Under normal circumstances the end of a world war might be cause for reflection. And indeed, each November we have institutionalised mourning at an almost mandatory level.

But the cold war is different. Lives were only lost in countries the US and the USSR should never have been in. Remote peoples were armed and set against one another.

Now we reap what we sowed. Were it a just war, museums like the Nike Historic Missile Site in California might be as affecting as a trip to landing beach in Normandy.

The Hercules Missile system was intended as a line of defence against Soviet bombers. It became obsolete as both powers came to rely on ICBMs.

Now it is so obsolete they allow artists to climb all over the deactivated stock, for the making of graphite rubbings or whatever else it is that artists do.

Neudecker has engaged with every inch of this 41ft behemoth. The full incarnation of this work would not even fit in the downtown Brighton gallery.

Straddling the missiles like a peacetime Dr Strangelove, she renders cold hard steel in a manic, performative, durational scribble.

Keen eyed defence strategists will realise there are two Hercules on display. One light, one dark. Neudecker leaves us to guess which was the real thing, which a military decoy.

Does the lighter missile represent a tentative fear, an explosive potential which mustn’t be disturbed? Or does the darker missile indicate a deeper, more passionate engagement with the real thing?

Either way, this is close as you’d want to get. Neudecker’s piece is evidence relating to last night’s nightmare. The East-West standoff, the three minute warnings, the paranoia . . . It happened all along.

This piece can be seen in The Air Itself is One Vast Library at Lighthouse Arts, Brighton. See galllery website for more details.

It is one of the most frightening scenarios you can imagine: up to six armed drone aircraft circling your neighbourhood, preparing to strike and strike they do.

Numbers are what surprised me most from reading James Bridle’s blog about unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. If six Reapers above your village doesn’t amount to terrorism, nothing does.

So in a laudable attempt to bring the long war home, the artist has arranged for an UAV outline to be painted on Brighton seafront, yards away from the pier and other amusements.

It is electric green, a shade which might be to the 21st century what lapis lazuli was to the 15th. Just as they treasured their azure Madonna blue, we may fetishise our virtual, chroma key green.

An accompanying film makes clear the drone was put in place by road painters from Hi-Way Services. And indeed you might mistake the wing outlines for some obscure parking regulation.

But note the masterful way the paint slips down the kerbs between the promenade and the road. It has all the fluid movement and stealth you might well fear from an unfriendly UAV.

Perhaps this is also fitting, but people don’t seem to be taking much notice. Joggers jog past. Coach parties drive past. Bridle’s work is about our ignorance as much as anything else.

You would have to collar every passerby in turn and say, look, just yesterday two men were killed on a motorbike in the Yemen. Did you even know we were at war there already!?

This fact is true at time of writing, gleaned from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and posted along with the satellite view on the aforementioned blog, dubbed with cruel irony Dronestagram.

Drones may be invisible, but we allow them to be. None of these strikes make the evening news. In the past eight years almost 3,500 people have been killed thus in Pakistan alone.

The campaign is remote in every sense. Our hands are kept so clean that, weather permitting, we can even sunbathe nearby. Thank god the victims can’t see us, even if we can see them.

Under the Shadow of the Drone was commissioned by Lighthouse, Brighton, and can be viewed on Madeira Drive, until May 26.