A US Navy sea drone has plucked a downed helicopter crew from the waves. The British defence establishment, ever alert to the shifting winds of martial fashion, now ponders what this means for the future of drone doctrine. Let me save them the trouble: it means the end of the heroic age.
Consider the Victorian era. Kipling’s ‘thin red line’ of British infantry, the stoic sailor wresting a shipmate from the storm. There was moral weight in risk, in the flesh and bone of rescue. Now a machine—a glorified remote-controlled lifeboat—does the job without a tremor. The crew is saved. Bravo. But what have we lost?
The Romans would have understood. Their legions were built on virtus, the manly courage that defined the citizen-soldier. Replace that with a drone, and you get the late Empire: mercenaries, barbarians, and a populace that forgot how to fight. We are repeating the pattern. Our defence chiefs discuss ‘drone doctrine’ as though it were a theological text. They will write white papers, commission studies, form committees. Meanwhile, the very concept of military courage evaporates.
This sea drone is a marvel of engineering. It may save countless lives. But it also allows us to sanitise war, to pretend that conflict is a video game. The crew of that helicopter were lucky. Their rescue came without a daring pilot, without a straining winch cable, without the cold sweat of a comrade’s hand. It came from a server farm in Virginia. That is not progress. It is decadence.
The Victorians, for all their faults, knew that technology must serve man’s spirit, not replace it. Brunel built bridges, but he did not propose they cross themselves. Our drones rescue crews, but they cannot rescue our souls. The British defence chiefs would do well to remember that a doctrine is for making war, not avoiding its human cost.
In the end, the sea drone is a symptom of a deeper malady: the belief that we can outsource our humanity. The Romans outsourced their defence to Germanic tribes; we outsource ours to algorithms. The result is the same. We grow soft, entitled, and forget that the best rescue is the one where a man risks his life for another. That is the only doctrine worth evaluating.
