27 March 2019

From 28 February to 1 March, the Remote Warfare Programme held a two day conference entitled ‘Conceptualising Remote Warfare: The Past, Present and Future’. Sponsored by the British International Studies Association, the conference brought together a wide range of experts from the military, academia, civil society and parliament and explored the many aspects of remote warfare. 

This panel discusses the geographies of remote warfare.



Track 1

Introduction

Abigail Watson and Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen



Track 2

On the Apparent ‘Nowhere-ness’ of Militarised Drone Operations

Alex Holder, University of Liverpool



Track 3

Shattering the Distance Paradigm

Major Joseph O. Chapa, Oxford University



Track 3

‘Hot air, Aeroplanes and Arabs’: Remote Warfare in Mandate Iraq

Group Captain John Alexander, Royal Air Force’s Air Historical Branch



Track 4

UCAV Operations and the Future of Military Cultural Cohesion

Jenny Oberholtzer, RAND

DVIVSHUB/Flickr. 

About the speakers

Alex Holder is a PhD Researcher at the University of Liverpool who is investigating the practical role of legal frameworks in drone strikes.

Joseph Chapa is a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford. His areas of expertise include the just war tradition, military ethics, and especially the ethics of remote and autonomous weapons. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy from Boston College and a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University.

John Alexander is a part-time historian at the Royal Air Force’s Air Historical Branch, a Whitehall bureaucrat working on national security, and an RAF Reserve. As a regular he specialised in air/land integration, including in the Falklands and various Middle Eastern campaigns, was twice a Chief of the Air Staff Fellow, conceptualised future conflict for the 2010 SDSR, and spent his final six years in the Service in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Jenny Oberholtzer is a defense analyst at the RAND Corporation. Her work focuses on wargaming, OSINT and future technology. Before RAND, she worked in corporate security. She holds an M.S. in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University with an emphasis in Eurasia, and a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from U.C. Berkeley.