Making War Cheaper, Easier with Lower Casualties for the Attacker

Initiating a war is always a political decision… defending an unprovoked attack… not so much. In democracies, especially where an additional force of conscripts is required, political leaders contemplating war need a pretty angry electorate to decide to send their voters’ sons and now daughters into harm’s way. So it generally takes a lot to get a democracy to declare a full-fledged war. Politicians often try to use “incidents” and “provocations” – passive aggressive strategies – to get “the other guy” to attack first. Then, you are simply “defending” against an aggressor.

That provocative strategy – as Donald Trump goes out of his way to jab at North Korea’s “Little Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un – is a pretty obvious ploy to just about everyone. It is why so many of our allies now consider Donald Trump as one of the most dangerous players on the global political stage. By way of example, a recent poll in Germany placed Donald Trump as that nation’s second-most perceived threat (behind migration issues) to peace and security.

But there is another trend that is making declaring war so-much-easier, one that seriously reduces the human cost of mounting an attack: robots and drones. As stunning as photographs from sea-borne and air-borne drones might be, they are still relatively vulnerable, slow and easy to take out. They’re not cheap, often running into millions of dollars each (not nearly as expensive as manned weapon systems), but they still lack the vastly more sophisticated technology, power and speed that is normal for our latest manned military ships and aircraft. However, that is going to change fast… and we have to add a whole new capacity – the soldier-robot – to the growing list of such offensive weapons.

For example, “Russia recently unveiled Fedor, a humanoid robot soldier that looks like RoboCop after a Whole30 crash diet; this space-combat-ready android can fire handguns, drive vehicles, administer first aid and, one hopes, salute. Indeed, the world’s armies are in such an arms race developing grunt-bots that one British intelligence expert predicted that American forces will have more robot soldiers than humans by 2025.” New York Times, December 11^th.

The December 12^th The Cipher Brief devoted a substantial portion of its report to the issues and technical developments surrounding the growth of hi-tech military drones. Here are a few observations from that issue, focused on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs):

Drones lower the costs of using force by removing the risk of military casualties, meaning some states will be more likely to engage in kinetic action – particularly democracies that require popular support for use of force. Democratic constraints against war occur when the citizens bear the burdens of war – commonly through casualties – in that they pressure their leaders to be more selective about the wars they engage in. The Pentagon’s reported decision to deploy armed drones not long after the domestic backlash following the death of four U.S. troops in Niger is indicative of this characteristic…

The U.S. use of drones for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and kinetic strikes surged in the global fight against terrorism. Under the Obama administration, estimatesshow, a total of 563 drone strikes targeted militants in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen alone – compared with the 57 strikes that took place under the George W. Bush administration. This does not include drone strikes in Southeast Asia, Libya, Iraq or Syria. From 2002 to 2014, armed drones conducted 98 percent of the non-battlefield targeted killings. The remaining 2 percent were a result of raids, manned aircraft or cruise missiles. Under the Trump administration, drone strikes continue unabated, with new plans to expand the use of armed drones to the Sahel based out of Niger.

While a number of technological limitations have restricted drones largely to use in asymmetric warfare such as the U.S.-led global war on terror, a parallel trend of technical advances to make them smaller and easier to operate has made UAVs more accessible, including to democratic and authoritarian state and non-state actors. Currently, some 90 state and non-state actors possess drones for surveillance purposes, and more than 30 countries have or are developing armed drones, with at least eight countries known to have used them in combat, including the U.S., Israel, U.K., Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey…

Advanced military drones have the ability to remotely deploy over distance. This is a key tool in the U.S. arsenal, enabled by numerous forward operating bases that allow them to reach remote locations using over-the-horizon satellite-based remote control. These drones enable their controllers to loiter above targets for an extended period, allowing pilots to verify identities through patterns of life and biometric analysis, and strike with relative precision as compared with conventional military weapons. They are also able to loiter to assess the impact of the strike. These attributes make drones especially effective in targeting militants seeking refuge in expansive regions of largely inaccessible and ungoverned territory.

But current drones face a number of limitations as well. They fly significantly slower than manned aircraft. The F-16 cruises at a speed of about six times that of a Reaper – making drones susceptible to the air defenses of many states and even some non-state actors. They also currently do not possess air-to-air capabilities or countermeasures if engaged by manned aircraft in contested airspace…

The world is becoming saturated with drones, and the technology that underpins these systems is only expected to become more sophisticated. Next-generation drone technology now in development includes: additive manufacturing for bulk production; advanced materials for enhanced stealth and smaller size; energy storage, solar powered systems and satellite-based communications for long-distance flight endurance; and automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning for ease and speed of navigation and targeting…

Both software and hardware are at the core of next-generation drones. The physical limitations of drone proliferation inherent in hardware do not apply to software, which is more diffuse and rapidly adaptable. Programming drones to remain on a “leash,” following warfighters wherever they go, or with the ability to loiter over a designated area and automatically find, fix and engage threats on their own, has tactical implications for war, particularly in the urban battlefield of the future replete with infrastructure that provides concealment for enemy forces.

At the same time, advances in nanotechnology could lead to drones that mimic birds or insects, such as the Black Hornet, which could be capable of stealthy, close-quarter audio, video and possibly even DNA-sample intelligence collection. More disruptively, these nano-drones could engage in highly targeted killings through the injection of poison or self-destruction.

Yup, those self-same robots, basically mechanized systems driven by artificial intelligence, that threaten to take a whole pile of future jobs from us will also allow us to vet our anger by initiating military actions that cost us a whole lot less than past combat operations and wars. We may be able to take out terrorists with increasing frequency (and they can now counter with parallel weapons), but it so much easier to make some absolutely horrible mistakes and ignite and escalate military alternatives when diplomatic paths are still the best option.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we all have to be worried about technology that allows our leaders to lose their tempers, feel their oats, and kill without risking American lives in the process.