“Robot warfare: campaigners call for tighter controls of deadly drones
Conferences will raise concerns over unpiloted aircraft and ground machines that choose their own targets
The rapid proliferation of military drone planes and armed robots should be subject to international legal controls, conferences in London and Berlin will argue this month.
Public awareness of attacks by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as Reapers and Predators, in Afghanistan and Pakistan has grown but less is known of the evolution of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs).
Two conferences – Drone Wars in London on 18 September and a three-day workshop organised by the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) in Berlin on 20-22 September – will hear calls for bans and for tighter regulation under international arms treaties.” (Continued on The Guardian website)
Over the past ten days or so there have been over a dozen reported drone strikes in Pakistan near the Afghan border. Associated Press reports today (15th Sept) that drone strikes “have killed more than 60 people in 13 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan.” AP based their figures on Pakistani intelligence officials’ reports, other sources put the death toll at 75. Many of the drone strikes have taken place around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border. According to The Guardian, this is the most intense and sustained period of US drone strikes in Pakistan since the US began attacks in Pakistan in 2004, while the Christian Science Monitor says that US drone strikes in Pakistan have now reached 70 this year – a new record.
Many of the news reports on the strikes quote anonymous US intelligence sources saying that the strikes are aimed at the Haqqani Network, a family /tribal network with alleged links to Al Qaeda. None of the reports that I have seen so far remind readers that the US has not declared war on Pakistan and so such strikes are unlawful. In addition such a period of intense bombardment is highly likely to incur civilian casualties and will no doubt lead to further alienation of the Pakistan population.
Next Saturday, 18th September, peace campaigners, researchers and the public will come together in central London to examine the growing phenomenon of drone wars. The conference, organised by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) will take place at the University of London Union and will include speakers, workshops and a chance to network with other campaigners. Click here to for more details and booking form.
The ‘playstation mentality’ of drone operators is one of the serious concerns that the peace movement has in relation to drone strikes and will b be examined in more depth at the September 18th Drone Wars conference.
On September 14, 14 activists from around the country will stand trial in Las Vegas for trespassing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada in April 2009. Creech is headquarters for the Air Force’s drone warfare program, from where unmanned planes (called “Predators” and “Reapers”) do surveillance and fire (“Hellfire”) missiles at targets on the other side of the globe. As this results from one of the first public protests of this insidious new technology, a spirited defense, including an appeal to international law, is being prepared. More details here
Last week, BAE Systems quietly announced that it had won a $50m contract to further develop the ARGUS system in conjunction with U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ). ARGUS (or Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance) provides real-time, high-resolution, video surveillance capability for U.S. combat forces for detecting, locating, tracking and monitoring events on battlefields. It is being designed to be used with drones or small manned aircraft.
This latest contract, to develop an infrared capability for ARGUS so that it can be used at nightime, come a few months after few months after BAE Systems admitted that ARGUS had been successfully tested by DARPA in Autumn 2009.
“is designed to overcome the narrow “soda-straw” field of view of conventional surveillance sensors by providing multiple real-time video streams …. DARPA says ARGUS can provide up to 65 “Predator-class” steerable video streams. The 1.8-gigapixel sensor has four optical telescopes, each with 92 5-megapixel focal-plane arrays – cellphone camera chips, says BAE. The airborne processor combines the video output from all 368 arrays together to create a single mosaic image, with an update rate of 12-15 frames a second.
On the ground, the operator can create windows around stationary or moving targets within the image and ARGUS will down-link the video for these windows in real time. The system provides up to 65 640 x 480-pixel video streams simultaneously, limited only by data link capacity. Also a “global motion detector” mode looks at the entire image and tags potential targets with low-res image “chips”.
ARGUS in Operation (image Wired.com)
In other words, one drone will be able to track, in real time, up to 65 targets and as Wired.com suggests, monitor them over and area of 65 miles.
With up to 65 simultaneous video streams ARGUS easily beats the famously named ‘Gorgon Stare’ which was being developed to have 12 video streams.
The old adage “you can run, but you can’t hide” is becoming more true than ever, and real-time surveillance of huge swathes of territory using drones seems to be just over the horizon.
This week, President Obama declared the war in Iraq to be over. The announcement received much press coverage and not a little scorn, as at least 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq. Little noticed however was also the fact that US military chiefs admit that UAV flights in Iraq have not lessened – in fact the likelihood is that drone flights in Iraq will actually increase. Asked about UAV flights in Iraq, Gregory Gonzalez, UAV project manager in the US Program Executive Office for Aviation said “It’s not going to slow down any time soon.”
In fact many analysts predicate a bright and glowing future for drones with sales predicated to be worth over $70bn over the next 10 years. However a growing number of critics are beginning to question the morality of drone wars and drone assassinations.
“A year ago, 14 of us, including a number of priests and nuns, walked onto Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, headquarters of the drone program. We walked on with roses and knelt down and prayed. They almost opened fire on us, they arrested us and put us in jail.” He went on to say “The future is not the drones. We need to abolish these evil weapons and pursue nonviolent ways to resolve international conflict.”
“Robot warfare: campaigners call for tighter controls of deadly drones
