Drones - Unarticulated Threat

Drones: disembodied aerial warfare
and the unarticulated threat
DAVID HASTINGS DUNN *

At the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 an English and Welsh army defeated a French
force at least six times its size, inflicting casualties of a ratio of 9:1.1 The decisive
advantage was gained by the use of the longbow and armour-piercing arrows. The
French preponderance in cavalry and heavy armour was turned against them and
exploited by the archers. As well as piercing French armour, the arrows destroyed
the idea that a knight on horseback was invincible. This example of a disruptive technology in action provides a useful background to the debate about the
impact of drones in modern warfare, as a lot of the discussion on this subject
comes down to how significantly different drones are from other aerial systems
whether or not they are a disruptive technology. Partly for this reason, the term
drone is disliked as pejorative by the air forces that use them, which prefer the
terms remotely piloted vehicle, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned
aerial system (UAS).2 In refusing to accept the nomenclature of drones, air power
traditionalists reject the proposition that their use constitutes a step change in the
application of flying machines. But in so doing, they are also implicitly failing to
acknowledge that drones actually have two separate parents: conventional aircraft
without a pilot, but also smarter and more capable model aircraft. Much of the
debate on drones to date has focused on the larger systems, and this focus partly
explains the rejection of the idea that they represent a strategic novelty.3 For air
power traditionalists, the legal and ethical debate that has arisen around drone
use has more to do with how they have been employed than with any intrinsic
characteristics of the technology. After all, they argue, their ability to fly long
patrols with no risk to the pilots who operate them represents an incremental
improvement along a trend line which has characterized US and UK uses of air
*
I am grateful to Stefan Wolff, Nicholas J. Wheeler and Richard Lock-Pullan and two anonymous reviewers
for helpful comments on this article and to Lindsey Murch for invaluable research assistance. Dunn, Wolff
and Wheeler are also grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for their support for this research
on drone warfare.
1
See http://www.britishbattles.com/100-years-war/agincourt.htm, accessed 24 July 2013.
2
Unmanned as a term is similarly disliked as this fails to take account of both how labour-intensive their
operation is and also how much control is exercised over their use. Unmanned is also gender-specific. A
better term might be disembodied aerial systems or DASbut drones has now stuck and is unlikely to be
dislodged.
3
A good example of this debate to date is Michael J. Boyles The costs and consequences of drone warfare,
International Affairs 89: 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 129.
International Affairs 89: 5 (2013) 12371246
2013 The Author(s). International Affairs 2013 The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Published by John Wiley & Sons
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford ox4 2dq, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
INTA89_5_10_Dunn.indd 1237
29/08/2013 14:37
David Hastings Dunn

