Armed U.S. Army Gray Eagle

Roland Hale, U.S. Army Photo, via Wikimedia Commons

Last week, the Department of Defense published a gigantic, boring, and tremendously important book. The "Department of Defense Law of War Manual" is 1204 pages of rules for war. Since World War II, various branches of the military have published service-specific manuals, and a few of the more recent ones mentioned unmanned vehicles. The Navy manual addresses underwater robots, the Air Force manual included drones as military aircraft. The new Pentagon manual--which applies to the whole of America's military--provides the clearest, most comprehensive vision yet of how the military understands drones within the laws of war.