What are drones? How is their increasing use changing warfare? And how are they making the world a much more dangerous place?
What are ‘drones’?
In short, the term ‘drone’ generally refers to a remote-controlled or ‘uncrewed’ aerial vehicle (UAV). However, increasingly, drones are not just operated in the skies but also on land and in the world’s seas and oceans – these too are often referred to as drones.
What’s in a name?
Naming has always been a keenly fought aspect of the debate about drones, with sometimes bitter conflict over whether such platforms should be called ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’ (UAVS), ‘remotely piloted air systems’ (RPAS) or ‘drones’. ‘Drones’ has been the term that has stuck, particularly in mainstream media, but is regularly used interchangeably with UAV (with ‘unmanned’ being replaced in recent years by ‘uncrewed’ for obvious reasons). While many in the military now accept the term ‘drone’, some continue to insist that it belittles both capabilities of the system and those who operate them.
An RAF Protector drone takes flight
In the military arena, there are now many different types and categories of drones, from small nano-drones used to reconnoitre buildings, to large drones armed with many missiles and bombs, to ‘first-person view’ (FPV) drones originating from gaming now used to carry out one-way attack missions. Very broadly speaking, however, drones can perhaps be separated into two basic categories: those that are used only for surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, and those that are also armed with missiles and bombs.
A Bug nano-drone in operation with British Army
Helsing HX-2 one way attack drone
The use of aerial drones has grown tremendously over the past decade for a number of reasons. Firstly, large drones can stay in the air much longer than a piloted aircraft as the crew operating the drone on the ground can be changed. A piloted fast jet, for example, can only stay in the air for around eight hours before the pilot becomes too fatigued to operate the aircraft. Larger drones can now stay in the air for many, many hours, with some solar powered drones operating for weeks.
Secondly, because there is no on-board crew, expensive equipment used to maintain the health of the on-board crew can simply be jettisoned and that significantly reduces the cost of drones in comparison to piloted aircraft. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, as drones are flown remotely there is no danger to any onboard pilot. Drones are often operated by crews who are hundreds or even thousands of miles away meaning they are face no danger.
Ukrainian soldier operating FPV drone
‘Suicide drones’
Iranian Shahed 136 drone
The use of one-way attack (OWA) drones – sometimes dubbed ‘suicide’ drones has also grown significantly over the past few years, both in Ukraine, but also by non-state groups. There are several different categories of this type of drone, and while they are used to carry out remote lethal attacks and therefore have significant aspects in common with the much larger drones such as Reaper or Bayraktar drones, they are significantly different in that they are expendable as the warhead is integrated into the structure of the system which is destroyed in use.
While ‘loitering munitions’ are a sub-set of ‘one way attack’ drones, not all one-way attack drones are loitering munitions.
AI and Autonomy
While many drones are remotely-operated by crews on the ground, increasingly drones are incorporating AI and autonomy, both in their flight processes but also, very worryingly in terms of surveillance and target acquisition. Drones, in many ways, are the gateway to lethal autonomous weapons and we must ensure that there is always human control over the use of lethal force.
For more on this see our guide to autonomous weapons.
The Danger of Drones
Advocates of drones often present them as being a ‘risk-free’ solution to security problems. Using remotely-controlled or autonomous drones to engage bad guys far away from our shores, we are told, keeps the public as well as our armed forces safe. The reality, however, is that rise in the use of drones is increasing global insecurity.
Lowering the threshold for the use of force
Politicians know that the public do not like to see young men and women sent overseas to fight in wars which often have remote and unclear aims. Potential TV footage of grieving families awaiting funeral corteges has been a definite restraint on political leaders weighing up the option of military intervention. Take away that potential political cost, however, by using unmanned systems, and it makes it much easier – perhaps too easy – for politicians to opt for a quick, short-term ‘fix’ of ‘taking out the bad guys’ rather than engaging in the often difficult and long-term work of solving the root causes of conflicts through diplomatic and political means, towards
Transferring the risk and cost of war from soldiers to civilians
Keeping ‘our boys’ safe through using remotely-controlled drones to conduct attacks strikes comes at a price. Without ‘boots on the ground’ air strikes are inherently more dangerous for civilians on the ground. Despite claims of the defence industry and advocates of drone warfare, it is simply not possible to know precisely what is happening on the ground from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
The lack of transparency around the use of armed drones also make it increasingly difficult to accurately account for civilian casualties. While the UK claims, for example, that only one civilian was killed in the thousands of British air and drone strikes in Iraq and Syria, journalist and casualty recording organisations have reported thousands of deaths in Coalition airstrikes.
