Battlefield Responses to New Technologies: Views from the Ground on Unmanned Aircraft

How do individuals on the battlefield respond to the introduction of new technologies? How will unmanned and increasingly autonomous technologies be received by ground combat personnel? In this paper we explore tactical-level perceptions of one particular technology—armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—by conducting a survey experiment of ground fires controllers. Our findings reveal that these personnel have strong behavioral reactions to the introduction of unmanned technology. Especially in situations with high risk to ground troops, we find a strong preference for manned aircraft with implications for the future use of UAVs and human–machine relationships in war. These results suggest the need to incorporate behavioral variables into future studies of military adoption and innovation and indicate that the future adoption of unmanned systems may be just as much about the “warm fuzzy” of trust as confidence in unmanned capabilities.