Upon completion of my mechanical engineering degree, I will commission into the United States Air Force as a Second Lieutenant, and enter the “profession of arms” tasked with the defense of our country. As a mechanical engineering student, with the scientific and technological understanding similar to those mentioned above, I have thought about the engineering of weapons that make our military incredibly well equipped and advantaged in conflict. Learning in this course however, we have been taught about the expectation of an engineer to “promote the welfare of human beings”, which conflicts with intent and design of weaponry. This yields the moral issue that is the focus of this essay; how does an engineer morally justify the engineering or weapons systems developed to damage or kill human property, infrastructure, and people.
This essay will explore this moral issue by assessing the identity and purpose of a weapon, and how they are used in modern day applications. The essay will highlight the conflicting nature of this field of engineering by examining the NSPE Code of Ethics, as well as analyzing the conflict from various ethical theories that have been covered in ENGR 482, followed by focusing on several weapons system projects that are paradigm examples for this moral issue. To conclude the essay, I will present my opinion on the matter, defended with my personal ethics accompanied with the ethical theories taught in this course.
To begin the analysis on the moral
Thesis Statement: A weapon developed for a nation’s defense is the envy of other nation’s conquest.
On Nov 2013, the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) awarded the contract to “modernize” its existing custom developed application Cadet Administrative Management Information System (CAMIS) II to the Solers Corporation (Solers Corporation, 2016). CAMIS was developed over several years and began to encompass support for many disparate business processes at the Academy, but primarily served as a Student Information/Management System. This modernization effort or CAMIS III was the third iteration of moving CAMIS from a legacy system to a new platform. Almost 2 years later: Mar 2016, this project ended with the government decision to discontinue the modernization effort. This was done by primarily not exercising option years and stopping funding on the modernization development line item of the contract. (Paulson, 2015) Despite modernization effort ending, the government continued to support the CAMIS III operations and support portion of the contract, as well as the legacy CAMIS II contract. This paper attempts to analyze why this software project failed, based on the personal experiences and perspectives from the overall combined team and attempts to understand why. The major reasons for failure included: gross underestimates (scope, cost, and schedule). However, there were opportunities to achieve a better outcome. These opportunities were failures by the program manager, vendor team, and management stakeholder expectations.
Though people questioned why acts of war were committed, they found justification in rationalizing that it served the greater good. As time evolved, the world began to evolve in its thinking and view of the atomic bomb and war. In Hiroshima, John Hersey has a conversation with a survivor of the atomic bomb about the general nature of war. “She had firsthand knowledge of the cruelty of the atomic bomb, but she felt that more notice should be given to the causes than to the instruments of total war.” (Hersey, 122). In John Hersey’s book, many concepts are discussed. The most important concept for the reader to identify was how society viewed the use of the bomb. Many people, including survivors, have chosen to look past the bomb itself, into the deeper issues the bomb represents. The same should apply to us. Since WWII, we have set up many restrictions, protocols and preventions in the hope that we could spare our society from total nuclear war. The world has benefited in our perspective of the bomb because we learned, understand, and fear the use of atomic weapons.
The issues regarding the arms trade discussed in Sowing Weapons of War include the free market in arms, moral responsibility, policies for curbing the trade, and the banning of landmines. Regarding the free market in arms, the Unites States’ activity in the trade has increased dramatically since the Cold War and this increase has led to an increase in lives lost in third world countries due to violence. As a supplier of war weapons, the United States has a moral responsibility to ensure that they follow the process for a legitimate trade. The trade is legitimate if it promotes legitimate defense or follows the principle of sufficiency. However, even though there are instances where the trade can be justified, measures should be taken to curb the trade. Strict controls in the United States as well as internationally can curb the trade; as well as finding nonmilitary ways to protect jobs. Landmines claim the lives of civilians every week; measures need to be take internationally to reduce the number of landmines hidden across the world. In conclusion, weapons of war take the lives of several people everyday, but it does not have to remain this way as there are many steps that the country and the world can take to put an end to the illegitimate
One important moral implication, effecting how we address the question of civilian casualties, has to do with weapons that are inherently indiscriminate. It is widely accepted that not only is their use in war morally prohibited, but their mere possession as well is looked at as immoral.
