Every Country Will Have Armed Drones Within Ten Years

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/05/every-country-will-have-armed-drones-within-ten-years/83878/

by rpm4321 • 12 years ago

62 61 12 years ago

I'm not surprised.

How hard would it be for an individual to mount an RPG or Liberator firearm payload on a sub $1k drone that can be piloted 20km?

I also expect drone regulations to increase considerably once attacks from such low-end drones start appearing.

Klinky3• 12 years ago

Certainly not trivial, and certainly not for $1K. Perhaps in 10 years like the article suggests.

However, you could probably take an off-the-shelf large R/C plane or helicopter and put a small explosive payload in it, then crash it into somewhere. Even that would be hard to do for under $1K, and range would be limited.

walshemj6• 12 years ago

And if it was practicable and effective it would have been done already.

The IRA experimented with this decades ago and gave up and lest be honest the average al Qaeda terrorist cell would find using human suicide bombers much easier to use.

imjustsaying2• 12 years ago

Good point. I just did some searching around the internet; 20km for under $1k is way off the mark.

300m however with a live video stream and GPS navigation programming is available under $1k even on Amazon:

http://lowenddrone.com

Dewie• 12 years ago

Armed aerial drones will be used for targeted killings, terrorism and the government suppression of civil unrest. What’s worse, say experts, it’s too late for the United States to do anything about it.

Yes, it would be best for only the US to have this technology, as they would surely only use it for good..

sspiff2• 12 years ago

This reminds me of the story about Theodore Hall, who gave secrets from the US atomic bomb projects to the USSR, allegedly for the sake of preventing a monopoly of such power by the US and balancing out the two major power blocs to prevent one from simply destroying the other, with all the associated horrors.

unsigner• 12 years ago

And then the countries with the most pacifist hackers will be at a severe disadvantage...

tonylemesmer2• 12 years ago

Love this:

“Once countries like China start exporting these, they’re going to be everywhere really quickly. Within the next 10 years, every country will have these,” Noel Sharkey

How about you change "China" to "USA" - Basically the same right? What's so wrong about China having drones that he singles them out?

gambiting2• 12 years ago

Because it's the common perception that USA would never sell their weapons to terrorists or third world countries where there is little to no control over them, but China lacks such a moral compass and will sell to anyone who is willing to pay. A completely wrong perception, but there it is.

joelrunyon• 12 years ago

I don't think it's the US's moral compass (more likely it's strategic compass) that's at work here.

tonylemesmer2• 12 years ago

I agree - I guess my beef is that the USA have already "exported" them. Whether that's physically or just the idea of drones in general. Having said that, whoever comes up with an idea for a deadly product first and shows it to someone else is ultimately responsible, not always these so-called rogue nations.

buzaga412• 12 years ago

"such a moral compass" seriously?

venomsnake• 12 years ago

Old joke - how does the US knows there are WMD in Iraq - they keep the receipts.

US armed both Iraq and the Taliban in the 80s.

noselasd• 12 years ago

I'm not sure he says it's wrong that China have drones - but china is already a well known supplier of technology and they havn't signed an international agreement against exchange of drone technology.

Thus, you're more likely to see China manufacturing and exporting drones to whomever wants to buy than the US.

andreasvc• 12 years ago

He's not saying it's wrong. He's saying it's likely that China would do it rather than USA.

Jtsummers3• 12 years ago

The commenters [in the article] seem to be largely avoiding phrasing these in moral terms. It's more that the Chinese are far more willing to spread these systems than the US (at present). China's making huge inroads across the globe by spreading their technologies (for economic or military or other uses). The US already established itself as a global power. China is still growing in that regard and is trying to woo nation-states that the US or others have held or still hold significant influence over.

sspiff2• 12 years ago

Every country ... Only every country that is, wants to be or pretends to be a military power.

Many (smaller) countries realized long ago that if they would end up at war with a much larger neighbour, their own military power would be of no use, and gave up on maintaining and building self-sufficient military machines.

Instead, they focus on a certain aspect of military operations, and develop and maintain that segment of their armies in order to make a somewhat meaningful contribution to a certain alliance, hoping that alliance will help them should they ever need it.

