5000 Feet is the Best refers to the ideal flight altitude of a US Predator drone. Ideal, that is, for killing and destruction, so it’s entirely appropriate that it’s also the title of a 30-minute video at the partially re-opened Imperial War Museum in London.

If you don’t associate the museum with art and discussion of issues of war and peace you obviously haven’t visited for several years. Its main draw is still the military hardware that hangs from the ceilings and squats like poison toads on swathes of floor space, but the museum has a fascinating art collection and is not afraid to tackle the pros and cons of contemporary conflict.

Issues don’t come more controversial at the moment than US drone attacks, so fittingly the film – together with an exhibition of photos of US and UK soldiers in Iraq – is the first in a new programme of exhibitions and events by artists and photographers.

Full marks for engaging with controversy. But this is – to use a weasel word often resorted to when cultural engagement offers no direct analysis or answers – an “exploration” of the use of drones, which will leave many of the museum’s traditional visitors frustrated.

Jerusalem-born artist Omer Fast offers us extracts from an interview with an unidentifiable operator who sent drones to targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan, linked by scenes of an actor leaving and entering the interview room in a Las Vegas hotel and offering other responses and anecdotes, which may or may not have been drawn from the real recollections. There’s also documentary footage and fictionalised re-enactments that, for example, show how an attack might look in Nevada. That’s dramatic and powerful because it foresees the day the US loses its supremacy in drone technology and becomes victim as well as perpetrator.

There’s no black and white, good and bad, truth and lies. These elements are mixed up and lines are blurred. We can’t even be sure the drone operator is real and telling the truth. (Apparently he was found through advertisements placed by Fast, which were pounced on by the security services.)

But the video is spookily effective. It disturbs and provokes and makes you think about the use of drones and their impact on dispatchers and targets.

Good work for a war museum.

· 5000 Feet is the Best is a 30-minute video that plays non-stop at the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, SE1, until 29 September. Info: 7416 5000/ http://www.iwm.org.uk

* London global justice events listing

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