Description
This paper investigates how Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have been influencing interventionist dispositions within Brazilian military (in)securitization practices. Its main argument is that the expectation, importation, and experimentation with these artifacts already designed as facilitators for interventions reinforce historically built notions of military expertise as a prerogative to permanently intervene over the population, fostering contemporary tendencies of strategy focusing on preventive actions and risk management. It explores how these devices have entrenched within the military in the past two decades, (re)drawing its own interventionist know-how that propels the Armed Forces towards political administration and towards operations designed to engage over populations and areas deemed to be more prone to risk behavior, pose threats to national security, and require better management. Based on International Political Sociology and Critical Security Studies approaches on technology, (in)security, practices, and devices, this paper draws on an ongoing analysis of drone use by the Brazilian military, conducted through analysis of military manuals and academy papers, and an original survey conducted with the Brazilian Air Force.
