Using drones: principles, tactics and results (amended title)

[davidbfpo]

A short article, with many short videos, 'Everyone Who Wants a Drone Will Have One Soon':http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...e-soon/262882/

The focus is on the 'home front':

The upshot of all this is that it's not going to take much to procure a drone and do anything you want with it. And if you try to outlaw them, then, well, only the outlaws (and government) will have drones.....Drones will make traditional fences as obsolete as gunpowder and cannons made city walls.

[davidbfpo]

JMM has added several posts on the separate thread that watches HVT policy under Obama:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=13239&page=7

Hat tip to Abu M for the comments by 'Drunken Predator Drone', where this sentence struck me:

Sovereignty is the inherent right to control your territory, and that right isn’t solely dictated by your capacity to do so

Link:http://gunpowderandlead.org/author/drunkenpredator/

'Drunken Predator Drone' writes in the context of Pakistan. What would happen if another 'ally' of the USA was repeatedly hit by drone strikes? Say Italy, where the US pursued a suspect AQ member and illegally rendered him.

I have long thought the use of an apparent drone only approach / tactic primarily, if not only gains time through the impact of violent, leadership decapitation. Often there appears to be no other US tactic in use.

Clint Watts again asks what are the alternatives to drones in a wider CT strategy:http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=813

Clint was writing after an extensive WaPo article, mainly on the targeting process last week:http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...10/23/4789b2ae

[davidbfpo]

A column by Professor Paul Rogers:

The United States and Israel see armed drones as a valuable tool of "remote control". But Iran, China and Russia - and non-state actors - are working to achieve their own capacity. The emerging era is one of drone proliferation.

Near the end:

If the United States can persist with targeted assassinations in northwest Pakistan, acting with seeming impunity as it rewrites the laws of war, and if Israel can do the same in Gaza - why should other countries not follow suit?

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-ro...s-new-blowback

Interesting points made over the Iranian drone that flew from the Lebanon, down to Gaza and then across the Negev Desert before being shot down.

[carl]

Here is a story about the latest victim of a drone strike in Yemen.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/2...ld_News_Update

It is interesting because according to the story it would have been quite easy to pick the guy up. He was living in his home town which was not very far from the capital of Yemen. He had been arrested before and in 2011 had served as a go between between the gov and some rebels of some kind. And he was killed the day after the election.

So we kill a guy we could have probably picked up the day after the election. We are not covering ourselves with glory here. The way my cynical eye sees it either 1. We got played by somebody in the Yemeni gov to knock off an enemy for them. 2. Some of our guys are really lazy and decided it would be too much trouble to drive someplace and grab the guy. Or 3. The powers that be inside the beltway needed a drone kill to make a statement right after the election and this guy was easy to get.

The more I read about all this drone/Tantalus device killing the more I think this will ultimately be very bad for us.

(Tantalus device is a reference to...?)

[Fuchs]

or
4. Capturing is too much hassle because there's no evidence or even only crime to justify detention.

[carl]

Originally Posted by Fuchs

or
4. Capturing is too much hassle because there's no evidence or even only crime to justify detention.

Indeed. Which means we are killing people just on general principles. This is not going to end well.

[davidbfpo]

Carl,

Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert and Clint Watts have been "ding, dong" on Twitter on this latest drone strike in Yemen. I posted Gregory's recent comments on US intell in Yemen, see Post 74:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=12784&page=4

[davidbfpo]

The thread title includes results, so here are some.

Notwithstanding the Twitter and elsewhere traffic on the recent spike in drone strikes in the Yemen; now with a third failure to get their target - there is this CNN roundup:http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/1...12/?hpt=hp_bn2

It shows ten deaths, with seven attributed to drones, although I'd add one in the Phillipines which few thought the Phill. AF did IIRC.

[davidbfpo]

..a look at U.S. actions in the past makes it possible to reverse-engineer a rough decision tree for certain types of suspects.

Link:http://www.theatlantic.com/misc/disposition-matrix/

[jmm99]

If the answer to their question #10 ("Is US capture plausible?") is negative, then we proceed to either a personality strike or a signature strike as hypothesized here, One Strike You're Out ??

