Unmanned: Drone Warfare and Global Security
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Unmanned Rogers T02683 00 pre 1 05/03/2014 13:36 Rogers T02683 00 pre 2 05/03/2014 13:36 Unmanned Drone Warfare and Global Security Ann Rogers and John Hill Between the Lines TORONTO Rogers T02683 00 pre 3 05/03/2014 13:36 First published 2014 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in Canada in 2014 by Between the Lines 401 Richmond Street West, Studio 277, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8 Canada. 1-800-718-7201 www.btlbooks.com Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Rogers, Ann, 1964-, author Unmanned : drone warfare and global security / Ann Rogers and John Hill. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-77113-153-7 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-77113-154-4 (epub).— ISBN 978-1-77113-155-1 (pdf) 1. Drone aircraft. 2. Military robots. 3. Security, International. 4. Military weapons (International law). 5. War--Moral and ethical aspects. 6. War and society. I. Hill, John (Journalist), author II. Title. UG1242.D7R65 2014 623.74'69 C2013-907913-0 C2013-907912-2 Copyright © Ann Rogers and John Hill 2014 The right of Ann Rogers and John Hill to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3335 9 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3334 2 Pluto Press paperback ISBN 978 1 77113 153 7 Between the Lines paperback ISBN 978 1 7837 1147 5 Pluto Press PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 77113 155 1 Between the Lines PDF ISBN 978 1 7837 1149 9 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1148 2 epub eBook ISBN 978 1 77113 154 4 Between the Lines epub Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Text design by Melanie Patrick Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America Rogers T02683 00 pre 4 05/03/2014 13:36 In memory of our fathers Jack D. Rogers, 1929–2007 Rowland C. Hill, 1925–2013 Rogers T02683 00 pre 5 05/03/2014 13:36 Rogers T02683 00 pre 6 05/03/2014 13:36 Contents Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 1 From Balloons to Big Safari: UAV Development 12 2 The Drone Takes Off 29 3 The UAV and Military Doctrine 48 4 The Consequences of Killing Without Consequences 67 5 Targets: The View From Below 83 6 Unlegal: Justifying a Drone War 101 7 Killer Robots 117 8 From Man O’ War to Nano-War: Revolutions in Military Affairs 133 Notes 149 Bibliography 167 Index 178 Rogers T02683 00 pre 7 05/03/2014 13:36 Abbreviations ABM anti-ballistic missile COIN counter-insurgency CT counter-terrorism DARO Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency FATA federally administered tribal areas GPS global positioning system HALE high altitude long endurance IADS integrated air defence system IAF Israeli Air Force IAI Israeli Aircraft Industries IDF Israeli Defense Force IED improvised explosive device ISAF International Security Assistance Force ISR intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance JDN Joint Doctrine Note LARS lethal autonomous robotics system MALE medium altitude long endurance NRO National Reconnaissance Office NSA National Security Agency PGM precision guided munition PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder RAF Royal Air Force RMA Revolution in Military Affairs STAG Special Task Air Group SAM surface to air missile UAS unmanned aerial system UAV unmanned aerial vehicle UCAV unmanned combat air vehicle UNAMA UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan USAAF US Army Air Force USAF United States Air Force Rogers T02683 00 pre 8 05/03/2014 13:36 Introduction What’s that buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing? Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore1 During the early 1970s, running water was installed in the houses of Ibieca, a small village in northeast Spain. With pipes running directly to their homes, Ibiecans no longer had to fetch water from the village fountain. Families gradually purchased washing machines, and women stopped gathering to scrub laundry by hand at the village washbasin. Arduous tasks were rendered technologically superfluous, but village social life unexpectedly changed. The public fountain and washbasin, once scenes of vigorous social interaction, became nearly deserted. Men began losing their sense of familiarity with the children and donkeys that once helped them haul water. Women stopped congregating at the washbasin to intermix scrubbing with politically empowering gossip about men and village life. In hindsight the installation of running water helped break down the Ibiecans’ strong bonds – with one another, with their animals, and with the land – that had knitted them together as a community. Is this a parable for our time?2 As Richard Sclove’s narrative demonstrates, a technology can produce consequences that may seem clear enough in hindsight but were not considered or intended at the time of its introduction. This book represents an effort to investigate the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or ‘drone’ as a human artefact, bringing together its diverse forms and histories, current and projected uses, and the ethical, philosophical and legal challenges it raises, with a view to better understanding its large-scale effects on the human environment. The arrival of drones on the international stage has been both slow and rapid: slow in as much as experiments with the idea have been going on for over a hundred years without it becoming mainstream, and rapid in that since the technology caught up with the concept at the end of the twentieth century the growth in UAV use has been explosive. The US military’s inventory increased 40-fold between 2002 and 2010, and Rogers T02683 01 text 1 05/03/2014 13:36 2 Unmanned upwards of 70 countries now possess UAVs in one form or another. They have also been controversial, both because of how they have been used – most notoriously as tools for assassination – and because of what may be a fundamental public suspicion towards the idea of robotised warfare. It is with the connection between these aspects that we are most concerned here: does the nature of this technology have an impact on how it is used, and does this usage constitute a step change in how we carry out our global affairs? The essence of the question lies in the uniquely ‘unmanned’ nature of this technology. In general, contemporary unmanned aerial systems consist of one or more vehicles linked by satellite to a ground station. On the face of it, they can do what manned aircraft can do, and indeed they carry out the same kinds of missions using the same kinds of surveillance equipment or weapons that manned aircraft carry. But by creating a profound separation between operator and target, drones remove the physical risk to the side using them, and this leads to a change in perception about how they can be deployed. The corollary of removing physical risk is a corresponding diminution of political risk – political fallout is minor compared to what it would be if bodies, not machines, were on the line. Drones solve the ‘Gary Powers problem’ – Powers was the CIA’s U-2 pilot shot down by the Russians in 1960 and sentenced to ten years in prison for espionage (he was eventually traded in a spy swap in 1962). Less risk, both material and political, allows drone performance to be optimised: they penetrate into spaces and territories where humans cannot or will not go; not bound by physical needs like rest or food, they are an enduring presence over their target area. Although the weapons and sensor suites they carry may be no better than those of manned systems, in combination with these qualities of access and persistence, their intelligence gathering and targeting abilities are greatly enhanced. More curious, however, is that drones are also viewed as less problematic by the states they are in operation against. Drones seem to manifest a less obvious trespass than a manned incursion, making a lower imposition on national sovereignty. The fact that they are tacitly tolerated further enhances their ability to access areas that manned aircraft can’t or won’t go. This nexus of access–persistence–accuracy is the core of drone warfare: it facilitates what we call here nano-war, that is, the ability of states to bring military-scale force to bear on specific individuals in situations where the delivery of such force would otherwise have been difficult or unacceptable. The low imposition and the relative disposability of the Rogers T02683 01 text 2 05/03/2014 13:36 Introduction 3 UAV allows force to be used where in the past it would not be used (or only much more rarely). Thus we now regularly see the search for, and pursuit of individuals in territories where otherwise the pursuing state’s writ does not run.