power for over a decade. And further, their use for targeted killing in what the
Obama administration prefers not to call the war on terror does not constitute a
step change in technology from the use of cruise missiles, manned systems or even
special forces. Nevertheless, in this article I will argue that drones do indeed constitute a disruptive technologythat is, an innovative technology that triggers
sudden and unexpected effects and represents the potential for discontinuity from
what went before.4 My contention is that, both in their use by the United States,
Israel and the UK, and in their potential as terrorist weapons, drones and their
proliferation represent a new development in aerial warfare the implications of
which have not yet been fully grasped, debated or responded to.
Over the centuries, warfare has seen the development of various disruptive
technologies including gunpowder and the atomic bomb. More recently in the
commercial world disruptive technologies such as the iPod have transformed the
music business and smartphones have revolutionized communications. The impact
of disruptive technologies is not always immediately apparent, and may represent an evolutionary progression building on other technologies. So, for instance,
smartphones have changed the way we communicate but evolved in turn from
mobile phones. Drones in the form of Predators and Reapers are in some senses
just remotely piloted combat aircraft, as their users claim, but to describe them thus
is to underplay the ways in which their use disrupts how we think about conflict.
The coincidence of this technology with the post-9/11 security environment has
led to a new form of warfare that presents a series of challenges to traditional
ways of thinking about combat. Rather paradoxically, at a time when heroism
and self-sacrifice have become prominent themes in public discourse as a result
of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, drones present warfare as the antithesis of
these values. They represent warfare as post-modern and post-heroic. In a sense
they are the technological western response to Al-Qaeda terrorism and Taliban
insurgency. In this respect they present a series of challenges to our conceptions
of warfare. They blur the distinctions between the military and intelligence
worlds, between warfare and law enforcement, between combat and assassination;
between the battlefield and the hinterland, between the territories of allies and
enemies, between domestic and foreign threats, and between counterterrorism
and counter-insurgency. They disrupt the calculus of risk of the participants in
this form of combat by transforming the balance of vulnerabilities. By disembodying these weapons platforms, the technology enables their use with domestic
political impunity, minimal international response and low political risk and cost.
It is now politically and technically easier to kill suspected terrorists than to arrest
them.5 Drones are the enabling technology for a new era of targeted killing on an
4
See Committee on Forecasting Future Disruptive Technologies and National Research Council, Persistent
forecasting of disruptive technologies (Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2010), p. xv. Details at http://
www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12557, accessed 24 July 2013.
5
David Ignatius, Our default is killing terrorists by drone attack. Do you care?, Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120104458.html, accessed 4
July 2013. Ignatius cites Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, as asking: Have we made detention
and interrogation so legally difficult and politically risky that our default option is to kill our adversaries rather
than capture and interrogate them?
1238
International Affairs 89: 5, 2013
Copyright 2013 The Author(s). International Affairs 2013 The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
29/08/2013 14:37
Drones: disembodied aerial warfare and the unarticulated threat

unprecedented geographic scale. Both physically and politically they fly below the
radar, thus ushering in a new permissive form of interventionism. They are the
counterterrorism weapon of choice, facilitating the US military drawdown from
Iraq and Afghanistan while allowing the surveillance and elimination of targets on
a growing global scale.
Yet while much has been written on this aspect of drone warfare, it is not the
only consequence of this disruptive technology. Rather like the longbow, the
drone may be ushering in a revolution whose effects reach far beyond the front
lines of distant wars. Indeed, the greatest innovation to warfare that drones represent may be their potential use by would-be Robin Hoods to whom they offer
a new means of circumventing traditional notions of security and safety. Just as
with the longbow, realization of the significance of this technology is a necessary
prerequisite to the establishment of appropriate and necessary defences in this new
age of aerial warfare.
A revolutionary technology
While it is the use of drones in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia that
hasunderstandablygenerated most of the controversy and debate on this
topic, the use of large-scale systems such as Predator and Reaper actually represents the least innovative aspect of this new technology. 6 Indeed, most of the
innovation is neither in large-scale systems nor in military technology. Where the
real novelty lies is in the way that breakthroughs in drone technology promise to
change the way these vehicles operate in the changing aerial environment of the
twenty-first century.
Hitherto, aircraft have had to be big enough to transport a pilot and associated support and control systems. They have been expensive to acquire, operate
and learn to fly. Drone technology changes this picture profoundly, with revolutionary consequences. Many things previously done by a helicopter or small plane
can now be done more cheaply and easily by drones; and many other things that
were previously not even contemplated, owing to size or cost constraints, are now
made possible through the use of these flying robots. Drones are now routinely
used in crop dusting in Japan, Europe and America, for the use of GPS points, a
constant flying speed and programmable height means that they are cheaper, use
less chemicals, and are more precise and versatile than other methods.7 Indeed, the
potential for drone use in precision agriculture, optimizing water and land use
and monitoring crops and livestock, is predicted to be enormous.8 Drones are now
being used to deliver medicines in areas such as Maseru in Lesotho where roads
6
See e.g. David H. Dunn, Nicholas J. Wheeler and Stefan Wolff, Legal, legitimate, and effective drone warfare:
grand illusion or future reality?, The Birmingham Brief, 4 Dec. 2012, http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/
thebirminghambrief/items/Legal,-Legitimate,-and-Effective-Drone-Warfare-Grand-Illusion-or-FutureReality.aspx, accessed 24 July 2013.
7
Unmanned drones used for spraying to better assist cropgrowth, 9 June 2013, http://sacramento.cbslocal.
com/2013/06/09/unmanned-drones-used-for-spraying-to-better-assist-crop-growth/, accessed 24 July 2013.
8
Michael V. Copeland, Beyond surveillance: envisioning the future drone workforce, http://www.wired.
com/business/2013/05/the-business-of-putting-robots-in-the-sky/, accessed 24 July 2013.
1239
29/08/2013 14:37
David Hastings Dunn

