Predators, reapers, ravens - and
revolution Brian Glyn Williams
With very little discussion, the United
States and as many as 50 other nations have
inaugurated what amounts to a "drone revolution"
that will profoundly change our very understanding
of the security environment.
There can be
no doubt that unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones,
represent the future of counter-terrorism and
counter-insurgency in remote and insecure lands
such as Pakistan's tribal region, Yemen, Somalia,
Libya and beyond. [1] Where US boots cannot be
placed on the ground to hunt terrorists, drones
will increasingly strike at those whom America
deems to be its enemies.
John Brennan, the
president's top counter-terrorism adviser,
recently announced that, "The United States does
not view our
authority to use military
force against al-Qaeda as being restricted solely
to 'hot' battlefields like Afghanistan".
This means that the Barack Obama
administration believes it can utilize drones
wherever al-Qaeda or allied terrorists may be,
from North Africa to the southern Philippines. All
signs indicate that the US military and the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are planning a
future where drones will play an increasingly
important role in warfare and anti-terrorist
operations.
This means more strikes in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, the primary focus of
current drone operations. As the United States
draws down its troops in Afghanistan in 2013-2014
and prepares to hand the fight against the Taliban
over to the Afghan National Army and Afghan
National Police, its presence on the ground in
this strategic country will be much diminished.
It is increasingly clear that the Pentagon
will transfer its anti-Taliban combat efforts to
small, elite Special Forces groups, manned support
aircraft and drones. These elements, which will
most likely be based in so-called "Joint
Facilities" in Jalalabad (eastern Afghanistan)
Kandahar (southern Afghanistan) and Bagram (north
of Kabul), will be used to assist the Afghan
Army's defensive efforts or to carry out
offensives against Taliban-held sanctuaries. They
will also be engaged in "hunt and kill" missions
designed to take out local Taliban commanders and
disrupt their networks.
With the coming
withdrawal of most US troops in Afghanistan, the
need for counter-terrorism "personality strikes"
(ie strikes on high value targets) will be greater
than ever. This will certainly mean a continuation
of "signature strike" attacks (ie strikes based on
"pattern of life" activities, such as transporting
weapons to a known Taliban safe house or crossing
the Afghan border with weapons) on Taliban foot
soldiers as well.
The drones will also
play a key role in keeping up the pressure on
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen
and al-Shabab militants in Somalia. New Yemeni
President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi appears to
have condoned the recent strikes against the
terrorists who have taken advantage of the recent
turmoil following the 2011 downfall of the Saleh
government to carve out sanctuaries in Abyan
province. In Somalia, US Special Forces and drones
are increasingly being used to raid al-Shabab
militants and to monitor pirates who have seized
Western captives.
In Libya there were more
drone strikes in 2011 during the overthrow of
Muammar Gaddafi than in Pakistan. The Global Post
described this as the new model for similar
campaigns in the future saying Gaddafi's death is
"the latest victory for a new American approach to
war: few if any troops on the ground and the heavy
use of air power, including drones". By contrast,
the conventional model of military intervention
involving the insertion of ground forces is
extremely costly and invites domestic and external
criticism in a way that drones do not.
Drones and American foreign policy
Drone-centric alternatives to conventional
warfare dovetail with the Pentagon and CIA's
long-term plans for counter-terrorism and
counter-insurgency operations in the Islamic world
and beyond. Former CIA official Bruce Riedel has
said the Obama administration "has made a very
conscious decision that it wants to get out of
large conventional warfare solutions and wants to
emphasize counter-terrorism and a lighter
footprint on the ground". Obama has
announced the US military of the future will focus
on "intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance,
counter-terrorism, countering weapons of mass
destruction, and the ability to operate in
environments where adversaries try to deny us
access" [2]. All of these missions translate to
more drones.
While the recent economic
crunch has led to huge cuts in the US military's
size and budget, the Pentagon has called for a 30%
increase in the US drone fleet. This represents a
shift from big bloody wars, like the invasion of
Iraq which cost almost a trillion dollars and
4,500 American lives, to the model of the aerial
campaign in Libya, which cost just over 1 billion
dollars with no American loss of life. Other
nations are following suit; British military
officials have said that almost one third of the
Royal Air Force will be drones in 20 years.
In addition to bases in Turkey, Sicily,
Afghanistan and possibly once more in Pakistan,
drones will be found in forward staging areas some
advisers are calling "lily pad bases", like the
ones currently found in Camp Lemonier (Djibouti)
or Arba Minch (Ethiopia). Such bases may also be
built in Jordan and Turkey to help monitor Iraq
and in the Seychelles Islands of the Indian Ocean
to hunt Somali pirates.
Obama has also
authorized the building of a new drone base in the
Arabian Peninsula to carry out strikes on al-Qaeda
operatives in Yemen. Obama's defense budget also
calls for funding for the construction of a new
"Afloat Forward Staging Base" (AFSB), a launching
pad for drones and Special Forces that can be
sailed to potential hot spots.
The
drone revolution Whether one supports the
drone strikes or is opposed to them there is no
doubt that drones are here to stay. A few facts
about drones will make this abundantly clear:
More than 50 countries have built or bought
drones. Even Lebanon's Hezbollah has used
Iranian-built drones. Over the next decade more
than $94 billion is expected to be spent globally
on drone research and procurement. China unveiled
25 new drone models at an air show in 2011 and
Iran claims their Karrar (Striker) drones are
capable of long-range missions.
