Mattis’ Pet Peeve: Calling Drones 'Unmanned Aerial Vehicles'

I think they should call them Surveillance Hovering Integrated Tactical System.

Big fan of Mattis, but this strikes me as rather picayune. We know they’re piloted by someone (on the ground), we know data is being downloaded, blah blah blah. Tell me, Mr Secretary, do you have the same issue with terms like ‘unmanned space flights’, or ‘unmanned space missions’, etc? Look, this isn’t rocket science. Well, actually, maybe it is, since rocket scientists do call them unmanned missions. We KNOW what the commonly-accepted usage of the term means. BTW—there are nuanced differences between unmanned and unoccupied. Unoccupied generally means that something (car, house, train, bathroom, seat, desk, whatever) usually has an occupant but doesn’t at the moment.

Speaking of pet peeves :)

The boss is always right