are sparse and poorand they can do it cheaply, delivering 2 kilograms over 10
kilometres for 24 cents.9 They are also being used to monitor orang-utan populations in Indonesia; search for poachers in Kenya; monitor traffic congestion in the
United States; conduct infrastructure inspection (for example, spotting leakages
along the length of oil pipes and breaks in power lines or levees); photograph
properties for real estate agents; patrol the US border with Mexico and Canada for
illegal immigrants; survey construction sites, coalfields and archaeological sites;
fight forest fires; spot lost hikers; and even transport food in restaurants.10 Reports
of their applications seem endless.
A series of technological innovations lie behind these new devices, a lot of them
developed for mobile phones and tablets. Improvements in battery technology
now give drones greater power, lift, range and endurance. Cameras are now
tiny and highly capable, and the chips that run them are both intelligent and
fast.11 Improvements in hyperminiaturized sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes,
magnetometers, ultrasound altimeters and robotic control systems have also
driven the development of these devices. Without the friction of ground motion,
it appears that robots actually work better in the air. As Grossman observes: When
robots take to the air, theyre faster and nimbler and more graceful than humans
will ever be. All along, robots just wanted to be drones.12 Crucially, they are also
cheap and easily available. Three hundred dollars buys a quadcopter through mail
order with real-time video streaming to a smartphone from which it is controlled
through an app.
While US law currently prohibits the use of drones for other than recreational
purposes, this is about to change. Under intense lobbying from drone manufacturers and potential customers, in February 2013 President Obama signed the
Federal Aviation Authority Modernization and Reform Act, which mandated the
integration of drone use in US airspace by September 2015.13 Elsewhere they are
legal and operational for a variety of uses, and their employment and availability
are likely to increase rapidly as their price and cost of operation come down. More
than 500 firms in the United States alone are eagerly awaiting deregulation to offer
either drones or the services that these devices offer to a waiting market.14 More
widely, according to a report on drones by the Teal Group in 2011, spending on
drones has become the most dynamic sector of the worlds aerospace industry
and within a decade is expected to double to a value of US$94 billion, with more
9
Bruce Upbin, Drones can save the world, drones can destroy us all, Forbes Magazine, 11 June 2013, http://
www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2013/06/11/drones-can-save-the-world-drones-can-destroy-us-all/,
accessed 24 July 2013.
10
For sushi delivery on an I-Tray see http://mashable.com/2013/06/12/sushi-drone-delivery/?utm_campaiashgn
=Feed:+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_cid=M-Product-RSS-Pheedo-All-; on the orang-utans, see http://
www.orangutan.com/projects/conservation-drone-project/, accessed 22 July 2013. See also Lev Grossman,
Drone home, Time, 11 Feb. 2013, pp. 1825.
11
Grossman, Drone home, p. 23.
12
13
Nick Wingfield and Somini Sengupta, Drones set sights on US skies, New York Times, 17 Feb. 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/technology/drones-with-an-eye-on-the-public-cleared-to-fly.
html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed 24 July 2013.
14
1240
29/08/2013 14:37

