Battling Moral Injuries

Servicemen and women in land forces around the world often confront a number of duty-related mental, emotional, and physical hardships. War can inflict many different manifestations of ethical and psychological distress, which fall under the umbrella of ‘moral injury’. Moral Injuries (MI) were first discussed in relation to military personnel transgressing moral beliefs and values during war, but it has since expanded to include equivalent emotional experience by healthcare professionals, first responders, rescue workers, and everyone facing similar complex emotions as a result of actions taken or observations made throughout traumatic circumstances. While moral injury and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been seen to share several symptoms, military, soldiers, clinical psychologists, as well as chaplains are concerned about PTSD’s incapability to account for the substance of moral and ethical distress that battlefields may generate. Modern warfare produces new challenges to the personnel. With the advent of new technologies and the use of drones, the author of a particular action does not directly see the consequences of what he/she has done. This may cause different types of moral injuries since the handler will take longer before realising the magnitude of his gesture.

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Small Yet Powerful, Bug-Like Microdrones Are Gaining Strength

A team at MIT can now build small drones that fly around with bug-like agility and elasticity because of a new type of artificial muscle. Kevin Chen, senior author of the paper, states that “This opens up a lot of opportunity in the future for us to transition to putting power electronics on the microrobot,".

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China Sanctions Raytheon, Lockheed over Taiwan Deal

On Monday, China decided to impose new sanctions on U.S. defence contractors Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin due to their arms sales to Taiwan, stepping up a feud with Washington over security and Beijing’s strategic ambitions. It is the third time China has announced punishments against U.S. companies.

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Social Media App TikTok the New Military Tool for Military Defence and Cooperation?

In today’s age of social media and Generation Z (Gen Z) "taking over" the world, there is a new modern approach to military defence. Ordinary citizens record military activities on their phones and post videos on social media. The social media app TikTok, which is often associated with dance trends, is currently being used to watch a very different kind of choreography: the movement of military forces that could be on the brink of a new severe conflict on European soil (Britton and Mulligan, 2022). The app has recently come into the spotlight as tensions between Russia and Ukraine have led to what could be called "the first TikTok conflict" (Bowman, 2022). Videos of Russian troops gathering at the borders of Ukraine are widely distributed on TikTok (Sonne et al., 2022).

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European forces to relocate from Mali to Niger in fight against jihadist insurgents

A contingent of some-2400 European troops are set to leave Mali and continue counter-insurgency operations from Niger, as the former colony’s President Mohamed Bazoum said on February 18th. The Sahel area has been constantly plagued for years by Islamist groups, with hundreds of victims and millions of displaced. In the past decade, France, at the helm of a European coalition, has shown a keen interest in collaborating with former colonies to contrast the threat, but the missions have encountered both logistical problems and local dissatisfaction with foreign presence, with Malian armed forces spokesperson Souleymane Dembele lamenting the inefficacy of European troops and Nigerine anti-foreign leader Maïkol Zodi considering them «as an occupying force».

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