Killer drones winning conflicts across the planet

Bomb-toting robotic drones are now winning wars in nearly every conflict on the planet. The Iran-built armed drones used in the strike by Houthi rebels in Yemen against oil plant targets in the United Arab Emirates this week demonstrated once again that these weapon systems have the reach and the firepower to cause a tactical and strategic impact. Drones with a range of weapons attached have been playing an increasingly deadly role in the eight-year-old conflict in eastern Ukraine while the world waits to see if President Putin will order his army across the border. Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Donbas have been bombarding dug-in Ukrainian troops with mortar-armed drones. In retaliation the Kyiv government has bought Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drone armed with precision missiles and has successfully targeted Russian D-30 howitzers used by Moscow’s proxy force. It has been a reminder to Putin that Ukraine no longer has a second-rate army with old Soviet weapons but has a force with a rising capability and advanced weaponry. New types of drone are also emerging. One version of the remotely-controlled aerial killer, this time capable of carrying an assault or sniper rifle, was unveiled by an Israeli company this month and could soon be the de rigueur weapon system for every infantry combat commander. The proliferation of weaponised drones in the hands of a growing club of nations – and armed non-state actors, such as the Iran-backed Houthis - has changed the whole concept of warfare strategy in current and future conflicts. Every government wants them and the export market generated by the top drone producers is so huge that access to these airborne robot weapons is easy and affordable. The majority of military drones sold for export are unarmed and in this area Israel leads the way. Even the US flies Israeli surveillance drones. However, affordable weapons-carrying drones produced by China have cornered the export market for armed models. Relative newcomers, Turkey and Iran, are also now strong competitors and have set up production lines. Their drones are selling fast. As a result, a Turkish or Iranian armed drone is increasingly being involved in an attack that makes a difference on the battlefield in some part of the globe. Multiple Iranian drones were used in the attack in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital. As the Tigrayan rebels have discovered in the civil war in northern Ethiopia, there is nowhere to hide when the Addis Ababa government drones, bought from Turkey, Iran and Chinese ones sold by the UAE, appear in clusters from over the horizon to pound their convoys and camps. Robotic aerial bombing transformed the fortunes of the national government in Libya and during last year’s conflict in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia where Turkey’s missile-armed Bayraktar TB2 ruled the skies for the Azerbaijanis. The morality of having a weapon system that just requires an operator sitting doing a shift at his console destroying human targets from hundreds or thousands of miles away has yet to be seriously addressed. For the moment, drones armed with precision-guided missiles and bombs have created a new era of vulnerability for all forces operating on the ground. Not since the invention of the machinegun and its use on the battlefield in the First World War has a weapon system so dramatically changed the face of warfare, according to Paul Scharre, a former US Army Ranger and later a senior Pentagon official who is an acknowledged authority on drone warfare. “With the arrival of the first machineguns, armies had to adapt their tactics, and so today military forces under attack from armed drones have to change their tactics,” Scharre said. “In Nagorno-Karabakh it put at a premium the ability of the ground forces to hide from the drones. Ground forces are far more vulnerable today than they ever used to be,” he said. “Drones also create more attention than attacks by fighter jets. A strike by an armed drone gets more media focus than an attack by an F-16 dropping bombs, and that has an impression on policy-makers,” he said. Armed drones have gone from being a weapon system for the few to becoming an asset for every army and, potentially, for every terrorist group. The US monopoly on drones, epitomised by the thousands of strikes on al-Qaeda and other terrorist targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia, has been replaced by a free-for-all in drone production and export sales. China is at the heart of this new warfare potential. Its Caihong CH-4 and CH-5 drones, looking remarkably similar to America’s Reaper model, has been sold to a growing number of nation customers, including Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, Turkmenistan and the UAE. The US has been careful to sell its Predator and Reaper armed drones only to close allies. For example, the UK bought Reaper drones from the US in 2007 and armed them with Brimstone anti--armour missiles. The UK is due to replace them with Protector drones bought from the US company, General Atomics. However, with other nations, notably China, Turkey and Iran, less reluctant to sell their armed drones, there is a risk that nations armed with such advanced weapons might be increasingly tempted to use them not just for internal suppression but also for extraterritorial strikes, following the US example. This would not only raise questions about America’s extraterritorial counter-terrorist strategy but would focus attention on whether such attacks are illegal under international law. It’s a topic which is likely to become more emotive as the proliferation of armed drones gathers pace. The US has been urged to work with other nations to expand the number of state signatories to the joint declaration for “the export and subsequent use of armed or strike-enabled unmanned aerial vehicles”, signed by 45 countries in 2016, and to encourage responsible use of drones consistent with international law. The Biden administration is currently reviewing drone policy and no new approach has yet emerged. The US first launched a drone strike, using a Predator armed with Hellfire anti-tank missiles, in Afghanistan in November, 2001. when George W Bush was president. His successor, Barack Obama, became an enthusiastic supporter of drone strikes. The CIA and Joint Special Operations Command killed an estimated 3,000 or more terrorists up to 2016 under his administration. In July 2016 Obama issued an executive order, setting out new guidelines in an attempt to limit collateral damage (civilian deaths). The strikes continued at an accelerated pace under President Trump and remain an option for the current administration. However, there has been a remarkable silence about America’s drone wars since Joe Biden became president, apart from the disastrous strike in Kabul which killed, in error, ten members of an Afghan family, including seven children, during the fateful evacuation of US troops from Afghanistan in August last year. Meanwhile, the top priority for the next generation of drones designed in the US is silence. The CIA and special forces operators want drones without the familiar buzzing sound which can give away their presence. Researchers and defence companies working for the spy agency and the US Air Force have turned to hybrid-electric technology to reduce noise levels to the minimum. If super-quiet drones could fly lower it would help provide better definition optics, using face-recognition technology to be 100 per cent certain of a particular terrorist on a wanted list, thus reducing further the risk of civilian casualties and the elimination of the wrong target. In the world’s conflicts today, however, the armed drone has become a deadly weapon of war, an easy and safe way to kill and destroy with only the buzzing sound giving an early warning of an approaching attack.