than 50 countries having already purchased surveillance drones to date.15 Singer
states that 87 countries have so far used drones militarily.16 But what started as
a military technology is rapidly becoming used in the civilian world; as Kenneth
Anderson has noted, everybody will wind up using this technology because
its going to become the standard for many, many applications of what are now
manned aircraft.17
The proliferation of drone technology will present many challenges, not least
to the laws of privacy and how to prevent aerial collisions or damage from debris
and crashes. What is potentially of much greater consequence is the use of these
technologies with malign intent. There is little doubt that this technology is now
ripe for commercial exploitation in hundreds of applications. Comparatively
little attention, however, has been given to the impact of these technologies on
traditional notions of safety and security. While drone use against terrorists and
insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been hotly debated, much less has been
written on the potential exploitation of this dual-use technology by terrorists
and insurgents; and most of what there is tends to focus on the use by Hezbollah
of drones supplied by Iran to overfly Israeli airspace.18 Partly because these craft
were used by Hezbollah for surveillance and propaganda purposes, they have not
provoked much reaction from Israel, although there is a concern that they could
be used to crash into the Israeli nuclear reactor in Dimona. Attempts by Hamas in
the early 2000s to use model aircraft packed with explosives to mount short-range
attacks across the Gaza border were also dismissed as gimmicks, in part because at
that time these devices lacked range and needed line of sight control to be effective, and so were not seen to represent much of an additional threat to the rockets
being launched from Gaza.19 That said, it would appear that Israel took the threat
sufficiently seriously to counter it by booby-trapping a UAV supplied to Hamas
and exploding it remotely, killing six of the team operating it as it was being
readied to fire.20 Al-Qaeda has also shown interest in using such systems. In 2001 it
considered using remotely controlled aircraft to attack the G8 summit in Genoa,
but rejected this idea in favour of the more destructive use of guided jumbo jets
each filled with 60 tonnes of jet fuel.21 Another plot to bomb the Pentagon and US
Capitol with a model aircraft filled with explosives was foiled in 2011 by the FBI
before it could be put into action.22 Even though this involved a seven-foot plane
15
William Wan and Peter Finn, Global race on to match US drone capabilities, Washington Post, 4 July 2011,
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-07-04/world/35238016_1_surveillance-drones-general-atomicsaeronautical-systems-zhuhai-air-show, accessed 24 July 2013.
16
Peter W. Singer, The proliferation of drones, IP Journal, 19 June 2013, https://ip-journal.dgap.org/en/
ip-journal/topics/proliferation-drones, accessed 24 July 2013.
17
Kenneth Anderson of American University in Washington DC, cited by Wan and Finn, Global race on to
match US drone capabilities.
18
Wan and Finn, Global race on to match US drone capabilities.
19
Mohammed Najib and David Eshel, Exploding toy planes: the next threat to Israel security, 25 Feb. 2003,
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/851749/posts, accessed 24 July 2013.
20
Najib and David Eshel, Exploding toy planes.
21
Dennis Gormley, Unmanned air vehicles as terror weapons: real or imagined?, 1 July 2005, http://www.nti.
org/analysis/articles/unmanned-air-vehicles-terror-weapons/, accessed 24 July 2013.
22
Abby Goodnough, Man is held in a plan to bomb Washington, 28 Sept. 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/
2011/09/29/us/massachusetts-man-accused-of-plotting-to-bomb-washington.html, accessed 24 July 2013.
1241
29/08/2013 14:37
David Hastings Dunn

