F16 fighter jets and their role in (media) conflicts
What role could F16 fighter jets play in the conflict in Ukraine? This is a question that is often asked in the media, notably by the french newspaper Le Monde[1]. According to the American political scientist James Der Derian in his book ‘Virtuous War’[2], the effects and destructions caused by supposedly ultra-high-performance military technologies are not objectively achieved in the reality of combat on the battlefield – quite the contrary. The American author and researcher reveals three striking examples:
Fighter jets and their ‘surgical strikes’
During the Kosovo war at the end of the 1990s, after 78 days of bombardment and 38 000 air missions, in some cases by ‘F16’ fighter jets, the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) war machine did not cause any major destructions in the ranks of the Serbian army[3]. General Wesley Clark, in charge of operations in the Balkans during the Kosovo war, claimed that 110 tanks, 210 armoured vehicles and 440 artillery pieces were destroyed[4]. In reality, however, the press, in particular the British newspaper Guardian (which is well known for the quality of its publications), confirmed that only a dozen vehicles have been destroyed[5].
Fighter jets and their ‘collateral damage’
In the course of ‘modern wars’, many civilian casualties have resulted from reliance on so-called ‘surgical’ or ‘precision’ bombing. Indeed, this imprecision even led to the destruction of the Chinese embassy that was bombed in Belgrade during the Kosovo war. But, fortunately, this ‘collateral damage’, which was in violation of international law on the inviolability of embassies and their representatives, barely caused a diplomatic incident.
Fighter jets and their ‘technical incidents’
The third example dates back to 2001, when an American surveillance plane flying over Chinese airspace, which was full of electronic sensors, collided with a Chinese fighter jet (in which the pilot lost his life)[6]. Once again, fortunately, this ‘technical incident’ led to yet another diplomatic incident. Nowadays, in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, numerous ‘air skirmishes’ in the Baltic Sea area, the Black Sea and even more recently in the Bering Strait pose a serious risk of a ‘technical incident’, and therefore of increasing the risk of a dangerous escalation of conflicts in these regions.
Weapons systems that construct reality
Virtuous War is, as the author ironically puts it, a ‘weapon of mass deconstruction’[7] that exposes the illusions of the strategic discourses that legitimise war. For James Der Derian, the culprit behind this process of constructing reality is not Skynet, as in the cult film Terminator, but the ‘MIME-Net: Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network’[8]. In other words, this process is linked to the ‘military-industrial complex’[9] that former US President General Eisenhower warned us[10], but more precisely, according to political scientist James Der Derian, to a network made up of the military, industry, the media and the entertainment sector.
Weapons systems for massive dissimulation
James Der Derian’s thesis is therefore the emergence of a new hybrid war: it is ‘virtual’ and ‘virtuous’ and has been ‘designed by the Pentagon’ in the United States. This style of warfare is described as ‘virtual’, meaning that it is increasingly based on computerised simulations, global surveillance using electronic sensors, the use of command computers in decentralised networks[11], drones and mass media dissimulation on the effects of violence.
Through these mechanisms of ‘governmentality’[12] (namely a set composed of discourses, institutions and techniques), war is waged remotely, without the vision of dead bodies or the screams of the wounded. In other words, the reality and horror of the fighting on the ground is erased. These mechanisms have transformed war into a clean and ‘virtuous’ activity. It could even be said that simulation becomes a dissimulation of reality for the purpose of deterrence[13].
Military aircrafts in the ‘fog of war’
James Der Derian notes that these simulation mechanisms used by the military-industrial complex tend to replace reality, in order to produce an illusory interpretation of it, or even to re-imagine the past[14]. Virtuous War is therefore a wonderful book that shows that the horror and ‘fog of war’[15] do not disappear with technology; quite the contrary, they thicken and add confusion to the chaos of war[16].
The conclusion of these cases is twofold. On the one hand, this quasi-religious belief in the technological solution of military aircrafts (fighter jets, surveillance aircrafts, drones, etc.) gives the illusion of absolute control. The resulting excess of ‘confidence’ can lead to a proliferation of irrational behaviour, and consequently increase the risk of accidents and the escalation of conflicts[17]. On the other hand, the accidents caused by this ‘technological fundamentalism’[18] play the role of a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, that is to say, bringing to fruition the fateful idea that ‘we (the international community) are at war’. And so, paradoxically, this idea is to the detriment of those who want it (often for short-term ideological or material considerations). Finally, Virtuous War gives you robust critical weapons to deconstruct the technological illusion of war, which remains (and will remain for a long time) extremely lethal.
Bibliographical notes:
[1] Le Monde, 18 May 2023, URL : https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2023/05/18/quel-role-pourraient-jouer-les-f-16-que-l-ukraine-reclame-aux-occidentaux_6173832_3210.html (Consulted on 1/08/2024)
[2] Der Derian, James, “Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial Media-Entertainment Network”, Londres and New York, Routledge, 2009 (2nd Éditions), 368 pages
[3] Ibid., p.189
[4] Ibid., p.199
[5] “Most RAF Kosovo bombs ‘off-target’”, Guardian, 14 August 2000, URL : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/14/balkans2 (Consulted on 1/08/2024)
[6] Der Derian, James, op. cit., p.201
[7] Ibid., p.127
[8] Der Derian, James, “Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial Media-Entertainment Network”, Londres et New York, Routledge, 2009 (2nd Éditions)
[9] Definition of the “military-industrial complex”, URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex (Consulted on 1/08/2024)
[10] General Eisenhower’s speech on the military-industrial complex (1961), URL : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU (Consulted on 1/08/2024)
[11] Der Derian, James, op. cit., p.242
[12] Foucault, Michel, « Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au collège de France, 1974-1975 », Paris, Edition de l’EHESS-Gallimard-Seuil, 1999, p. 112
[13] Der Derian, James, op. cit., p.117
[14] Ibid., p.96
[15] Carl von Clausewitz, « De la théorie de la guerre », De la Guerre, livre 2, chapitre 2, paragraphe 24
[16] Der Derian, James, op. cit., p.4
[17] Ibid., p.211
[18] Ibid., p. xxii
