The unmanned spy plane that Lebanon's Hizbullah sent buzzing over Israeli towns in 2005 was loud and weaponless, and carried only a rudimentary camera. But the surprise flight by a regional terror group still worried U.S. analysts, who saw it as a sign that the unmanned vehicles were falling into the wrong hands.
Today that concern appears to have been well founded. At least 40 other countries"”from Belarus and Georgia to India, Pakistan, and Russia"”have begun to build, buy, and deploy unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, showcasing their efforts at international weapons expos ranging from the premier Paris Air Show to smaller events in Singapore and Bahrain. In the last six months alone, Iran has begun production on a pair of weapons-ready surveillance drones, while China has debuted the Pterodactyl and Sour Dragon, rivals to America's Predator and Global Hawk. All told, two thirds of worldwide investment in unmanned planes in 2010 will be spent by countries other than the United States.
You wouldn't know it to hear U.S. officials talk. Jim Tuttle, the Department of Homeland Security official responsible for safeguarding America against nonnuclear weapons, downplays the idea that drones could be used against us. "What terrorist is going to have a Predator?" he scoffed at a conference last winter. More recently, The Wall Street Journal reported, the U.S. ignored a dangerous flaw in its UAV technology that allowed Iraqi insurgents to tap into the planes' video feeds using $30 software purchased over the Internet.
Such arrogance is setting us up for a fall. Just as we once failed to imagine terrorists using our own commercial aircraft against us, we are now underestimating the threat posed by this new wave of technology. We must prepare for a world in which foreign robotics rivals our own, and terrorists can deliver deadly explosives not just by suicide bomber but also by unmanned machine.
The ease and affordability of such technology, much of which is already available for purchase commercially, means that drones will inevitably pass into the wrong hands, allowing small groups and even individuals to wield power once limited to the world's great militaries. There is, after all, no such thing as a permanent, first-mover advantage"”not in technology, and certainly not in war. The British may have invented the tank during World War I, but the Germans wielded it better in the blitzkrieg more than two decades later.
For now, however, America remains at the forefront of the robotics revolution"”superiority that has come at considerable effort and expense. We've channeled billions into UAVs, initiating what has been called the largest shift in military tactics, strategy, and doctrine since the invention of gunpowder. This year the Pentagon will buy more unmanned aircraft than manned, and train more UAV pilots than traditional bomber and fighter pilots combined. As Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, put it in January, "We can't get enough drones."
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Actually, it occurs to me that the people who should worry about the private use of cheap UAVs are divorce lawyers. Occasionally some poor slob gets so furious with his ex-wife's attorney that he will go postal and blow the lawyer away with a shotgun in public. However, just think how much more common this kind of violence might become when lots of people know how to use a hobby-level UAV to put a grenade right through someone's picture window with complete anonymity. In short, we may get a little terrorism, but we could have a lot of plain, old-fashioned, domestic revenge killing.
As a software designer with robotics experience, I agree that any kid who can figure out Lego Mindstorms can eventually figure out how to build a UAV. Nor will I be surprised if a few people manage to use such machines to drop a few loads of explosives occasionally on the continental U.S. However, the logistical system necessary to support a sustained campaign is still extremely expensive, and only nations have that kind of capacity. As a Vietnam veteran, who was once involved in calling air strikes, it is clear that we have little to fear on this account. We will either be dealing with terrorists of limited means, or we will be in a conventional war with another nation. In either case, our country is most likely to survive in good order, albeit with some casualties. In truth, we lose far more people to the flu each year that we ever have, or likely ever will, to terrorists, and we should learn to keep such threats in perspective if we expect to deal with them intelligently and cost-effectively.
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