that could travel at 100 mph, the fact that it was thwarted and involved limited
amounts of explosives went some way towards accounting for the minimal impact
of this threat at the time.23
The possibility of model aircraft being used to attack the 2012 London Olympic
and Paralympic Games, however, was taken seriously by those responsible for
security at the event. For the duration of both sets of games model use was banned
in the metropolitan area, Rapier anti-aircraft missiles were stationed in London,
and the skies were patrolled by RAF Puma helicopters crewed by marksmen
prepared to fly alongside any drone, model aircraft or otherwise, and shoot it out
of the sky.24 After the games, however, these measures were withdrawn, indicating
that the UK authorities did not consider such a level of protection necessary for
everyday security. What lies behind such thinking is the debate on risk assessment.
A dangerous complacency
The view that drones do not constitute a different order of threat is reflected in
such practice and in the literature. Gormley, for example, states that if there is
any lesson that 9/11 provides it is that security planners must avoid confusing
unfamiliar threats with improbable ones, and goes on to argue: Achieving
successful autonomous flight of a UAV is a daunting task for any terrorist group,
even were they to have all the necessary technical skills. It would require at least
two years of determined effort and some level of outside or foreign assistance.25
A similar view is taken in a 2009 study by the Rand Corporation, which states:
Terrorists will not think about UAVs in isolation and security planners should
not do so either. For terrorists planning an attack, UAVs are one possible attack
mode among many, and their use will be driven by how they compare to other
options.26 According to this approach, rather than fly over defences, terrorists
are more likely to attack undefended targets or choose to penetrate defences in
another wayfor example, using a person with an explosive vest, or another
form of attack from the air, e.g. using mortars or rockets that many terrorist
groups already routinely use.27 For these authors, many of the alternative ways
of solving this operational problem are weapons and tactics that are much more
familiar to terrorists and would not require them to acquire and learn to operate
a UAV or remote-controlled plane. This particular report even goes as far as to
argue that security planners may actually prefer he or she use the UAV since doing
so would limit the potential damage and casualties from the attack in many cases
where other means of striking the target are feasible.28
23
See Jeevan Vasagar, Students planned terror attack using remote control planes, Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2013,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10140642/Students-planned-terror-attackusing-remote-control-planes.html, accessed 24 July 2013.
24
Interview with senior RAF officer, Birmingham, 10 June 2013.
25
Gormley, Unmanned air vehicles as terror weapons, p. 7.
26
Brian A. Jackson and David R. Frelinger, Emerging threats and security planning: how should we decide what hypothetical
threats to worry about?, occasional paper (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2009), p. 7, http://www.
rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP256.pdf, accessed 24 July 2013.
27
Jackson and Frelinger, Emerging threats and security planning, p. 8.
28
1242
29/08/2013 14:37

To describe this line of argument as woefully complacent would be a vast
understatement. What the 9/11 attacks showed more than anything was a willingness on the part of the perpetrators to think creatively and to employ technologies and tactics that were entirely unconventional in order to achieve strategic
surprise, shock and destruction. They have also shown a propensity to attack
symbolic targets like the Pentagon or the World Trade Center in part because they
are defended and have been attacked previously. By attacking the same targets they
seek to make the point that nothing is invulnerable or off limits. As defences against
suicide bombers by vest or car bomb are tightened, the increasing costs attached
to penetrating them by this means will increase the attractiveness of drones as one
possible attack mode among many, and perhaps also as an alternative, dramatic
and eye-catching way to strike at enemies. Dismissing the terrorist use of these
systems also fails to grasp the point that drones are attractive weapons in their
own right for their own symbolic reasons. Given the controversial use of drones
by the US and UK in many parts of the Muslim world, the ability to strike at the
homeland with such a device must be very attractive to many terrorist groups as
the ultimate expression of a paradoxically symmetrical asymmetric warfare. The
fact that Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, cited US drone use
as part of his motivation for his planned attack is testimony to the political saliency
that drones have among terrorist recruits.29 While the Rand study may be right
in arguing that motors and rockets might be more attractive weapons for terrorists
who are familiar with their operation, this overlooks the crucial detail that most
would-be terrorists, especially domestically based home-grown terrorists, do not
have easy access to these systems. By contrast they could easily and cheaply acquire
a commercially available drone. Nor do the other objections hold up. Modern
drones such as quadcopters are very easy to operate and are self-stabilizing. The
observations that they are very sensitive to the wind and weather and could end
up stuck in a tree do not constitute valid reasons to dismiss this technology in
such a flippant manner.30
Another idea that has been advanced is that terrorist groups, from the IRA to
Al-Qaeda, have never previously embraced unconventional technologies such as
poison gas or drone technology.31 This, of course, is to ignore both the use of sarin
gas on the Tokyo underground in 1995 by Aum Shinrikyo and the possibility that
modern terrorists may have a very different modus operandi from that of groups
like the IRA. The conclusion of the Rand report and the standing down of drone
defences after the Olympics reflect the view that UAVs are a niche threat and
that they should be largely viewed as simply one more means among many of
delivering a moderately-sized bomb to a target rather than a novel threat in their
own right.32 Viewed in this way, drones are neither game-changers nor impactful
enough that they represent more than a small slice of the overall threat faced by
29

