History
and Examples of the Weaponized Drone
Drones are classified as remotely-piloted aircraft (RPAS)
or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) that are either controlled by pilots from
the ground or autonomously following a pre-programmed mission. According to
Wordpress.org the evolution of the drone can be interpreted as the passage of
five overlapping phases. First, drones were used as practice targets for the
military in the early twentieth century (wordpress). Secondly, in the interwar
period and into WW II as a kind of flying bomb. Thirdly, during the Cold War as
a viable surveillance platform. Fourthly, the drone has been weaponized fusing
surveillance with killing. Lastly, as a policing tool for domestic law
enforcement. The drone epidemic began on August 22, 1849 when Austria launched
200 pilotless balloons against the city of Venice.
The balloons were armed with
bombs that were controlled by timed fuses and fuses electrically triggered via
copper wires fed up to the balloon. Some of the bombs exploded as planned, but
as the wind changed direction, it blew several balloons back over Austrian
lines (P.B.S). This is, by most accounts, the first recorded use of a
weaponized drone. In 1883, an Englishman named Douglas Archibald who
experimented with kites was able to successfully capture the first aerial
photograph by equipping a camera to a large kite, however in 1898 during the
Spanish-American War the U.S. Military familiar with Archibald’s design
realized the potential for a wartime application and produced the first ever
wartime aerial reconnaissance photos. Two decades later, as a secret project
the first functioning unmanned aerial vehicle was developed under the
supervision of Orville Wright and Charles F. Kettering. When the U.S. entered
World War I, Kettering’s engineering prowess was applied to the war effort and
under Kettering’s direction the development of the world’s first self-flying
aerial torpedo came about, which would later be called “The Kettering Bug.”
According to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the “Bug” was a
12-foot-long wooden biplane with a wingspan of nearly 15 feet and weighed in at
530 pounds, which includes a 180 pound bomb. Fewer than 50 “Bugs” were built
but the war ended before any could be used in battle. In the mid to late
1930’s, the Royal Navy realized the need for an anti-aircraft gunnery target
for anti-aircraft training and developed the Fairey Queen (Warren). Only three
were built and all could only be launched from naval ships. The first two
crashed immediately after launch, however the third was successful. After the
success of the Fairey Queen, the Royal Navy and De Havilland built the DH-82B
also known as the “Queen Bee.” Although these planes were similar in appearance
they were very different. The “Queen Bee” could be operated remotely by another
pilot or by a controller in another aircraft, on a warship or from a control
panel on land. It also could either take-off via a runway or be launched off a
warship. At the rise of WWII the U.S. Army Air Corps began the development of
the GB-1 Glide Bomb. The GB-1 was developed to bypass German air defenses. It
was a workable glider fitted with a standard 2,000-pound bomb. The bombs were
dropped from B-17s and then guided by bombardiers to their target below. In
1943, one hundred and eight GB-1s were dropped on Cologne, causing heavy
damage. However in 1942, the USAAF began the development of the GB-4 it was
almost identical to the GB-1 but, under its fuselage it carried an AN/AXT-2 TV
camera and transmitter. This was the first television-guided weapon. Although
potentially revolutionary, the crude image could only function in the best
atmospheric conditions. After WWII ended a special “Pilotless Aircraft Branch”
of the U.S. Air Force was established to develop the Q-2 also known as the
“Firebee”. This was by far the most important class of target drones built by
the Ryan Aeronautical Company. The “Firebee” would later be known as the
grandfather to the modern drone according to Gizmodo.com. At the rise of the
Cold War, Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union while piloting a U-2
spy plane. This caused the Eisenhower administration to replace its manned
reconnaissance program with that of an unmanned program. In 1962, the Ryan
Aeronautical Company built its first surveillance drone. It was known as the
“Lightning Bug”. The “Lightning Bug” formerly known as the “Firebee.” The
Lightning Bugs were launched from the wings of a Lockheed DC-130 Hercules
