According to The Washington Times, the Pentagon is subbing out the use of the term “unmanned” in a nod to political correctness and will henceforth refer to “uncrewed” drones and other autonomous weapons. The change appears in the Pentagon’s latest annual report to Congress on the Chinese military made public this week.
The new wording affects three of the military’s acronym-heavy lexicon’s terms: UAS for unmanned aerial systems; UAV for unmanned aerial vehicles; and UCAV for unmanned combat aerial vehicles.
The new terms are “uncrewed aerial systems,” “uncrewed aerial vehicles,” and “uncrewed combat aerial vehicle.”
Of course, the Pentagon didn’t respond to questions about the new vocabulary.
The shift to “uncrewed” comes as a congressional report criticized the Pentagon’s leadership for adopting what critics say are liberal and left-wing “woke” policies.
“Our military’s singular purpose is to ‘provide for the common defense’ of our nation. It cannot be turned into a left-wing social experiment. It cannot be used as a cudgel against America itself,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, and Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican, stated in the report. “And it cannot be paralyzed by fear of offending the sensibilities of Ivy League faculty lounges or progressive pundits.”
The lawmaker said the world remains a dangerous place and “the Biden administration’s insanity is eroding our greatest source of security in it.”
“We need to spend more time thinking about how to counter Chinese aircraft carriers and less time thinking about pronouns,” he said.
“Diversity, inclusion, and equality at its core is about leveraging the strengths of all our people, advancing opportunity, addressing potential barriers or discrepancies, and – fundamentally – ensuring people are treated with dignity and respect. We always talk about weapons systems, yet every one of us will agree that our greatest weapons system are our people. So that’s why our policies to better leverage our people and increase unit cohesion are important here,” a spokesman with the DOD told The Daily Wire in a statement regarding a related matter.
Erica Carlin is an independent journalist, opinion writer and contributor to several news and opinion sources. She is based in Georgia.