Last month 13 North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) nations agreed to jointly
deploy a fleet of its own Global Hawk surveillance
drones after seeing how useful the American drones
were in the air war against Gaddafi's forces in
Libya. NATO has already begun building a 1.3
billion euro (US$1.7 billion) drone base at
Sigonella in Sicily. Many observers are worried
that a future drone race will see other countries
besides the United States hunting down their
enemies with remote controlled planes.
In 2000 the US had just 50 drones. Today
almost one in three US warplanes is a drone. That
translates to approximately 7,500 drones in the US
fleet. The majority (5,346) are Ravens, a small
hand-launched surveillance drone heavily used by
the army in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since 2005 there has been a 1,200% increase in
patrols by drones. The US Air Force trained more
drone pilots in 2011 than pilots for fighter and
bomber aircraft combined.
New jet-powered drones threaten to make
current inventories of propeller-driven drones
obsolete. The US Air Force has begun deploying a
new jet drone known as the Predator C or Avenger
that will allow it to mount attacks at a much
faster speed than the propeller driven Predators
and Reapers in its current fleet.
The Avenger carries even more ordnance than
the Reaper. The US Navy is developing a
carrier-based jet drone known as the X-47B which
can fly 10 times farther than manned planes and
defend aircraft carriers from threats such as
"carrier killer" missiles. [3] The US has also
launched the "Phantom Eye," a hydrogen-fueled
surveillance drone that can remain aloft for four
days at 65,000 feet. [4] Meanwhile, the UK has
developed a $225 million intercontinental jet
propelled drone known as the Taranis after the
Celtic god of thunder. Unlike the Predator and
Reaper, the stealthy Taranis has an internal bomb
bay which can carry a wide array of weapons.
The US Air Force is developing nano-drones
like the Wasp, which weigh less than a pound and
can fly to 1,000 feet. The air force has also
planned Project Anubis to build killer
micro-drones that weigh less than a pound. The
small drones will be used to terminate "high value
targets" and will one day fly in swarms against
the enemy.
The US Army recently developed a small
backpack size drone known as the Switchblade, a
small kamikaze-style aircraft carrying explosives
that can be launched from a tube, loiter in the
sky and then dive at a target upon command. [5]
The US Army has developed a surveillance drone
that can be flown by the crew of an Apache AH-64D
Longbow attack helicopter to help it find its
targets on the ground.
Predator drones are already being used to
monitor the US-Mexican border. Mexico is using
much smaller US built drones for the same purpose.
America has already experienced its first
attempt by a terrorist to use a drone to carry out
a terrorist act. In September 2011 Rezwan Ferdaus
was arrested in the Boston area after the Federal
Bureau of Investigation found him plotting to use
seven foot remote control toy planes loaded with
C-4 plastic explosives in them to fly into the
Pentagon and other targets in Washington DC.
In December 2010 the US Air Force announced
that it had test flown the X-37B, an unmanned
space vehicle modeled on the Space Shuttle. This
development caused many drone critics to worry
that the Air Force was involved in the development
of drones for space warfare.
While the
first drone attack on al-Qaeda in Yemen in 2002
was greeted with tremendous coverage by the
international media, drone strikes today have
become so mundane that they are now relegated to
small articles on back pages of newspapers, if
they are picked up at all.
Both Democrats
and Republicans seem to have accepted this radical
development with little real debate as have the
vast majority of Americans. In fact 83% of
Americans are reported to approve of Obama's
stepped up drone policy. For Americans, drone
attacks in distant locations seem to be an
accepted part of the new scheme of things in the
post-9/11 world.
As for the CIA, which was
so reluctant to get into the drone assassination
business prior to 9/11, current CIA head David
Petraeus has said, "We can't get enough drones."
Former defense secretary Robert Gates has said,
"We are buying as many Reapers as we possibly
can." The air force's 147th Reconnaissance's Wing
Commander, Colonel Ken Wisian said of drones "The
demand for this kind of capacity is insatiable."
Conclusion While
America's CIA is currently the only intelligence
agency that flies killer drones beyond its
borders, it is perhaps only a matter of time
before Russia, China, India, Israel and other
countries deploy killer drones abroad in search of
their foes. Israel is already deploying its drones
in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian sources say
they have killed over 800 people, mostly
civilians.
David Cortright of Notre Dame
University has asked: "What kind of a future are
we creating for our children? We face the prospect
of a world in which every nation will have drone
warfare capability, in which terror can rain down
from the sky at any moment without warning?"
As rare voices like Cortright's ponder the
future of remote controlled aerial killers and
their impact on war and counter-terrorism, drones
are increasingly coming to shape the way the
United States and other countries hunt and kill
those they deem to be enemies. Peter Singer,
author of Wired for War: The Robotics
Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
best sums up the future by writing "The [drone]
technology is here. And it isn't going away. It
will increasingly play a role in our lives ... The
real question is: How do we deal with it?"
Notes 1. For an
introductory survey of the CIA's drone campaign in
Pakistan see: Brian Glyn Williams, "The CIA's
Covert Drone War in Pakistan, 2004-2010. The
History of an Assassination Campaign," Studies in
Terrorism and Conflict. 33, 2010. 2. White
House, Office of the Press Secretary; "Remarks by
the President on the Defense Strategic Review,"
January 5, 2012. 3. See here.
4. See video here. 5.
Innovation News Daily, September 6, 2011; see also
here.
Dr Brian Glyn Williams is Associate
Professor of Islamic History at the University of
Massachusetts-Dartmouth. His interactive web page
can be found at: www.brianglynwilliams.com.
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