The Rise of the Drones

By Dave Webb

School of Applied Global Ethics, Leeds Metropolitan University;

Acting Chair, CND;

Convenor, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

September 2010

Thanks very much for inviting me and for organising this really important conference on a subject that more people really need to know about. SLIDE-2 I have been given the title “Rise of the Drone” I guess to give some background to some of the extremely important issues that the developments in robotic warfare are presenting us with. There are some excellent and extremely knowledgeable people here to give much more detailed information during the workshops – so if your questions aren’t answered here then they probably will be by someone somewhere else. The term “drone” is used to describe a range of remote control devices but in this talk I will be focussing mainly on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs. SLIDE-3

As well as currently being acting chair of CND, I am also convenor of the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. This is an international network of grass roots campaigning groups concerned with the exponentially increasing use of space by the military. Each year we coordinate a week of global actions and events that focus on this issue and last year’s Keep Space for Peace Week actually focused on drones and their use in warfare. SLIDE-4 These war machines are targeted and directed through space technology to conduct surveillance and deliver weapons systems to ground-based targets. They represent the latest developments in war fighting technology that separate the perpetrators of acts of violence from the consequences of their actions by as much as several thousand miles. SLIDE-5 Young men and women are controlling planes over Afghanistan and Pakistan from computer terminals in Nevada and California in the US. Although US Air Force statements insist that trained and experienced pilots and aircrew are “the preferred option” for these tasks, it seems clear that they are also willing to recruit young people with fast reactions, who can demonstrate particular skills at computer games. SLIDE-6 They have also been used by Israel in Gaza and are receiving increasing attention in the media as they are adding significantly to civilian death tolls in these regions. SLIDE-7

Drones are guided by and communicate through space satellite technology and are now an integral part of what is known as “network centric warfare” – SLIDE-8 whereby information is shared and battle management conducted through computer and space technologies. SLIDE-9 Ground based stations, armed units and intelligence systems around the world are also plugged in to this system that allows the US and its allies to project power and ‘full spectrum dominance’ across the globe. SLIDE-10 These communications systems may not be that secure from hackers. In December last year CBS reported how drone video images were found on the lap tops of Iraqi insurgents. It is relatively easy it is for anyone with cheap basic software to intercept the video feeds from drones. This was known about for some time as, in 2002, a British engineer who enjoys scanning satellite signals for fun stumbled across a NATO video feed from the Kosovo war. It is emphasised that although the drone videos can be intercepted – they remain in the control of the US military.

General UAVs

Drones were first used by the US in the 1950s as target practice for fighter pilots and were later used to spy over China and Vietnam in the 1960s and for surveillance in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. SLIDE-11 They were deployed in 2000 on CIA secret missions to look for Osama Bin Laden and have been used with increasing frequency ever since. In recent years funding for their development has climbed, reaching over 3 billion dollars this year. In April the US Army announced it had surpassed 1 million unmanned flight hours, increasing its inventory from a handful of UAVs in 2001 to around a1,000 aircraft in 2010. SLIDE-12 95% of what they have today didn’t even exist at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. In 2003 around 35,000 UAV flight-hours were logged in Iraq and Afghanistan by US forces and this has been dramatically increasing year by year.

SLIDE-13 Drones come in all shapes and sizes – different families. Some tiny used to communicate inside buildings. SLIDE-14 Others are as small as toy planes and can be carried in a back pack and launched by hand to spy over hills or buildings, helping to identify and provide information on targets. The US has several thousand of these. Others are much larger and more deadly. SLIDE-15 The US Global Hawk is 44ft long with a wingspan of over 116ft (about the size of a corporate jet) and is used for high altitude, high resolution radar surveillance. Northrop Grumman recently unveiled the first of a new generation of Global Hawk which can gather data on objects as small as a shoebox, through clouds, night or day, for 32 hours from 18,000 metres which is almost twice the cruising altitude of passenger jets. Following the North Korean nuclear test in June last year the US declared that it would begin replacing its manned U-2 spy planes in South Korea with Global Hawks. These big drones are very expensive, costing as much as $60m each and, although they have no-one on board, each Global Hawk requires a support team of 20-30 people.

SLIDE-16 The Predator drone (manufactured by General Atomics) is smaller, being just 27ft long with a wingspan of just less than 49ft. However, it can be armed with two Hellfire missiles. It was a Predator that was used to monitor the movements of the Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and assist the attack on his house by US jets. The Predator series has just surpassed one million flight hours, involving 80,000 missions, over 85% of which have been flown in combat

SLIDE-17 A later version of the Predator, the Reaper, is the first US hunter-killer drone. It can carry 15 times more weapons than the Predator, including up to 14 Hellfire missiles and 2 500-pound laser-guided bombs, and travel at around 300 mph – about three times the speed of its predecessor. SLIDE-18 The Reaper was also designed to spy and is fitted with an incredible array of sensors as well as three cameras, which can operate during the day or at night. SLIDE-19 A Reaper was also used to kill at least 6 senior Al-Qaeda commanders in the region of the Pakistan border.

Currently there are around 45 countries using and/or developing something like 260 different kinds of drones (including Belarus, Colombia, Sri Lanka and Georgia) for a variety of activities. Some analysts have suggested that Georgian drones, obtained from Israel, outperformed Russia (who also buys Israeli drones) in aerial intelligence during the conflict in August 2008.