30

31

32
See Boyle, The costs and consequences of drone warfare.

Interview with retired senior MOD civil servant, Birmingham, 3 June 2013.
1243
29/08/2013 14:37
David Hastings Dunn

a modern nation from terrorism.33 Yet this view is both outdated in its view of
the latest drone technology and seriously lacking in imagination in contemplating
possible threats.
Drones possess many qualities which, when combined, make them potentially
the ideal means for terrorist attack in the twenty-first century. They can be operated
anonymously and remotely; they present little or no risk to their operators; they
can be acquired cheaply and easily; their operation can be mastered simply and
safely; and they can be used in isolation or in large numbers (given their availability and cost) to devastating effect. The aerial dimension they inhabit presents a
means of surveillance, reconnaissance and attack that was previously reserved for
large piloted aircraft, which conversely require specialist training to operate, are
expensive to acquire and use, are subject to controlled and monitored operation,
need an airstrip to launch from, and require an act of self-destruction in order to be
used as a terrorist weapon. The ready availability of drones changes the risk calculationon both sides. Conventional thinking about the security of buildings and
high-value targets assumes the absence of a serious aerial threat. Security for such
sites has traditionally been thought of in terms of perimeter defence and entry
point control. It is for this reason that the US Embassy in London is to be relocated
to a new site in Wandsworth as its existing site, in Grosvenor Square, cannot be
protected against the threat of truck bombs. The new design includes an artificial
lake, a moat, grass berms and a 30-metre blast zone precisely in order to protect
against truck bombs. The entry point will be guarded by US marines, screens and
the latest sensors. But while the new buildings glass will be protected by polymer
coating, it is unclear how secure it is against aerial attack by drones packed with
explosives. With a drone, an individual office could be identified and attacked with
precision and impunity by an explosive device or even a kinetic collision. Crowds
at sporting events or rallies are vulnerable in a similar way. What works for crop
dusting can be applied with malign intent to a large crowd. A crop-spraying drone
could even target one group of supporters at such an event. As Gormley notes,
dispersal of chemical or especially biological agent is ideally suited for a UAV;
its flight stability permits the release of agent evenly along a line of contamination, and while these substances may not be easily available it is important to note
that even gasoline, when mixed with air, releases 15 times as much energy as an
equal weight of TNT.34 Nor is it necessary to explode gasoline: flammable liquids
need only be ignited over a crowd to have a devastating effect. If a simple Chinese
lantern can cause millions of pounds worth of damage to a recycling plant, as
occurred in Birmingham in July 2013, the potential damage to property or populations by guided fire-bombs could be immense.
What is true of the vulnerability of crowds and buildings is also true for
convoys and cars. In this as in other areas, conventional thinking about threats
on the ground needs to be challenged. Rethinking about the aerial environment
is also needed. In 1987 Matthias Rust flew a single-engined Cessna for 500 miles,
33