airplanes, which acted as a coordinating mothership for the drones. The
Lightning Bugs flew pre-programmed routes and were also controlled by Airborne
Remote Control Officers onboard the Hercules. With the battle space of the Cold
War widening the U.S. consider sending drones to replace its U-2s in spying
missions over Cuba. Lightning Bugs were subsequently used for surveillance in
so-called “denied areas” including Cuba, North Korea, and the People’s Republic
of China. During the Vietnam War the “Lightning Bugs” were extensively used for
surveillance. According to Pbs.org over 34,000 surveillance missions were flown
by the Lightning Bugs across Southeast Asia. Over the last hundred years many
improvements in technology advanced the drone tremendously (PBS). Which brings
us to the birth of the predator. In 1988 Abraham Karem’s company Leading
Systems Incorporated developed a drone called the Amber. The “Amber”
demonstrated that an endurance flight of 40 hours could be obtained; however
the Amber was insufficient for prolonged surveillance due to the lack of
sophisticated sensor equipment. In 1989, Karem and his team of scientists
responded to this deficiency and developed the “GNAT-750 (Smithsonian).” This
drone is referred to as the father of today’s hunter killer drones. The GNAT
improved on the Amber by being capable of longer autonomous flight, it was
equipped with GPS navigation, and also housed infrared and low-light cameras in
a moveable sensor turret under its nose. After Karem faced financial trouble he
was obligated to sell his company to Hughes Aircraft, which in turn sold it to
San Diego based General Atomics in 1990. General Atomics decided to continue
development of the GNAT-750. From 1992-1995, the Bosnian War took place and as
a result 100,000 people were killed, tens of thousands of women raped, and
millions more displaced. By 1993 the CIA
had become frustrated with poor quality satellite intelligence over Bosnia. In
February of 1994 the GNAT took on its first mission over Bosnia; however the
GNAT faced the same challenges that satellite intelligence did and that was due
to inclement weather. However, the biggest impediment was the communication
device housed in the aircraft’s fuselage. This was the C-band line-of-sight
data link which only has a range of around 150 nautical miles (Lee). This meant
that the drone could only be controlled from a relatively close proximity and
seriously restrict its surveillance capabilities. The CIA realizing this to be
a major problem tried to solve this by using an intermediary aircraft to relay
the data, thereby extending the flight orbit of the GNAT; however this relay
did not solve the GNAT’s data problems. The surveillance imagery produced
simply had too far to travel: from a GNAT-750, to a relay aircraft, to a ground
station in Albania, to a satellite circulating the planet, and then finally,
onwards to the CIA headquarters in Langley. General Atomics responded to these
problems with the Predator. The Predator has a wingspan of 55 feet, is 27 feet
long, 6.9 feet high and carries a payload of up to 450 pounds and has a maximum
speed of 135 mph. The Predator drones were first flown in June 1994, and were
deployed to the Balkans (Word press). In 1995 Predators were shown in an
aviation demonstration at Fort Bliss. Impressed by the drone’s capabilities,
the U.S. Air Force soon established the very first UAV squadron, the 11th
Reconnaissance Squadron at Indian Springs Airfield in Nevada. After the CIA’s
Predator drone spotted who they believed was bin Laden at Tarnak Farm,
Afghanistan, in 2000, research went into shortening the kill-chain. The
Predator’s Hellfire was the solution. In 2001 tests were made early in the year
to turn the hunter into a killer (Wordpress). In summary, what started in
Abraham Karem’s Los Angeles garage as a funny-looking Albatross had become a
Predator drone with global ambitions and war would never quite be the
same.
Solutions 
An obvious solution for
weaponized military drones is to stop the use, as a form of war. Drones initial
purpose was for surveillance, this should be its only form of use. When Barack
Obama took office as the reluctant heir to George W. Bush’s “War on Terror,” he
renounced some of his predecessor’s most extreme policies. There is one
Bush-era policy, though, that President Obama made emphatically his own: the
summary killing of suspected militants and terrorists, usually by drone.
President Bush started the drone wars, but Mr. Obama vastly expanded them.