Others gave up on having armed forces at all.

hessenwolf2• 12 years ago

Defensive versus attacking capabilities differ very strongly though. The quagmire defense is not soo expensive, I would think. For example, Switzerland has lots of basements and guns and gun training. That just sounds like such a lame headache to take and hold.

TillE• 12 years ago

And mountains. Despite all the hideous death-dealing technology developed in the past century or so, mounting a successful invasion is still nearly as constrained by geography as it was a few thousand years ago.

vidarh• 12 years ago

A great example of the cost discrepancy in the context of drones: You see a "drone" flying towards you. Is it a) a dressed up $20 RC toy plane, or b) a flying bomb that can take lives or take out hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars of hardware?

Presumably, you wouldn't want to risk b), which means for every instance of a) you'd presumably end up committing resources to counter it, if the odds of b) are "high enough", where "high enough" could easily be 1% chance of a bomb or less if the 1% case is sufficiently lethal.

You could see a hidden defending force "swarming" an invader with toys with the odd highly lethal weapon in the mix very cheaply to slow an advance...

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

Armed drones could be a very cheap, effective part of any such strategy.

robmcm• 12 years ago

Will the futures equivalent of the AK-47 be on github?

arcadeparade2• 12 years ago

What’s worse, say experts, it’s too late for the United States to do anything about it.

This is an extraordinary comment to make, when they have used drones more than anyone.

Synaesthesia• 12 years ago

Yes the US had the most advanced and largest air fleet and I expect that to continue.

coldtea• 12 years ago

Well, for a few decades maybe. The Roman empire had the most advanced army at some point. And the British Empire had the best fleet at another.

walshemj6• 12 years ago

And how would the USA stop other sovereign country's from building UAV's.

FFS drones are basicly RC planes not Nukes

patrickk• 12 years ago

FFS drones are basicly RC planes....

Ahem. It's a bit of a stretch to call Reapers and Predators RC planes. Not to mentioned UAV spacecraft[1, 2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

[2] http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/unmanned-air-force-space-plane-l...

etiam2• 12 years ago

I took that to imply roughly that

'The USA has been igniting and fuelling this arms race with ever greater use and weaponization of drones, but now the process is self-sustaining. Even if the USA should cease developments of its drone program and start decommissioning the crafts, that in itself would not stop drone armament, since several other actors would in all probability continue developments on programs that are now already in full action'

arcadeparade2• 12 years ago

Interesting, I took it to mean that this journalist is like most others, in that he starts from the assumption that the U.S owns the world and has the right to rule it as such.

glassapps• 12 years ago

and every student as it seems :-)

_djo_2• 12 years ago

This is too US-centric, especially as it implies that drone proliferation will slow down if the US stops its own development. This is nonsense.

Fact is, the US was a late adopter to more modern drones, or UAVs, having fallen behind countries like Israel and South Africa who had developed propeller-driven surveillance UAVs and used them operationally in combat from the late 1970s.

Both gained much experience in the use of drones to evade surface to air missiles and developed stealth prototypes, including the South African Flowchart, and began early work on weaponising them. As a result, both Israel and South Africa were early exporters of drones, selling to dozens of countries and remaining major sellers. When the US needed to acquire tactical UAVs in the 1980s, it acquired Israeli Tadira Mastiffs. It wasn't until nearly a decade later that the first Predator flew, in 1994.

Both the above countries have armed drones for sale, though refuse to publicise their sales. So even if the US were to scale back its drone research massively, it would not do anything to slow down this pace of development elsewhere, which has only increased with more countries and companies building drones and their subsystems.

It was only in 2001 that trials were first carried out to arm Predators with Hellfire missiles. Not because they were more effective weapons platforms than manned aircraft, but because the idea was to shorten the time needed between spotting a target on the UAV's cameras and hitting it with a bomb or missile.

As such, most countries don't actually need armed drones. They're slower and more vulnerable than manned combat aircraft, are not designed to dash to target areas quickly and are typically more expensive to operate than aircraft like the Embraer Super Tucano or Aerosud AHRLAC because they need more ground equipment and a ground control station. The market for surveillance drones, especially those that can provide some level of persistent surveillance, is huge and growing bigger. The number of countries specifically requesting armed drones, however, remains low.

Jtsummers3• 12 years ago

This is too US-centric, especially as it implies that drone proliferation will slow down if the US stops its own development. This is nonsense.