34

Gormley, Unmanned air vehicles as terror weapons, p. 5.
1244
29/08/2013 14:37

landing undetected in Red Square, because the Soviet authorities were concentrating on a specific and known threatcruise missiles and western military fast
jets.35 Only Rusts benign intentions saved them from a potential strategic shock.
While the biggest threat comes from converted ultra-light aircraft, kit aircraft
that could be built undetected in a single garage could deliver 150300 pounds of
payload to any target that can be imagined.36 But even drones without a payload
represent a potential threat that is as yet unaccounted for in conventional risk
assessments. Their size, cost and ease of use make small drones ideal devices to be
swarmed against vulnerable targets. By virtue of either their kinetic energy alone
or their ability to function as mechanical bird strikes, drones pose a significant
threat to commercial airliners. Sitting beyond the perimeter of a major airport,
drones could also be swarmed into the engines of wide-bodied jets as they set off
on transcontinental flights, heavily laden with fuel and passengers. With on-board
cameras they can be guided in real time on collision paths. If both engines were
hit at 200 feet, well within the capability of a swarm of drones, catastrophe would
follow. At present no defence or precaution is in place to deal with this possibility, as the main drone debate lies elsewhere and the domestic assessment of this
threat has so far proved complacent. In the United States, for example, the Federal
Aviation Authority has no capacity to monitor flying objects below 3,000 feet.37
And yet the cost, ease of use and availability of drones at the present time mean
that unfettered access to the air has never been easier.38
Much has been written about the legal, ethical and prudential use of drones in
Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. While the extent to which they constitute a
disruptive technology in this context has formed a part of that debate, discussion
of drone use has been overly focused on how much they differ from traditional
conceptions of air power. It has also tended to focus solely on the employment of
these systems for controversial targeted killing, to the exclusion of a wider evaluation of this new set of aerial technologies in general. This focus may be largely
explained by the centrality of drone use to US security policy. President Obama
can talk about ending the decade of war and celebrate bringing US troops home
from Iraq and Afghanistan only because of a massive increase in his use of targeted
killing by drone strikes. Drone use in this setting is indeed a disruptive technology
in that it enables a new form of combat by obliterating the traditional distinctions
which characterized previous employment of air power. Drones have facilitated
an increase in covert warfare and a blurring of what is meant by combat, intervention and indeed sovereignty. Yet debate on this aspect of drone technology has
masked a wider discussion on their potential use by non-state actors. To the extent
that this issue has been debated at all, it has been downplayed by contextualizing
it as one new security threat among others such as chemical, biological or radiological security threats or the potential vulnerability to cyber attack. This is an
35
Chloe Hadjimatheou, Mathias Rust: German teenager who flew to Red Square, BBC News Magazine, 7 Dec.
2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20609795, accessed 24 July 2013.
36
Gormley, Unmanned air vehicles as terror weapons.
37
Gormley, Unmanned air vehicles as terror weapons.
38
I am grateful to Flt Lt Ian Grogan, RAF, of the University of Birmingham Air Squadron, for this point.
1245
29/08/2013 14:37
David Hastings Dunn

odd reaction, as defensive measures against all these other technologies are being
actively taken, while none is being taken against domestic drone attack. What is
more, these other threats could be combined with drones to maximize their effect.
Drones could deliver chemical, biological or radiological material; computer
hackers could divert military or civilian drones to nefarious purposes. Drones
are also potentially more easily available and could be more readily diverted to
terrorist purposes than other security threats.
The fact that we live in times of defence austerity is no excuse for avoiding
a proper debate about the nature of new threats and how they might be met.
While the challenge presented by drones as potential terrorist weapons is real
and growing, this does not mean that nothing can be done to counter it. Various
measures have been suggested as defences against drone attacks, such as electronic
jamming, deeper perimeter defence of airports, physical barriers on buildings and
even high-powered fibre optic laser guns, but such measures will only be implemented if the threat from drones is acknowledged, debated and acted upon.39 For
this to happen, just as in 1415, it requires the knights of the Ministry of Defence
and other august bodies to get off their high horses and take this threat seriously.
39
US anti-drone weapon unveiled, http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/07/22/

US-anti-drone-weapon-unveiled/UPI-67511279821910/, accessed 24 July 2013.
1246
29/08/2013 14:37
Copyright of International Affairs is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not
be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.

Drones - Unarticulated Threat

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Drones - Unarticulated Threat

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Drones: disembodied aerial warfare

and the unarticulated threat

DAVID HASTINGS DUNN *

David Hastings Dunn

Drones: disembodied aerial warfare and the unarticulated threat

David Hastings Dunn

Drones: disembodied aerial warfare and the unarticulated threat

David Hastings Dunn

Drones: disembodied aerial warfare and the unarticulated threat

See Boyle, The costs and consequences of drone warfare.

David Hastings Dunn

Jackson and Frelinger, Emerging threats and security planning, p. 9.

Drones: disembodied aerial warfare and the unarticulated threat

David Hastings Dunn

US anti-drone weapon unveiled, http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2010/07/22/

You might also like