ABSTRACT Title of Document: ROBOTICS AND THE FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL ASYMMETRIC WARFARE Nicholas Grossman, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Professor George Quester, Department of Government and Politics In the post-Cold War world, the world's most powerful states have cooperated or avoided conflict with each other, easily defeated smaller state governments, engaged in protracted conflicts against insurgencies and resistance networks, and lost civilians to terrorist attacks. This dissertation explores various explanations for this pattern, proposing that some non-state networks adapt to major international transitions more quickly than bureaucratic states. Networks have taken advantage of the information technology revolution to enhance their capabilities, but states have begun to adjust, producing robotic systems with the potential to grant them an advantage in asymmetric warfare. ROBOTICS AND THE FUTURE OF ASYMMETRIC WARFARE By Nicholas Grossman Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Advisory Committee: Professor George Quester, Chair Professor Paul Huth Professor Shibley Telhami Professor Piotr Swistak Professor William Nolte Professor Keith Olson © Copyright by Nicholas Grossman 2013 Dedication To Marc and Tracy Grossman, who made this all possible, and to Alyssa Prorok, who made it all worth it. ii Acknowledgements Thank you to my dissertation committee for all the advice and support, Anne Marie Clark and Cissy Roberts for making everything run smoothly, Jacob Aronson and Rabih Helou for the comments and encouragement, Alyssa Prorok for invaluable help, and especially to George Quester for years of mentorship. iii Table of Contents Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... iv Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 The Future of International Asymmetric Warfare .................................................... 7 Al Qaeda's Grand Strategy ...................................................................................... 10 Nature of the Actors ................................................................................................ 11 Information Technology and Networks’ Capabilities ............................................. 15 Robotics and States’ Capabilities............................................................................ 19 Chapter Outline ....................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 1: A General Theory of Asymmetric Warfare .............................................. 26 Weak Actor Strategies in Asymmetric Conflict: Guerrilla Warfare, Insurgency, and Terrorism................................................................................................................. 28 Overcoming Material Disparity .............................................................................. 31 Non-material Asymmetries ..................................................................................... 32 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 44 Chapter 2: Testing and Applying the Theory ............................................................. 45 Big States vs. Small States and Big States vs. Networks: Hypotheses ................... 46 Data and Research Design ...................................................................................... 48 Results ..................................................................................................................... 57 Secondary Analysis: Situational and Strategic Variation ....................................... 66 Secondary Analysis II: Explaining the Increasing Frequency of Weak Actor Success .................................................................................................................... 79 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 95 Chapter 3: The War on Terror, Al Qaeda the Organization and Al Qaeda the Idea ... 99 The War on Terrorism .......................................................................................... 101 Al Qaeda the Organization.................................................................................... 106 Al Qaeda the Idea.................................................................................................. 112 The Global Jihadist Network ................................................................................ 118 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 123 Chapter 4: Asymmetric Warfare and the Robotics Revolution ................................ 125 Robots and the United States Military .................................................................. 127 Robots in Combat ................................................................................................. 129 iv Robots and Information ........................................................................................ 154 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 173 Chapter 5: Robotics and Non-State Networks .......................................................... 174 Acquiring Military Robots .................................................................................... 175 Adapting Commercially Available Robots ........................................................... 184 Hacking Unmanned Systems ................................................................................ 199 Conclusion: Robots and the Precedent of Computers........................................... 202 Chapter 6: Robots and Strong Actor Strategy against Localized Insurgencies: Pursuing Information Dominance ............................................................................. 207 Network-Centric Warfare ..................................................................................... 209 Red Force Tracking............................................................................................... 212 Building the Smart SWARM ................................................................................ 216 Countering Weak Actor Robots ............................................................................ 223 The Smart SWARM, Robots, and Military Strategy (Keeping Humans in the Loop) ............................................................................................................................... 226 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 230 Chapter 7: Robotics and Strong Actor Strategy in Irredentist Conflicts: Defending Israeli Civilians ......................................................................................................... 232 Hezbollah .............................................................................................................. 234 Hamas and other Palestinian Organizations ......................................................... 236 Using Robotics to Enhance Israel's Military Capabilities in Asymmetric Combat ............................................................................................................................... 247 Conclusion: Using Iron Dome to Emphasize Defense ......................................... 262 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 267 War of Ideas .......................................................................................................... 268 The Future of Asymmetric Warfare ...................................................................... 273 Drone Attacks ....................................................................................................... 270 Appendix ................................................................................................................... 273 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 277 v Introduction They said September 11th changed the world, but they didn't say for how long. When al Qaeda operatives flew passenger jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, scholars and strategists proclaimed an era of asymmetric warfare, with security threatened by shadowy networks and rogue states, rather than symmetric Great Power armies. Walter Laqueur, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, confidently predicted in 2003 that “terrorism is bound to remain high on the list of our priorities;”1 while Israeli scholar Martin van Creveld implored the “developed world” to “shake off its lethargy” and recognize “insurgency, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism, possibly, one day, armed with weapons of mass destruction” as its primary security concern.2 This followed a series of predictions from RAND scholars John