Almost entirely on his watch, United States strikes have killed as many as 5,000
people (Simonite). The president approved strikes in places far from combat
zones. He authorized the C.I.A. to carry out “signature strikes” aimed at
people whose identities the agency did not know but whose activities supposedly
suggested militancy. He approved the deliberate killing of an American, Anwar
al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. The administration also argued in
court that federal judges lacked the authority to say whether drone strikes
were lawful. It refused to release the evidence that it claimed made Mr. Awlaki
a lawful target (Simonite). In lieu of information, the administration offered
assurances that the president and his aides were deeply moral people who
agonized over authorizing lethal force. As this election season has underscored,
powers this far-reaching should not rest solely on the character of the
president and his advisers. In a democracy, the ability to use lethal force
must be subject to clear and narrow limits and the public must be able to
evaluate whether those limits are being respected. Mr. Obama observed almost
three years ago that “the same human progress that gives us the technology to
strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power
(Warrior).” At the very least, the president has the responsibility to ensure
that drone strikes are subject to meaningful oversight. The president should
begin by publishing the Presidential Policy Guidance, a document that has
provided the legal and administrative framework for the drone campaign since
2013. In response to litigation, the administration informed a federal judge
last week that it would release parts of the document, but it remains to be
seen how extensive the disclosure will be and whether it will be accompanied by
a broader reconsideration of the secrecy surrounding the program. The president
should also release the legal memos that claim to justify drone strikes away
from battlefields. Courts have compelled the administration to release portions
of two of these memos, but the public should have access to all of the
government’s legal reasoning about who may be targeted, where and for what
reasons. The government has a legitimate interest in protecting properly
classified information, but the law behind the drone program should not be a
secret. The president should also make it the country’s default practice to
acknowledge all drone strikes — not just those carried out on conventional
battlefields, as in Iraq and Syria. To facilitate this shift toward greater
transparency and to strengthen congressional oversight, he should withdraw the
C.I.A.’s authority to carry out drone strikes and provide that any future
strikes will be authorized and carried out by the Department of Defense. The
president’s chief counterterrorism adviser said that the government intended to
disclose annual assessments of casualties from lethal strikes “outside areas of
active hostilities.” This information will be of limited use to the public,
however, unless the government also discloses information about individual
strikes — when and where they took place, and numbers of casualties (Lee).
Finally, the president should establish a policy of investigating and publicly
explaining strikes that kill innocent civilians, and of compensating those
victims’ families. After an American drone strike last year killed two Western
hostages, Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, the government apologized,
opened an investigation and said it would offer compensation. It should do the
same when drone strikes kill or maim innocent Pakistanis, Yemenis and Somalis.
These kinds of changes, of course, will not quiet the drone campaign’s critics.
Many of those critics believe, as we do, that the campaign is broader than
international law permits. that congressional oversight should be far more
stringent and that, at least in some circumstances, the lawfulness of strikes
should be subject to after-the-fact review by the courts.
At a minimum, the changes
we propose would allow for a more informed debate about a subject that urgently
needs one, and they would create new, if modest, checks against overreach and
abuse. Equally important, the president could make the changes we propose on
his own in the limited time he has left in office. President Obama has
established a dangerous precedent, and consequently whoever prevails in
November will inherit a sweeping power to use lethal force against suspected
terrorists and militants, including Americans. Whether Democrat or Republican,
the new president, should also inherit policies that limit that power.
Camus
thoughts 
Camus was said “It is the job of thinking
people not to be on the side of the executioner (Camus)”. Camus’ also once
wrote an essay on the barbarity of the death penalty was written in 1956,
against the backdrop of the executions of hundreds of dissidents during the
Soviet crackdown in Hungary, as well as the execution of Algerian
revolutionaries condemned to death by French tribunals. He notes that by 1940
all executions in France and England were shielded from the public. If capital punishment
was meant to deter crime, why hold the killings in secret? Why not make them a
public spectacle?
Because, Camus argues,
deterrence isn’t the purpose of state murder. The real objective is vengeance
through the exercise of extreme state power. “Let us recognize it for what it
is essentially: a revenge. A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is
indeed called revenge. It is a quasi-arithmetical replay made by society to
whoever breaks its primordial law (Camus).”
