The Debate over Drone Proliferation Separating Fact from Michael C. Horowitz, Sarah E. Kreps, and Fiction in the Debate Matthew Fuhrmann over Drone Proliferation In the last decade and a half, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), “drones,” has become commonplace.1 In response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States launched its ªrst armed drone strike in Afghanistan in November of that year. The strike missed its intended target—Mullah Akhund, the Taliban’s number three in command—but killed several others. A year later, the United States used an armed drone to strike suspected al-Qaida members in Yemen, including Qa’id Salim Sinan al Harithi, who was thought to have plotted the attack against the USS Cole in 2000, which had killed seven- teen U.S. sailors. Since then, U.S. drone strikes have grown in both geographic scope and number, extending to Pakistan in 2004 and Somalia in 2007, and in- creasing from about 50 total counterterrorism strikes from 2001 to 2008 to about 450 from 2009 to 2014.2 U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta once understandably referred to drones as “the only game in town” in terms of stopping al-Qaida.3 Although the United States has been the most proliªc user of combat drones, several other countries have employed them as well, including Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. Almost a dozen states, in- cluding China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, reportedly now possess armed drones, and many others—including India—are racing to acquire them. The spread of armed drones has ignited considerable debate among scholars and policy- Michael C. Horowitz is Associate Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. Sarah E. Kreps is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University. Matthew Fuhrmann is Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University and Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. The authors would like to thank Neil Chitrao, Debak Das, Nicholas Miras, Rachel Stohl, Amy Zegart, and Micah Zenko, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their helpful feedback. 1. For the purposes of this article, we refer to UAVs and drones interchangeably, leaving aside de- bates over terminology. 2. Data from New America Foundation, http://securitydata.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan- analysis.html. See also Stephanie Carvin, “The Trouble with Targeted Killing,” Security Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2012), pp. 529–555; and Julia Macdonald and Jacquelyn Schneider, “Presidential Risk Orientation and Force Employment Decisions: The Case of Unmanned Weaponry,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, forthcoming. 3. Noah Shactman, “CIA Chief, ‘Drones “Only Game in Town” for Stopping Al Qaeda,’” Wired, May 19, 2009, https://www.wired.com/2009/05/cia-chief-drones-only-game-in-town-for- stopping-al-qaeda/. International Security, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Fall 2016), pp. 7–42, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00257 © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 7 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00257 by guest on 30 September 2021 International Security 41:2 8 makers about the consequences of armed and unarmed drone proliferation for international and regional security. One camp views drones as an important, even transformative, military tech- nology. Many within this camp caution that drones lower the costs of using force to the point of making war too easy and therefore more likely.4 Addi- tionally, because drones have a variety of commercial applications and because drone exports are increasing, those in this camp generally believe that militarily-relevant drones will spread very quickly.5 Drone proliferation, there- fore, is both inevitable and highly consequential for the international security environment. In contrast, a second camp views drones as a nontransformative technology that replicates capabilities that many modern militaries already possess.6 In addition, analysts in this camp contend that the technological re- quirements of sophisticated drones are beyond the reach of many countries.7 Consequently, drone proliferation is relatively insigniªcant for regional and international security. This article assesses the consequences of current-generation drone prolif- eration, concluding that both of the above perspectives are misguided. Exam- ining the effects of UAVs in six different contexts—counterterrorism, interstate conºict, crisis onset and deterrence, coercive diplomacy, domestic control and repression, and use by nonstate actors for the purposes of terrorism—we show that, although current-generation drones will introduce some unique capabili- ties into conºicts around the world, they are unlikely to produce the dire con- sequences that some analysts fear. In particular, drone proliferation carries 4. See, for example, Micah Zenko, “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies” (Washington, D.C.: Council on Foreign Relations, 2013), http://www.cfr.org/wars-and-warfare/reforming-us-drone- strike-policies/p29736; Michael J. Boyle, “The Race for Drones,” Orbis, Vol. 59, No. 1 (2015), pp. 76–94, at p. 78; Peter W. Singer, “Do Drones Undermine Democracy?” New York Times, Janu- ary 21, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/do-drones-undermine- democracy .html; and Adam N. Stulberg, “Managing the Unmanned Revolution in the U.S. Air Force,” Orbis, Vol. 51, No. 2 (March 2007), pp. 251–265. 5. Patrick Tucker, “Every Country Will Have Armed Drones within 10 Years,” Defense One, May 6, 2014, http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/05/every-country-will-have-armed-drones- within-ten-years/83878/. 6. See, for example, Charli Carpenter and Lina Shaikhouni, “Don’t Fear the Reaper: Four Miscon- ceptions about How We Think about Drones,” Foreign Policy, June 7, 2011, http:// foreignpolicy.com/2011/06/07/dont-fear-the-reaper/; Megan Braun, “Predator Effect: A Phenom- enon Unique to the War on Terror,” in Peter L. Bergen and Daniel Rothenberg, eds., Drone Wars: Transforming Conºict, Law, and Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 253–284; Mark Moyar, “Drones—An Evolution, Not a Revolution, in Warfare,” Strategika, January 2014, pp. 11–13; and Lynn E. Davis et al., “Armed and Dangerous? UAVs and U.S. Security” (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 2014). 7. Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli, “The Diffusion of Drone Warfare? Industrial, Organizational, and Infrastructural Constraints: Military Innovations and the Ecosystem Challenge,” Security Studies, forthcoming. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00257 by guest on 30 September 2021 The Debate over Drone Proliferation 9 potentially signiªcant consequences for counterterrorism operations and do- mestic control in authoritarian regimes. Drones lower the costs of using force by eliminating the risk that pilots will be killed, making some states— especially democracies, which may be especially casualty sensitive—more likely to carry out targeted attacks against suspected militants. In addition, us- ing drones could provide autocratic leaders with a new tool to bolster their do- mestic regime security.8 Yet, in general, current-generation drones are likely to have a minimal im- pact on interstate relations. Armed or advanced unarmed drones are unlikely to provoke international crises or incite regional instability. In addition, current-generation drones offer little utility for coercion against other govern- ments. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, moreover, drones might enhance security in disputed border regions by providing states with a greater ability to monitor contested regions persistently at lower cost. Monitoring can help to reassure states that potential adversaries are not attempting to change the status quo through force. The limited signiªcance of current-generation drones in interstate contexts beyond monitoring stems from a key technological lim- itation: drones currently in operation are vulnerable to air defense systems, so they are much less likely to be effective when operating in hostile airspace.9 The stakes in the debate about drone proliferation are signiªcant. For ex- ample, if drone proliferation is inherently dangerous, the United States should be leery of other states acquiring drones, especially armed drones. The United States should therefore attempt to limit drone proliferation, including through its own exports. Such a policy might reduce drone proliferation, but it could have adverse consequences for the U.S. industrial base, while causing Washington to miss opportunities to build capacity among allies. Alterna- tively, if current-generation drones are no different from, and less capable than, other comparable conventional military technologies, the United States should be less concerned with the effect of drone proliferation on the regional and international security environment. The article proceeds as follows. First, we contextualize the drone debate by discussing ongoing trends in drone proliferation. Second, we describe in more detail the core arguments made by the two camps concerning the military and political effects of drones. Third, we lay out our main claim that the reality is 8. See Matthew Fuhrmann and Michal C. Horowitz, “Droning On: Explaining the Proliferation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” International Organization, forthcoming. 9. As described below, the monitoring advantages of drones are likely to come from operating