However, that type of comparison is erroneous. To evaluate it properly, the drone should be set alongside weapons currently available for the same tactical function. For liquidating Osama bin Laden, the choice was between a drone and a commando raid, not between a drone and a Dresden-like bombing of Abbottabad. If one avoids being misled by some external attribute, the right form of comparison involves not a similarity of forms but an equivalence of functions. The drone is not a means of carpet bombing, and World War II bombers were not weapons designed for targeted assassination. The useful comparison here is not between a present-day flying weapon and an aerial weapon of the past, leading to the conclusion that progress has been made, but rather between this weapon and other present-day means for functions of the same order.

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 465