Page 27 - Armed Drones News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

About surveillance and can actually fly for days, cover hundreds, thousands of miles and drop bombs in enemy territory. what do you think of that? could that help us in the current situation we're dealing with in the middle east? >> okay. first of all, pete is right. drones are not a substitute for strategy but on the other hand the next great military revolution, technological revolution is in unmanned machines. armed drones, now we have the predator and the reaper and they're doing great work but we're talking about in the future, drones that will loiter for days at 90,000 feet what if drone...

Button, and a small missile is fired. but some are asking whether years from now we'll debate drones the way we're debating torture. >> the use of these unmanned aerial vehicles that you refer to as drones in the counterterrorism effort has done tremendous work to keep this country safe. >> reporter: the cia's clandestine fleet of armed drones has become central to its counterterrorism mission. the secretive nature of the program means no one can tell for sure how many of the estimated 3500 people killed mostly in pakistan and yemen were insurgents and how many were innocent civilians. >> in u...

Receives authorization, pushes a button, and a small missile is fired. but some are asking whether years from now we'll debate drones the way we're debating torture. >> the use of these unmanned aerial vehicles that you refer to as drones in the counterterrorism effort has done tremendous work to keep this country safe. >> reporter: the cia's clandestine fleet of armed drones has become central to its counterterrorism mission. the secretive nature of the program means no one can tell for sure how many of the estimated 3500 people killed mostly in pakistan and yemen were insurgents and how many...

Military casualties. but critics argue it's killed thousands of innocent civilians in yemen and pakistan. here's our chief foreign correspondent, richard engel. >> reporter: it's become the weapon of choice in the war against islamic terrorists. a u.s. drone flies over a target thousands of miles away. the cia tracks the location, receives authorization, pushes a button, and a small missile is fired. but some are asking whether years from now we'll debate drones the way we're debating torture. >> the use of these unmanned aerial vehicles that you refer to as drones in the counterterrorism effo...

An estimated 400 under president obama. >> the use of drones is heavily constrained. america does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists. our preference is always to detain, interrogate and prosecute. >> reporter: polls show about 70% of americans support the drone program. why? why is it more acceptable and more popular to kill people than to hold them and torture them? >> antiseptic drone strikes, which is the video image you see from the pentagon, torture is something we feel directly and personally and we think is morally wrong. >> reporter: but there is...