It is also hard not to connect awful terrorist attacks to remote warfare. While the public as well as senior military and security officials understand that there is a clear link between military intervention and terror attacks at home, politicians continue to baulk at the connection. The reality though, as Air Marshall Greg Bagwell argued told us “When you have an asymmetric advantage, enemies seek to find a way around it, and that is what terrorism is. There is a danger that you shift the way an enemy target you and looks for vulnerabilities, and that is where we find ourselves.”
- Read more: “Thinking war is bloodless is a mistake.” Talking drones & remote war with Air Marshall Bagwell
Expanding the use of ‘targeted killing’
One of the most controversial aspects of the increasing use of drones has been their use by the US, Israel and other states for ‘targeted killing’. Legal scholars define targeted killing as the deliberate, premeditated killing of selected individuals by a state who are not in their custody. Where International Humanitarian Law (the Laws of War) applies, targeted killing of combatants may be legal.
Outside of IHL situations, International Human Rights Law applies and lethal force may only be used when absolutely necessary to save human life that is in imminent danger. This does not appear to be the case for many of the drone targeted killing that have been carried out, for example, by the US in Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq. While some argue that it is the policy of targeted killing that is wrong, not the weapon used to carry out it out, it is very difficult to imagine that the wholesale expansion of targeted killing would have occurred without the technology. In the UK, campaigners have long been calling on the government to set out its policy on the use of armed drones outside a situation of armed conflict, something the government has so far refused to do.
Seducing us with the myth of ‘precision’
Drones permit, we are told, pin-point accurate air strikes that kill the target while leaving the innocent untouched. Drone advocates seduce us with the notion that we can achieve control over the chaos of war through technology. The reality is that there is no such thing as a guaranteed accurate airstrike While laser-guided weapons are without doubt much more accurate than they were even 20 or 30 years ago, the myth of guaranteed precision is just that, a myth.
Even under test conditions, only 50% of weapons are expected to hit within their ‘circular error of probability’. Once the blast radius of weapons is taken into account and indeed how such systems can be affected by things such as the weather, it is clear that ‘precision’ cannot by any means be assured.
Politicians and defence officials too have been seduced by the myth of precision war and are opening up areas that would previously been out of bounds – due to the presence of civilians – to air strikes. Perhaps most telling, internal military data which counters the prevailing narrative that drones are better than traditional piloted aircraft is simply classified.
Enabling video-game warfare
Separate, but connected to the idea that drones lower the threshold for using lethal forces is the notion, as Philip Alston the former Special Rapporteur on extra judicial killing, put it of the ‘PlayStation mentality’. Alston and others suggest that the vast physical distance between those operating armed drones and the target makes that act of killing much easier. The physical distance induces a kind of psychological ‘distancing’.
There are strong objections to this notion, particular by those involved. Drone pilots, it is argued, are highly trained professionals that are able to distinguish between a video games and real life. Furthermore, it is widely reported that some drone pilots are suffering from post-traumatic stress from having to see the results of their strikes, hardly an indication of detachment. On the other hand, there is some evidence for a ‘PlayStation’ mentality. In 2010 an Afghan convoy of vehicles was hit by an US airstrike involving drones in which 23 civilians were killed. A subsequent USAF investigation found that the Predator crew wanted to attack and “ignored or downplayed” evidence suggesting the convoy was not a hostile target. Elsewhere, in Dr Peter Lee’s recent book, Reaper Force, containing detailed interviews with British RAF Reaper crews, several talked about missions where they became fixated on a target and were ready to strike despite the presence of civilians. Only direct intervention from others meant the strikes did not take place.
- Read more: “Here’s their actual stories, make of them what you will.” Dr Peter Lee on ‘Britain’s Reaper Force’
Drones: Ushering in permanent war
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the rise of drone warfare is that it is ushering in a state of permanent/forever war. When air strikes can be carried out with impunity by drone operators – from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, who then commute home at the end of the day, there is little public or political pressure to bring interventions to an end.
Drones are enabling states to carry out attacks with seemingly little reference to international law norms. US law professor Rosa Brooks argued in a disturbing article in Foreign Policy that ‘there’s no such thing as peacetime’ anymore. “Since 9/11,” she writes “it has become virtually impossible to draw a clear distinction between war and not-war.” Rather than challenging the erosion of the boundaries between crucially distinct legal frameworks, Brooks argues that we must simply accept that “the Forever War is here to stay.” To do otherwise she maintains is “largely a waste of time and energy. “Wartime is the only time we have” she insists.
The slide towards forever war must be rejected and resisted. It is incumbent on us all, citizen, politician, military officer, to work towards global peace and security, not permanent warfare.