Where do you get that from?

Some quotes from the article:

  Virtually every country on Earth will be able to build or
  acquire drones capable of firing missiles within the next ten
  years. Armed aerial drones will be used for targeted killings,
  terrorism and the government suppression of civil
  unrest. What’s worse, say experts, it’s too late for the United
  States to do anything about it.

  “Once countries like China start exporting these, they’re going
  to be everywhere really quickly. Within the next 10 years,
  every country will have these,” Noel Sharkey, a robotics and
  artificial intelligence professor from the University of
  Sheffield, told Defense One.

  Singer cautions that while the U.S. may be trying to wean
  itself off of armed UAV technology, many more countries are
  quickly becoming hooked.

  So, what option does that leave U.S. policy makers wanting to
  govern the spread of this technology? Virtually none, say
  experts. “You’re too late,” said Sharkey, matter-of-factly.

The rest of your post, other than the comments on earlier-than-US use of drones, is a rehash of the various points in the article.

_djo_2• 12 years ago

It's underscored by one of the quotes used to end the piece off:

   Less impressed, Sharkey said the U.S. still has time to 
   rethink its drone future. “Don’t go to the next step. 
   Don’t make them fully autonomous. That will proliferate
   just as quickly and then you are really going to be sunk.”

And the opening premise of the article is not only that armed UAV technology is spreading, but that the reader should somehow be concerned that the US is unable to stop it. It speaks about what options are available to US policy makers to govern the spread of the technology, correctly answering 'none' but not once mentioning that the US never had any ability to govern the spread of UAV technology. Especially because it was not the originator of it.

The rest of the article is ok, particularly the quotes attributed to Singer (an excellent writer on the subject), Sam Brennan and Mary Commings and the maps showing which countries are using or developing armed and unarmed UAVs. I just feel it's let down by the editorial slant and US-centric focus.

gregpilling• 12 years ago

Thanks for this. I was always curious about the influence of Israeli tech in the drones here in Arizona in the late 90's.

At that time I was the technical rep for Snap-on Equipment, and I was called by TRW outside of Ft Huachuca. They needed equipment that could diagnose the computer system used in a drone, but the engine was a Moto Guzzi from Italy, and it had fuel injection on it that had been supplied by the Israelis. The fuel injection system had been stripped of all the diagnostic capability for some reason, so TRW was having a hard time diagnosing the system. I sold them a Simutech, which was this big octupus of wires that let you tap into all the PCM signals at once.

llomlup• 12 years ago

I guess the title should say "Every developed and some developing countries". Other countries have troubled economies that barely allow to have armed forces, let alone to purchase a new hardware.

mnw21cam• 12 years ago

On the contrary - quite a few poorer countries have remarkably well-funded militaries. There's a saying in Africa - "The poorer the country, the bigger the Mercedes."

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

Heck, I can have an armed drone next month. Buy a quadrotor coptor, an Arduino kit, a camera and a GPS chip. Some software and anybody can deliver a charge to a location and make a Youtube video of the whole thing.

Its way past technology outpacing our ability to react. The brave new world is here, with such wonders in it.

falcolas2• 12 years ago

FWIW, a model aircraft would have more payload, longer air time, and require less software to build than a quad rotor...

Quadrotors are cool, but severely limited in the range, time aloft, and payload categories.

JoeAltmaier4• 12 years ago

But quadrotors can be dialed in to an arbitrary GPS coordinate accurately and deliver a payload. That's the whole ballgame with assassination or sabotage.

chiph• 12 years ago

Something that wasn't mentioned is command & control. 1st tier militaries will have satellite communications, and be able to operate their drones world-wide. 2nd & 3rd tier militaries will have nearby ground-stations, with control capabilities limited to just-over-the-horizon.

Again, control of the high-ground is key.

    With regard to PRECIPITOUS HEIGHTS, if you are 
    beforehand with your adversary, you should occupy
    the raised and sunny spots, and there wait for him
    to come up.

EGreg• 12 years ago

Skynet?

jqm• 12 years ago

Will drone strikes eventually be followed up by semi-autonomous ship/ tank/ robot machine gunner invasions?

Probably.

Every Country Will Have Armed Drones Within Ten Years

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