I always wanted to go into the military as a little kid. Now, actually being at the age of what I need to decide on what I’m going to do for my future is a little harder than I thought it was going to be. I have chose to do my project on The United States Air Force. It has always intrigued me to join the military because of my grandfather. He was in the Air Force and always told me stories about when he was in the service. I really wasn’t sure about what branch to go into because I didn’t really know what pays the best, but which is also the safest. This project has showed me that the Air Force is the safest option, and pays the best out of all of the branches of the military. So, this
Mechanical engineer is something great to look into because they make good money. There a good things about being a mechanical engineer because you go to school for two year at RCC. There a change that you can work it a shop with AC in there and heat for the winter. If you’re great at mechanical engineer you can tell your people what they're doing wrong and right thing. Mechanical engineer works on cars, trucks, dirt bikes and four wheelers they can work on all them thing because they all got motors that what they learn about in school.
John Yoder argues that just war cannot simply act as a checklist to determine what decisions should be made in war – more prudential factors need to be considered. Oliver O’Donovan further elaborates on this argument by introducing the argument that, although the design of nuclear weapons seems to provide immediate evidence of indiscriminate intention, it is actually “the exercising party that is morally governing” as any weapon can be used indiscriminately. These arguments show that from a purely moral standpoint it is difficult to justify nuclear weapons; although nuclear weapons do not fit with the concept of just war, the fact that states are willing to adopt them shows either that these states do not value the concept of just war, or that the necessity to possess these weapons overpowers the ideals of just war. This shows that nuclear weapons provide an effect for which countries are willing to put aside their moral preferences; highlighting that there must be an underlying necessity for nuclear weapons in the 21st century. It is essential to now explore what that effect is.
Did you know there are thousands of jobs for a mechanical engineer, and the career will be unhurt by the struggling of the economy? There are many tasks a mechanical engineer is faced with on a daily basis. A mechanical engineer must have several qualities to make the work enjoyable for themselves and others. A mechanical engineer must be well qualified in their education to receive a job, as it is a broad industry. With having a job or career as a mechanical engineer you rarely have to worry if your job is going to exist the next day, or if your pay is going to get cut; a mechanical engineer is needed everywhere. Being a mechanical engineer there is the everyday struggle of blending work life with home life and dealing with the
Within the essay there will be explanation on the moral demand for engineers to serve the general public interest comparison this with the usual ethic of the market that stresses self-interest because the norm and also the different cultural ethical problems engineers face in the global community.
When it comes to technological advancement, perhaps one of the industries that have incurred the greatest and fastest growth is the military sector. Albert Einstein once said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” (Einstein, 1949) The changes in warfare have become increasingly deadlier over the course of human development, and its advancements have impacted humanity in profound and shocking ways. At one point it time, it was even customary to have drills involving the famous ‘duck and cover’ method that was made famous over numerous bomb drills in the United States
The politics of engineering is as complicated as engineering itself, and as contested as man and nature that usually enrich political debates. The mission of an engineer is essentially savoring it, defending it, and improving it, but also coping with it and transcending it. There is nothing especially laudable in romanticizing lost worlds, or pretending that societies without skyscrapers or modern communication are more “authentic” than our own, or believing that disarming ourselves will make the perils of technological power disappear. May we not fantasize that the present world is necessarily the finest human achievement yet, or that politically necessary and morally justified uses of technological power are wholly innocent. For, they usually are not.
My rendezvous with Mechanical Engineering began during my school days, when we visited a toy manufacturing facility as part of our educational tour. I remember watching in amazement, an array of complex machines working in unison to transform plastic and metal into intricately contoured toys. Even at that age, my mind was able to comprehend the sheer genius of the wizards who engineered those magnificent machines. It was then that I aspired to enter this intriguing branch of mechanical engineering.
It is widely-known that the Manhattan Project had profound implications on the world’s understanding of science and technology through the development of the first two atomic bombs which effectively ended World War 2 in 1945. However, this singular event in American history has been the focus of a major ethical dilemma for decades as well as having a legacy fraught with conflict and regret. That was what I wanted to explore in my research. I wanted to discover how the legacy of the Manhattan Project has influenced the current state of affairs in the world as well as the specific effects the project had on the world’s understanding of science and weaponry. Additionally, I set out to discover, not only how the scientists felt about their involvement in such a controversial event, but also the difference in perspective between the American public and the Japanese.
This report focuses on Engineering Ethics and summarizes an incident where some Canons of Engineering Ethics were neglected which lead to a fatal accident.