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Growing reliance on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the effort to combat militant groups has led to considerable debate about the consequences of this new mode of warfare. While critics have focused on the impact of civilian casualties on militant recruitment and the resulting use of terrorism, evidence suggests that 'drones' are paradoxically more effective in limiting civilian deaths compared to other forms of military force. This article demonstrates a different causal pathway connecting militant use of force to terrorist attacks. Drone strikes encourage militants to displace operations to urban centers. Confronted with unfamiliar terrain and greater government capacity, militants emphasize terrorist attacks against civilians. The article explores these dynamics in the longest running drone campaign, in Pakistan. While civilian casualties from drone strikes have no discernible effect on terrorism, strikes that kill militants increase terrorist attacks against civilians in urban settings, while failing to reduce attacks on government targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the costs of conflict influence public support for the use of force? Existing research finds that weapons that eliminate the possibility of military casualties, such as drones, increase popular support for engaging in conflict. We argue that this effect may be overstated because the choice of weapons technology is endogenous to conflict. Leaders may select to use drones in conflicts where the risk of harm to ground forces is especially high. To address this, we replicate and extend the research design of Walsh and Schulzke across three survey experiments. The key innovation in our experiments is that subjects are led to believe that the choice of attack type – drones or ground troops – is determined by weather conditions rather than strategic considerations. We find that support for military action does not differ across treatments in which subjects are told that the attack involves drone strikes or ground troops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precision weapons such as drones have become important elements of the military strategies of the United States and other countries. How does the use of precision weapons influence public support for the use of force? The public is averse to casualties, mission failure, and collateral damage. I argue that precision weapons increase the salience and importance of avoiding civilian harm. Individuals adopt their expectations about the outcomes of using these weapons and have lower tolerance for attacks that result in civilian deaths. This proposition is consistent with the results of two survey experiments. In the first, the possibility of civilian casualties leads to larger declines in support for the use of force than do military casualties or mission failure. In the second, respondents primed with information about an attack with precision weapons exhibited less tolerance for civilian harm than those primed with other weapons systems, despite the fact that the outcomes described to all respondents were identical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]