Not Ready for War Drones

The U.S. offers Germany war drones in competition with Israel. The offer comes too early. Too many moral, legal and technical questions remain open.

Unmanned armed aircraft, also called war drones or killer drones depending on the political context, are a controversial topic in Germany. This is why the announcement that the U.S. has approved the sale of Reaper drones to the German armed forces will foment an intense debate. Yet, a small misunderstanding in this debate is knowingly being tolerated: The consent of the U.S. Congress to deliver war drones to an ally is by far not the same as a German decision to actually purchase them.

Even if Lieutenant General Karl Müllner, commander of the German Air Force, would like to have Reapers with their Hellfire rockets in his arsenal, officers in aircraft uniform do not decide whether he gets them. Only a few years ago, Müllner’s predecessor Klaus-Peter Stieglitz wanted to buy the Reaper’s predecessor model Predator drones — at that point still unmanned — for the Afghanistan operation from the U.S. Despite the unanimous opinion of experts at the Air Force and the Ministry of Defense, politics yielded a different result: Germany leased the control system type Heron from an Israeli producer, not least because certain German companies were involved in the deal.

When a decision has to be made soon about the Heron successor, a U.S. model will be competing against an Israeli drone again. And again, the German Air Force favors U.S. systems. The outcome of this decision, however, will now be determined by a completely different problem: Rather than military officials, the aviation regulatory authority, which sets high standards before it approves departures and landings outside no-fly zones in Europe — and by the way also in the U.S. — will determine where these drones are allowed to fly outside of war and crisis zones.

To approve of an aircraft without a pilot, the authorities want to know many details, which they do not receive from U.S. drone manufacturers. U.S. companies rarely allow foreigners insight into the black box — the heart of the control system. Even the Heron recon drone, which is used by the German armed forces in northern Afghanistan, would not be allowed to fly over Germany.

The leasing contract for the unmanned recon drones in the Hindu Kush area has only recently been extended until April 2015; after this date, the German armed forces will not have long-flight drones at medium heights any more, whether armed or unarmed. Germany aspires to an internally developed European model, which will be realized by the end of the decade at the earliest. Buying Reaper drones would thus only be another interim solution, or — from the point of view of the air force — it would at least constitute the access to a new class of unmanned flight systems with the possibility to employ arms.

Decision Only after Federal Election

Still, the current German debate on war drones for the German armed forces is about a more fundamental problem than the question of whether to buy from Israel or the U.S. It concerns the question of whether the German forces should include armed drones in their arsenal, along with the U.S., Israel and U.K., then the only countries with this weapons system.

In favor of the acquisition, proponents see valid reasons, such as protecting German soldiers; opponents, however, in almost all the parties in parliament, fear that it would lower the inhibition threshold to employ violence. This debate in parliament will continue until after the federal election. It is not probable that the members of parliament will come to a decision in the few remaining weeks of this legislative period.

Today’s announcement that the U.S. is willing to sell these war drones to Germany should be of help to the opponents in this debate. Under international law, the Predator stands for the debatable operation of these drones by the CIA in Pakistan for targeted killings, even if Minister of Defense Thomas de Maizière emphasizes so often, and rightly so, that strict operational rules apply for all the weapons of the German armed forces and that this manner of targeted killing is out of the question under German law.

The Reaper is the symbol of an evil killer drone for a merciless fight that affects innocent bystanders. Even if the decision by the U.S. Congress is no more than giving the permission to sell this system abroad, the argument between proponents and opponents of this armament of the German armed forces now enters a new level.