Beware Blue Skies: exploring the psychology of drone warfare

An immersive short film about the psychology of drone warfare by Trinity Senior Post-doctoral Researcher Dr Beryl Pong is part of the latest Imperial War Museum London exhibition, ‘War and the Mind.’

Beware Blue Skies, based on research into drone warfare by Dr Pong, features two scenes depicting the perspective of a drone operator and civilians going out their private, daily business.

Dr Pong, who is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and heads the Cambridge Centre for Drones and Culture, began her research into civilian psychology during the Blitz of 1940 – 1941 in Britain.

In her book, British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime, she explored people’s experiences – as told through literature, film, photography and painting- on the Home Front, which led to consideration of those affected by drone warfare today.

I was taken aback by how much people at this time were preoccupied with what I’d call the aerial imagination – what it’s like to see yourself from the air, wrapped up with the anxiety during the mid-twentieth century about civilian vulnerability to aerial attacks.

And I was struck by how much visibility the World War II home front continues to get in the collective consciousness here in the UK, and how relatively neglected the current experience of drone warfare is in comparison, particularly the experiences of those living with prolonged drone surveillance in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen.

At the Centre for Drones and Culture, which is based at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Dr Pong researches the politics and ethics of drone use, how they make us see our world differently in areas including war and humanitarianism.

The title Beware Blue Skies refers to a statement by Zubair, whose grandmother was killed by a drone strike when he was 13 years old. He relates the psychological impact of living beneath drones in Pakistan. ‘I no longer love blue skies … In fact, I now prefer grey skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are grey,’ says Zubair.

Dr Pong, who has a background in literary and cultural studies, was interested in how art forms could bring nuance and visibility to complex political issues such as drone warfare and its psychological consequences.

It draws from research into drone warfare, and from testimonies from victims and witnesses of drone violence, to try to recreate a little bit of the fear, surreality, and unsettling anxiety of living under drones in a creative format.

The film is a collaboration with the Imperial War Museum and creative agency Human Studio, and Dr Pong hopes it will encourage viewers to consider the history of drone warfare more deeply ‘especially now that it has entered a different phase of acceptance and mundanity, with the widespread use of drones in conflicts like the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war.’

Beware Blue Skies can be seen from 7 November 2024 – 16 March 2025 in War and the Mind, a free exhibition at the IWM London exploring war’s many psychological dimensions, from the First World War to the present day.

Banner image: a still from Beware Blue Skies. Courtesy of Dr Pong, the University of Cambridge, Human Studio, and the Imperial War Museum.