Strange Word Game: What is a "Suicide Drone"?

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I saw this news story a while back and decided to copy it here as a topic for future consideration. 

BREAKING: 3 American soldier killed and at least 24 wounded after a suicide drone strike on a U.S. base in Jordan right on the border with Syria. Iran and it’s proxy groups are the main suspects. Major escalation!

Now as I understand it, suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. It is something people do, and maybe lemmings. But does a machine intentionally take its own life? I mean, wouldn't the drone have been programmed to self-destruct? Does the drone have a mind of its own and volition? Does this mean that missiles should be called suicide missiles now? And why not call mines in a mine field suicide mines when they blow up? Should bombs be called suicide bombs?

Yet the phrase suicide drone has become a common part of our current vernacular, as illustrated here in these statements from X.com:

---Watch how HMS Diamond (D34) Type 45 air-defence destroyer of the #RoyalNavy targeted and destroyed one of the Kamikaze/Suicide drones of #Iran's #Houthi rebels.

---JUST IN: Multiple US senators, Including Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, and John Cornyn, are now calling for direct strikes on Iranian forces after the deadly suicide drone attack that killed three American service-members and injured dozens more

---China has developed a suicide drone considered the most cost-efficient in the world, with a price not exceeding $10,000. This drone, named Feilong-300D, is the cheapest in its class compared to well-known counterparts, such as the Iranian Shahed-136.

---According to REUTERS, the LUKOIL oil refinery in Volgograd has stopped operating after a Ukrainian suicide drone attack last night.

---An AQ 100 Bayonet suicide drone (called the HF-1 by the Germans) during an attack on Belaya Sloboda in the Kursk region. The AI software is supplied by the German company Helsing, and production is financed by Germany.

Even if inaccurately named, what I find disturbing is seeing how many countries are flooding the world with these small, medium and large military craft. In today's X feed you will see drones being manufactured in Russia, the U.S. and China (in massive quantities) but also in more than 20 other countries including, but not limited to, U.K., Canada, German, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Iran, North Korea, Israel, Ukraine, Algeria, Turkey, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Brazil, Nigeria, and Indonesia.

How do you like them apples? What are the implications for future warfare? 

"Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird... It's a plane... It's a Suicide Drone!"

It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding

If there was an internet back in Revolutionary War days, the following Daniel Boone tale would no doubt have been tagged a "rural legend." As the story goes, one day the famed Kentucky pioneer was hiking through a forest when he unexpectedly stepped on the tale of a rattlesnake. Simultaneously, a mother grizzly stood high over him and he noticed he'd come between the bear and her cubs. As if this weren't enough, beyond the cubs was a Native with fierce intentions placing an arrow into his bow.

More Hollywood than real life, but it's an apt illustration for the times we live in. Economic crises, global warming, unexplained infectious epidemics, food shortages, drug wars... and the ongoing conflicts in multiple locations throughout the known world signaling that 9/11 is not yet finished... We tune it out daily, primarily so we can enjoy our sports, entertainment and other diversions. It's hard to function when your heart is heavy so most of the time you cap it. Having responsibilities on the job helps distract us as well.

But like trying to hold a beach ball underwater, our global troubles occasionally slip out and surface again so that we're aware of the global interconnectedness of the world we live in. This week, it occurred in the form of riots in an uncertain number of countries. Purportedly these riots were a knee-jerk reaction to a film about Mohammed. Is it possible the film is but the occasion for this display of anti-Americanism that has been long seething beneath the surface due to American behavior abroad?

During World War II, as U.S. troops marched into town after driving out the Nazis in Northern Italy, the people rushed out to greet them, shouting "Bueno Americano!" The Americans at one time were heroes. My sense is that this is no longer so. One reason might be that when we visit other countries the only Americans they encounter are our drones.

A story in The Guardian states that in Pakistan alone there have been over 330 drone attacks with more than 3,000 civilian casualties. I doubt the people in Pakistan are shouting "Bueno Americano." Nor the people in Yemen or Somalia or Egypt. In a Tom Englehart column at LewRockwell.com yesterday it was pointed out that being militarily powerful is now America's great claim to fame. Currently we now produce nearly 80% of the world's arms, and have Delta and other incursion forces in as many as 120 countries worldwide.

I don't know where this is all going to lead, but it concerns me. I hear other people-in-the-know express their concerns and wonder how we can so willingly go on with our bread-and-circuses.

Then again, maybe the bread-and-circuses are good because we have no power to really change anything anyways. The power brokers decide and we live with the consequences. The Ugly American has cnme of age.