In the representation of warfare a new point of view has entered the field: the point of view of the weapon. This is something previously unseen, something entirely strange and jarring. We can now view the field of battle, and the final moments of human lives, from the disembodied perspectives of the technologies deployed to extinguish those lives. And to see such things, as anyone can at any time – without, in fact, even necessarily intending to – is to recognise that a new front has been opened in the degradation and dehumanisation of our culture.

I am talking here about footage taken by attack drones in which the perspective is that of death itself. Online recently I came across a video posted to social media by a Ukrainian army unit that specialises in the deployment of so-called FPV drones. FPV stands for “first person view”: these are drones with on-board cameras, controlled by “pilots” using monitors or headsets along with game console-style hand-held controllers.

The video, which lasts about 80 seconds, consists of a series of clips taken by drones in the battlefield in the final moments before reaching their targets. The targets, in the case of this particular video, were individual Russian soldiers, many of whom were attempting to escape or hide from the approaching airborne bomb. In one clip a soldier is seen running for the entrance of what seems to be a derelict Orthodox church. The drone’s camera pursues him inside where he scrambles over the rubble and detritus of its wrecked interior; he trips over a fallen wooden beam, and the drone – and the viewer’s perspective – reaches him and detonates.

Another........

© The Irish Times