Public executions became
a threat to the state, because the dreadful act tends to provoke revulsion in
ordinary citizens, like Camus’ father, who see it clearly for what it is: a new
form of murder “no less repulsive than the crime(Camus).” A form of murder that
is performed, in theory, in the name of the citizens and for which they are
complicit.
This kind of
state-sanctioned killing, Camus reasoned, leads only to more murder, a vast
panorama of murder. “Without the death penalty,” Camus writes, “Europe would
not be infected by the corpses accumulated for the last twenty years on its
soil (Camus).”
So what would Albert
Camus, the great moralist of the 20th century, think about the latest
innovation in administrative murder, Obama’s drone program, a kind of
remote-control gallows, where the killers never see their victims, never hear
their screams, smell their burning bodies, touch their mutilated flesh?
The conscience of the
killer has been sterilized, the drone operator, fully alienated from the act he
is committing, can walk out the door after his shift is over and calmly order
an beer at the local brewery or play a round of golf under the desert sky. He
is left with no blood on his hands, nor savagery weighing on his conscience, no
degrading images to stalk his dreams.
Drone strikes, Camus
would argue, are not just meant to kill. They are programmed to terrorize. In
this regard, whether the missile strikes its intended target or incinerates a
goat-herder and his flock is incidental. In fact, the occasional killing of
civilians may well be a desired outcome since collateral deaths intensify the
fear. This is punishment by example, not for any particular crime or impending
threat, but merely because of who you are, where you live, what you might
believe. These new circuitries of death are meant to humiliate, subdue and
dehumanize.
Conclusion 
In conclusion, you know
the history of the weaponized drones, the harm they do on innocent people, and
the backlash of people against weaponized drones. I strongly urge you to join
against the epidemic. While drones have improved the capabilities of the U.S.
military, unmanned systems will never replace humans on the battlefield.
Particularly in counterinsurgency warfare, UAVs can help protect soldiers and
minimize civilian casualties, but the human element is still crucial to the
success of low intensity conflict. The capabilities of UAVs must never be
mistaken for a strategy or a way to wage a “costless war (Chapa).” Viewing
technological improvements as such will only lead to a militarization of foreign
policy and unnecessary conflicts. Policymakers must therefore proceed
cautiously when employing these technologies in the field and develop new
standards for their use. Unmanned systems may lead to a safer type of warfare
for U.S. soldiers, but they will be unable to eliminate the inherent brutality
of war. If we continue down this slippery slope we too will or may have already
become the very terrorist we are fighting against. Libertarians,
anarcho-capitalists, and rugged individualists have always based their visions
of a capitalist paradise on the idea that the state is the main threat to the
power and freedom of the individual. And in the Age of the Gun, that was true.
But in the Age of the Drone, that is no longer the case. When the rich hold unlimited
military power in their own two hands, who’s going to stop them from just
taking the property of everyone else? If you’re a card-carrying National Rifle
Association member, you should ask yourself whether you’re going to be one of
the Robot Lords … or one of the rest (Chapa).
Works
Cited
"Aerial America." Smithsonian
Channel. Web. 12 May 2016.
<http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/aerial-america/701>.
"Albert Camus."
Bio.com. A&E Networks Television. Web. 12 May 2016. <http://www.biography.com/people/albert-camus-9236690>.
Chapa, Joseph O. "Drones and the
Ethics of Targeted Killing." Journal of Military Ethics 14.3-4 (2015):
284-86. Web.
"History of U.S. Drones."
Understanding Empire. 2012. Web. 12 May 2016. <https://understandingempire.wordpress.com/2-0-a-brief-history-of-u-s-drones/>.
Lee, Brianna. "Drones." PBS.
PBS, 2012. Web. 12 May 2016.
<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/drones/12659/>.
"Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAV)." Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Home Page. Web. 12 May
2016. <https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/uav/>.
Simonite, Tom. "Can We Trust Military
Drones to Decide When to Fire?" New Scientist 202.2713 (2009): 20. Web.
Warrior, Lindsay Cohn.
"Drones and Targeted Killing: Costs, Accountability, and U.S.
Civil-Military Relations." Orbis 59.1 (2015): 95-110. Web.
No comments:
Post a Comment