Drones in War: Lethal Answer to Suicide Bombers

Some of them are so small that you can carry them under your arm, some of them weigh six tons: Remote controlled robots save soldiers from direct contact with their enemy. The U.S. military and the CIA use drones to track down terror suspects and, in some cases, to kill them.

With a muffled diesel engine humming, the M160 digs deep into the ground of the military base Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. The vehicle, weighing almost six tons, looks like a small tank with its driving chains and the camouflage paint coat — three meters long, one and a half meters wide and almost as high.

Yet, the M160 does not carry ordnance; instead, its muzzle features a two meter-wide arbor that rotates crossways to the direction of travel, fixed on 34 steel tracks with one hammer head each. They plow into the ground to a depth of 30 centimeters, enough to set off every anti-personnel mine, booby-trap or unexploded bomb in its path.

The soldier who navigates the M160 stands at safe distance, a remote control similar to those of model aircraft in his hands. The signals reach as far as two kilometers; video cameras show where the robot is moving on the color display of the control panel.

Battle Drones are Navigated by Satellite

Fort Leonard Wood is home to the branch office of the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office, also known as Robot University. Here, not only are soldiers trained for their mission in Afghanistan; the U.S. army works meticulously on unmanned systems as well. Some of these systems, for instance Talon, are so small that you can carry them under your arm. They can make booby-traps on the roadside harmless — the sort that are used by insurrectionists in Afghanistan and Iraq by the thousands.

There are also armed versions, equipped with machine guns, grenade and rocket launchers, complemented by high definition video and infrared cameras for target recognition. They are virtually relatives of the infamous battle drones, albeit not navigable by a satellite connection from a distance of thousands of kilometers. Rather, the controls are held by soldiers entrenched behind the next house corner.

Mini-drones are as Small as Hummingbirds

By now all branches of the armed forces in the U.S. possess unmanned systems. The Navy operates with remote controlled submarines that deactivate mines or take on risky recon missions in shallow waters. Remote controlled helicopters take off from ships, equipped with electronic sensors and arms.

The army is developing combat vehicles that can maneuver half-autonomously in operational areas and carry tons of heavy arms with them. Mini-drones the size of hummingbirds allow soldiers a glance into backyards or beyond the next hill before they advance.

By now, the Air Force flies with a whole squadron of drones, from the stealth sky spy RQ-170 Sentinel that made the headlines because of a crash landing in Iran to the war drones Reaper and Predator that are mostly used to support troops in combat zones. However, in the meantime the CIA also uses large numbers of them, predominantly to track down terror suspects in Pakistan and Afghanistan and to kill them in some cases.

The idea of using unmanned systems for military purposes is not completely new. In the 1980s, German arms manufacturers had already started thinking about how to use model aircraft as scouts in the air. The goal was mainly to avoid exposing soldiers to unnecessary dangers and to give troops an advantage in terms of information about the situation in the battle zone. Just as the military once used aircraft primarily for recon missions, they have more recently used robots in the same way.

Breakthrough after 9/11

The breakthrough in the use of robots in the military only became possible because of the exponential growth of the output of computer chips. A smartphone performs multiple times the calculation operations that the NASA control center could handle during the Apollo missions to the moon. In addition, today enormous bandwidths are available for data transfer over long distances.

Yet the greatest impulse for the development and use of drones came after 9/11 and the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. Previous to that, the generals did not care much for the aircraft (which ran on snowmobile engines) that had been advocated under the aegis of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency since the mid-1980s.

However, they quickly recognized the advantages of Predators: For hours they can circle over the operational area and investigate the situation. Apart from radar and cameras that make it possible to decipher a license plate from a height of several kilometers, the machines also have a laser for target labeling on board.

Drones are Persistent and Cheap

More than once Osama bin Laden appeared on the screens of the American drone pilots, as Peter W. Singer of the U.S. think tank Brookings Institution points out in his book “Wired for War.” However, the reaction time was too long. By the time fighter jets arrived in the specified area, the Prince of Terror had disappeared again. The logical consequence was to equip the drones with arms such as Hellfire missiles or other munitions that were supposed to decrease the risk of killing innocent civilians or causing unnecessary destruction due to their much smaller demolition charges.

In the asymmetric conflicts against insurrectionists, the combination of recon platform and weapon carrier proved to be most effective from the military’s point of view. The robot pioneer Bart Everett from the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center concluded: “The robot is our answer to the suicide bomber.” From the commanders’ viewpoint it links three major advantages: The soldiers who fly them are not directly exposed to the enemy, unlike jet and helicopter pilots. Moreover, drones are not only persistent, but can share their gathered information with troops on the ground and with evaluators in the States in nearly real-time; and they can deploy arms with minimal delay. Last but not least, they are cheap: a Predator costs about five million dollars, while a F-35 Lightning fighter jet costs more than $100 million.

Target Killings Even without Drones

The numbers speak for themselves: the U.S. military possessed ten Predators in 2001; this number has now increased to 300. In 2003 the American army invaded Iraq without a single land-based robot; in 2008 more than 12,000 were in use there.

However, none of the missions that are achieved today by unmanned systems would have been impossible before. In the 1960s, U-2 spy planes already took high definition shots of hostile territory, while soldiers manually deactivated booby-traps and mines and fighter jets and helicopters bombed troops out of dangerous situations — but the fatal bomb attack on Kundus with a dozen casualties might have been preventable if drones had circulated in that area.

Controversial target killings also existed before the age of drones. In 2004 Israel killed sheikh Jassin, spiritus rector of Hamas, in Gaza with three missiles fired from a combat helicopter. Even the distance between target and shooter had been increased with missiles and cruise missiles long before drones.

With a tank, a fighter jet, a foot soldier and, ultimately, even with the robots, a human being must pull the trigger or press the red button to fire the gun. It is certain, however, that modern warfare has been altered fundamentally by these machines.