Israeli use of Drones in Gaza

SLIDE-20 Israel employed drones during the invasion of Gaza in 2008/ 2009, Over 1000 Palestinians were killed at this time and drones accounted for the deaths of at least 87 civilians, many of them children.

SLIDE-21 In June 2009 Human Rights Watch issued a report:“Precisely Wrong: Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles" – in it they highlighted the fact that frequently the killings had no combat or defensive role whatsoever. Their 39 page report gave details of 6 incidents of the use of drones by Israel in Gaza that resulted in 29 civilian deaths, including 8 children. They found that Israeli drone operators “failed to exercise proper caution” in determining whether their targets were civilians. Their findings were primarily based on debris from Israeli made Spike missiles which are fired from drones.

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Afghanistan and Pakistan

At any one time, there are at least 36 armed US UAVs over Afghanistan and Iraq and the US plans to increase this number to at least 50 by next year.

SLIDE-23 In Pakistan over 1,500 people have been killed in 165 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004 with 155 having taken place since January 2008. Most of these are claimed to be militants. However, there are no official figures released for the numbers of civilians killed and reports in newspapers are not entirely reliable and may not tell the whole story. In one attack in June last year a Predator airstrike killed at least 60 people at a funeral in South Waziristan in Pakistan.

SLIDE-24 One thing that is known is that attacks often serve to fuel anti-American sentiment in the conservative Muslim country.

It was revealed last year that the use of drones had taken a somewhat sinister turn. In 2004 the CIA secretly hired the infamous Blackwater to locate and assassinate top Qaeda operatives from hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While this programme was initiated by the Bush administration, it has increased under Obama and there have been around 50 known drone strikes in Pakistan since Obama became president. SLIDE-25

In October 2009 Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, warned the US that these “targeted killings” may violate international law. He said that the CIA had to show accountability to international laws which ban arbitrary executions.

"The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons."

The US has said that the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have no role in relation to killings during an armed conflict. But Mr Alston described that response as "simply untenable”.

So the US now has an additional “squadron” of armed drones – as well as those run by the US Air Force and the Army, there is another run by the CIA. The US is attempting to justify these attacks by arguing that Pakistan is not taking adequate steps to prevent militants crossing its border with Afghanistan and so it is acting in self defence - to protect its soldiers there. Article 51 of the UN Charter does allow countries to use military force in another country in self-defence – an article that has been used as a legal basis for acting against non-state actors such as terrorists planning attacks in another country. The article was also used as the basis of the UN Security Council resolution authorising military intervention in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in New York and the declaration by President George W. Bush of a “war on terror”, the scope of which does not seem to recognise national boundaries.

Although the US presence in Afghanistan is sanctioned by the UN, they are supposedly restricted to that country under the UN mandate and it is not the first time that such actions by them has been defended as being needed for self defence. In 1986 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the US had been “in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another State” and “not to violate its sovereignty” by supporting Contra guerrillas in their rebellion against the Sandanista government and by mining Nicaragua’s harbours. In addition in 2005 the ICJ ruled that Uganda could not use force under the doctrine of self defence against militants in Congo.Despite this however, by the use of drones, the USAF has increased the number of combat air patrols it can fly by 600% over the past six years.

The US has not actually declared war on Pakistan and SLIDE-26 Peter Singer (author of Wired for War) points out that the use of drones in this way may have changed what we mean by war:

“As of March 12, 2010, American unmanned systems had carried out 118 known air strikes into Pakistan, well over double the amount we did with manned bombers in the opening round of the Kosovo War just a decade ago. By the old standards, this would be viewed as a war.”

In addition, the use of robot systems will be seen quite differently by two opposing and different cultures. On the one hand the U.S. has had the memory of a previous war in Vietnam, where over 58,000 of their soldiers were killed. They will remember quite clearly the consequences of what happened in terms of the lack of popular support for a war that they were not winning. So, keeping the number of body bags low is essential to the U.S. Using technology to keep the war fighter far from danger is therefore seen as an important development. Today, after six years of intense fighting in Iraq, fewer than 4,500 U.S. soldiers have died in combat. And in Afghanistan even fewer coalition troops have been killed than in Iraq (1,280 - although that figure has been steadily increasing). However, by sending robots into the battleground the U.S. may be seen as behaving in a cowardly way by an opposition that will be viewed as the underdog in an asymmetric war. U.S. standing and the respect previously shown and felt for them is suffering as a consequence. In a situation where unmanned systems are seen as a means of avoiding sacrifice – seen as a sign of American unwillingness to face death – alternatives may be sought. If soldiers can’t be killed on the battlefield then, perhaps other ways of producing the same effect will be used. The more American soldiers are replaced on the battlefield by remotely controlled robots, the more it is likely to drive insurgents to hit back at the US by striking it at home.

European Activity

SLIDE-27 Drones are big business and, according to Visiongain, a London based market-research firm, global sales of UAVs are expected to increase by over 10% in 2009 to more than $4.7 billion. About 60% of this would be spent by the US and the Department of Defence has declared that it will spend more than $22 billion between 2007 and 2013 to develop, buy and operate drones. Israel ranks second in drone development and among the European leaders of this form of technology are Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. China possesses a substantial drone fleet. Of particular concern to the U.S. is the growing number of drones possessed by Iran. Development and sales of drones are spreading world wide – even though the export of armed drones is limited by the Missile Technology Control Regime and the Hague Code of Conduct, which aims to reduce global missile proliferation.