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On the contrary, military history compels me to conclude you are using an illogical strawman argument, because it erroneously asserts the introduction of a new and effective weapons system would necessarily be considered normal warfare and free of legal and moral challenges in the hands of most any government.

During the American Revolution, for example, the British were generally opposed to the use of rifles as military weapons. The rifles of the day were typically unable to mount a bayonet, which the infantry required as a weapon to repel cavalry and engage in close combat with infantry. Furthermore, the infantry could load and fire a muzzleloading infantry musket much faster than a muzzleloading rifle., which gave the muskets a greater weight in firepower that won battles while in line of battle formations. Consequently, the slower loading rifle without a bayonet was seen as too defective for use like a standard infantry musket with a bayonet, and its only remaining value on the European style battlefield was for use in sniper work to kill officers. At this point of time the selective killing of officers was seen by the British Army and some other armies as something more akin to dishonoarble assasination and murder on the battlefield than some form of honorable and manly duel in battle. Some officers in the British Army went so far as to propose treating Americans captured with a rifle as some kind of war criminals. The British Army used rifles and snipers, but it was s source of controversy for some time before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. One historical fact did force the British Army to consider its position on the matter. At the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill), the American army used the Indian fighting tactics they were accustomed to using in the colonial wars and used their rifles to snipe and kill the British officers leading the attack up the hill. Out of all the losses of officers incurred during the Revolutionary War, something on the order of one-fourth of those officer losses occurred in the assault on that hill in just one day. Some of the surviving British officers described the American use of the rifle that day as murder because of its selective killing of gentlemen officers supposedly needed to control the rabble of the lower ranks.

The controversy over the role of sniping on the battlefield has continued to some degree to this very day. It’s morality and honorability remains in greater and lesser controversy because it gives the attacker greater opportunities for immunity while greatly increasing the vulnerability of the targets. These are the same factors which brought the introduction of other new eapons into moral question and legal challenges. This was true of artillery and its fragmentation shells striking infantry from a distance, submarines such as the Turtle and CSS Hunley striking from hidden underwater approaches, aircraft dropping bombs and strafing from the sky with impunity, shotguns used in trench warfare, and hollow point bullets fragmenting into wounds. The armed drone is just the latest weapons system combining many of these same features which have sparked unending controversy over its ability to effectively and selectively make a target greatly more vulnerable and the attacker greatly more immune to counterattack. The arme drone can snipe a target almost like a rifle, attack from a hidden position in the sky like a submarine underwater, attack from the sky and retreat to the sky like a warplane, use fragmentation projectiles causing grievous wounds like fragmentation artillery rounds striking from a distance, and gives the attacker an unmatched degree of immunity against counterattack. Given the endless precedents for controversy over each new type of weapon, it must be asked how can it be remotely considered normal or logical for such a weapon to be free of the kind of controversies which lawyers inevitably exploit and cause legal opinions and memoranda to fly about like shrapnel from an artillery shell burst?