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From lightweight
surveillance devices to
heavily armed attack
weapons, pilotless aircraft
are rapidly becoming a
favoured tool of warfare.
But are they accurate?
Ethical? Here to stay?
by Dan Sabbagh Defence
and security editor
What is a drone?
Drones – remotely piloted craft – first appeared in the 1990s when they were
used for military surveillance by the US. Familiar advances in miniaturisation
and cost mean they are now used for all kinds of purposes – for recreation,
filming, monitoring conservation or to deliver vital medicines in remote
areas.
Military technology has also advanced, albeit more slowly, and the principal
drones used now are evolutions of the technology first deployed to spot
hidden Serbian positions during the 1999 Kosovo war. Weapons on drones
were first deployed almost immediately after 9/11, their usage since has been
bound up with the so-called “war on terror”.
How many military drones are out there?
The vast majority of the many thousands of military drones are used for
surveillance, and defence experts predict that will continue. Analysts at
information group Jane’s estimate that more than 80,000 surveillance
drones and almost 2,000 attack drones will be purchased around the world in
the next 10 years.
Weaponised drones are not cheap: experts say the starting price for the
technology is about $15m (£12m) per unit, with more for add-ons, on top of
the training and the crews needed to pilot them.
chart
In 2019 alone, Jane’s experts expect the world’s 10 biggest drone powers to
spend some $8bn on units.
“The wide variety in types of UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] makes them
suitable for both surveillance and combat missions, with low-cost models
able to conduct surveillance operations, opening up the capability for
militaries with a smaller budget,” says Greg Murray, a senior analyst at Jane’s.
chart
Drones rapidly proliferated in a second wave over the past five years, with
Pakistan and Turkey developing their own programmes. Since 2016, Turkey
has used drones heavily, against the separatist Kurdish PKK in its own
country, in northern Iraq and more recently against Kurdish groups in Syria.
China, meanwhile, has begun supplying a range of countries with its Wing
Loong and CH series drones, including to the UAE – where they have been
used in a string of deadly strikes in Libya – as well as Egypt Nigeria, Saudi
Arabia and Iraq, although not every country has been able to deploy what it
has bought.
chart
Drones account for 42% all UK aerial missions against Isis, and 23% of
weapon strikes, according to statistics collected by UK website Drone Wars
via freedom of information requests.
Pilots on rotation control devices that are able to loiter in a conflict zone for
about 16 to 20 hours – and able in theory to hit a target the size of a
household pane of glass. Justin Bronk, from military thinktank the Royal
United Services Institute, says “drones are five to six times more efficient
than conventional air missions”.
SSgt Christopher DeLucia checks a Predator drone at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada.
Photograph: Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images
That relies on a controversial law passed a week after 9/11. Critics say the
Authorisation for Use of Military Force permits “perpetual war” but despite
Democrat opposition, a Republican majority in the US senate help prevent its
repeal. For the US, such drone strikes have become commonplace.
Satellite image of Aramco’s Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqyaq, Saudi Arabia after a missile and drone strike
on the kingdom’s oil industry. Photograph: AP
The practice began under George W Bush, was expanded under Barack
Obama and appears to have increased further still under Donald Trump,
although in March he made analysis harder by signing an executive order
banning reporting of drone casualty details.
In Obama’s first two years in office, 2009 and 2010, 186 drone strikes were
launched in Pakistan, Syria and Yemen, according figures supplied to the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism. In Trump’s first year and 11 months in
office 238 drone strikes were launched.
In a rare piece of disclosure, the US said 473 air strikes (from both drones and
planes, the figures are not separated out) had been made against targets
outside Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria between January 2009 and December
2015. It acknowledged there had been as many as 116 civilian deaths as a
result of those strikes, 4% of the reported casualties.
But Jennifer Gibson at human rights group Reprieve says the organisation
has tracked a high rate of errors. Research conducted by Reprieve in 2014
“found that in attempts to kill 41 individuals, the US killed as many as 1,147
other people and that on average the high value targets died three times”.
A 12-year-old boy in Jalalabad Hospital after he survived a US drone strike that killed his father. The US military
claims it was targeting Isis fighters in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Andrew Quilty/The Guardian
Some disclosures stretch credibility to the limit. The UK says only one civilian
was killed or injured from British drone and air raids in Syria and Iraq,
between September 2014 and January 2019. In the those same raids, Britain
said 4,315 fighters were killed.
Press reports tell a different story. Over the past 12 months, a US drone strike
was believed to have killed 30 farm workers in Afghanistan; up to 11 civilians
were killed in a US drone strike in the south of Libya.
It has also used “double tap” targeting, where a site is hit twice or even three
times to target first responders considered connected with those already
attacked. That idea appears to be spreading: the UAE is accused of operating a
double tap strike in Libya this August, which killed 45 people including
guests from a nearby wedding who had come over to help.
Reyaad Khan, a British citizen fighting for Isis who was killed in an RAF drone attack in Syria. Photograph:
YouTube/PA
Reyaad Khan, a British Isis fighter from Cardiff, was killed in Syria aged 21, in
an RAF drone strike. The UK was not at war in Syria at the time, but then-
prime minister David Cameron asserted he had the power to make the
decision to target him. “I am not going to contract out our counterterrorism
policy to someone else,” he said.
box 1
The long term question is whether humans will be removed from the loop –
the science fiction nightmare where AI-powered drones will select and lock
on to targets with no human oversight. There is no shortage of speculation
about the topic and concern about the idea, but as yet little evidence of the
use of drones, particularly lethal drones, being governed solely by computer.
•
opposed by the US, Russia and China. Experts now hope to introduce rules
for autonomous warfare, but as with drone technology itself, there is no
serious attempt to halt development – or proliferation.
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briefing
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