premier aviation training squadron and a staff officer in the Pentagon.

In 2014 he was selected to become an RPA pilot and he attended the Air Force’s Undergraduate Pilot Training becoming the first Marine honor graduate. His last assignment was as the Commanding Officer of Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron Three (VMU-3) in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. As the Commanding Officer, he deployed four remotely piloted aircraft detachments to conduct counter-terrorism operations against violent extremist organizations.

We start out by exploring the evolution of the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator Drone into the armed MQ-9 Reaper, and some of the psychological effects associated with flying an armed vs. surveillance aircraft. We also discuss some of the advantages & challenges associated with remotely piloted vehicles - and perceptual changes from flying remotely piloted vehicles in crews assigned to them.

Drone aircraft are the beginning, and we explore how the cost & safety benefits of RPV's are being applied to tanks & land vehicles such as the Milrem TheMIS, Ripsaw M5 Robo-Tank, Miloš UGV, Gladiator TUGV, Foster-Miller TALON, and more. We also discuss robotic platforms such as the the GNOME, FEDOR, and well-known Boston Dynamics Atlas.

Great Britain and the USA are both exploring Artificial Intelligence to allow drones to decide when to pull the trigger themselves, which takes the ultimate control of warfare out of direct human hands and moves people into a planning & oversight capacity. Is this a good thing, and what does it mean for remote killing machines if they can operate autonomously?

In the space of 20 years, we’ve gone from remote piloted surveillance aircraft to fully automated killing machines that make their own decisions about combat. This is a slippery slope to an uncertain future and it is worth discussing the meaning of these changes to warfare now, rather than later.

Links & Resources
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L4LNL7R/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waynephelps/