A Centre for Drones and Culture event in collaboration with the Imperial War Museums

Beware Blue Skies: The Psychology of Drone Warfare (A Pop-Up VR Experience)

Two dates:

14 - 17 August 2025, IWM Duxford Airfield, Cambridge CB22 4QR

30 October - 2 November 2025, IWM North, Trafford Wharf Rd, Manchester M17 1TZ

No registration required

Following the success of Beware Blue Skies, an immersive film installation that ran at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London from November 2024 - March 2025 as part of the “War and the Mind” exhibition, we are pleased to offer a unique, limited-run version of the film in virtual-reality format at IWM Duxford and IWM North in Manchester. In Duxford, the exhibit will be situated in the American Air Museum, accompanying a refreshed display of the museum’s MQ-1B Predator drone.

Drawing from research on drone warfare and from eyewitness testimonies of drone violence in the Global War on Terror, Beware Blue Skies examines the psychological harms of drone warfare. These harms are often difficult to find accountability for: from noise sensitivity to fear, from changes in social customs to sleep deprivation and anxiety, drone warfare’s impacts extend far beyond the physical and material. As today’s news of “droneophobia” in the Ukraine-Russia war show, drones continue to weaponise sound and dread.

Beware Blue Skies reflects on the politics of immersive technologies in remote warfare. For two weeks, visitors have the opportunity to experience this film in virtual reality, and to speak with researchers from the Centre for Drones and Culture about questions concerning mediation and empathy raised by unmanned violence.