Regards

Mike

[Fuchs]

Originally Posted by davidbfpo

Link:http://www.theatlantic.com/misc/disposition-matrix/

Wasn't there some propaganda-only guy killed in Yemen a year or so ago?
That case would not fit into this scheme at all.

[omarali50]

btw, re the latest high profile victim, Mulla Nazir: http://www.brownpundits.com/2013/01/...-nazir-speaks/

[jmm99]

(wiki), perhaps - who picked the wrong traveling companion at the wrong time ?

As to "propaganda-only", the burden of proving that assertion lies on its proponent. But, one must admit that concept is immaterial here because no trier of facts is authorized to decide whether the burden is met or not. Thus, discussion is usually a waste of time.

Regards

Mike

[davidbfpo]

A BBC report, with a photo:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21313323

The Norwegian-designed Black Hornet Nano features a tiny camera and relays video and still images to a handheld control terminal. It measures about 10cm by 2.5cm (4in by 1in) and weighs 16g (0.6oz). ....Powered by battery, the Black Hornet is reported to have a range of about half a mile (800m), a top speed of 22mph (35kph) and can fly for up to 30 minutes.

[davidbfpo]

To lose a weapons system is expected, this many is startling:

Almost 450 drones operated by the British military have crashed, broken down or been lost in action during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last five years, figures reveal.

The Ministry of Defence has disclosed for the first time the five Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems used in the conflicts and the number that have perished due to pilot error, technical faults or the undesirability of retrieving them from hostile areas.

Link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/fe...ry-drones-lost

An interesting contrast to CWOT's latest threads on using (American) drones.

There is a long running main thread on drones, into which this will be merged one day: 'Using drones: principles, tactics and results':http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=7385

[SJPONeill]

It's a bit misleading as the article user perished and crashed interchangeably. While at the large NATO Class II/III end of the scale these may be close to one and the same, in the Class I mini/micro/nano categories, a crash might be something from which the UAV is picked up dusted off and relaunched, possibly not even requiring any repairs.

What this article chooses to ignore is the large number of hobbyist remote control air craft already operating freely in the UK, and most other Western nations, that have similar if not higher incident rates. Most military operated UAS are constructed to higher and more consistent standards than their hobby equivalents; and their operators are also trained to higher and more consistent levels.

I think this article is yet more fear-mongering from those who just feel the need to fear-monger about anything.

[davidbfpo]

I agree with this:

I think this article is yet more fear-mongering from those who just feel the need to fear-monger about anything.

I added the post as reliability of drones appears on SWC sometimes and it is part of the debate at home over drones.

[Fuchs]

Back in the 80's and 90's part of the sales pitch for drones was that they didn't need to have the super flight safety required for manned aviation. Less redundancy and less costs of testing were supposed to be major advantages of drones.
The focus on being able to use tiny spotter drones and extremely long endurance drones (with Global Hawk as gold-plated example or giant proportions) is only about a decade old. Previously, drones were widely understood to be expendable, and I think we still understand the tiny ones are indeed still expendable.

[carl]

Originally Posted by SJPONeill

I think this article is yet more fear-mongering from those who just feel the need to fear-monger about anything.

I don't know if it is fear mongering or not, but the article serves a useful purpose, to highlight the fact that drones crash a lot. They can't help but crash a lot given the limited view of the world the drivers have, the lag time between control input and response, what appears to me (viewing from the outside) to be limited control response, they are underpowered and the drivers have zero kinesthetic (sic) feedback. They are going to be crashing a lot until all those things are fixed.

And of course sometimes they decide to go walkabout. I'll never forget the bemused look on the face of a battle captain once. I asked him what was up and he said "The drone." "Oh yeah. Where's it going?" "We don't know exactly, but it's on its way."

[davidbfpo]

A NYT article Drone Pilots Are Shown to Have Stress Disorders, which refers to a new DoD report:

In the first study of its kind, researchers with the Defense Department have found that pilots of drone aircraft experience mental health problems like depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress at the same rate as pilots of manned aircraft who are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. The study affirms a growing body of research finding health hazards even for those piloting machines from bases far from actual combat zones.

Note the DoD report is not readily found, that maybe because it is due to presented at a conference this week.

Link to NYT article:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us...it_th_20130223