Attack of the drones Sep 3rd 2009 From The Economist print editionhttp://www.economist.com/search/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14299496
Military technology: Smaller and smarter unmanned aircraft are
transforming spying and redefining the idea of air power
FIVE years ago, in the mountainous Afghan province of Baghlan, NATO
officials mounted a show of force for the local governor, Faqir
Mamozai, to emphasise their commitment to the region. As the governor
and his officials looked on, Jan van Hoof, a Dutch commander, called
in a group of F-16 fighter jets, which swooped over the city of
Baghlan, their thunderous afterburners engaged. This display of air
power was, says Mr van Hoof, an effective way to garner the respect
of the local people. But fighter jets are a limited and expensive
resource. And in conflicts like that in Afghanistan, they are no
longer the most widespread form of air power. The nature of air
power, and the notion of air superiority, have been transformed in
the past few years by the rise of remote-controlled drone aircraft,
known in military jargon as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Drones are much less expensive to operate than manned warplanes.
The cost per flight-hour of Israels drone fleet, for example, is
less than 5% the cost of its fighter jets, says Antan Israeli, the
commander of an Israeli drone squadron. In the past two years the
Israeli Defence Forces fleet of UAVs has tripled in size. Mr Israeli
says that almost all IDF ground operations now have drone support.
Of course, small and comparatively slow UAVs are no match for fighter
jets when it comes to inspiring awe with roaring flyoversor shooting
down enemy warplanes. Some drones, such as Americas Predator and
Reaper, carry missiles or bombs, though most do not. (Countries
with hunter-killer drones include America, Britain and Israel.) But
drones have other strengths that can be just as valuable. In
particular, they are unparalleled spies. Operating discreetly, they
can intercept radio and mobile-phone communications, and gather
intelligence using video, radar, thermal-imaging and other sensors.
The data they gather can then be sent instantly via wireless and
satellite links to an operations room halfway around the worldor
to the hand-held devices of soldiers below. In military jargon,
troops without UAV support are disadvantaged.
The technology has been adopted at extraordinary speed. In 2003,
the year the American-led coalition defeated Saddam Husseins armed
forces, Americas military logged a total of roughly 35,000 UAV
flight-hours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year the tally reached
800,000 hours. And even that figure is an underestimate, because
it does not include the flights of small drones, which have
proliferated rapidly in recent years. (America alone is thought to
have over 5,000 of them.) These robots, typically launched by foot
soldiers with a catapult, slingshot or hand toss, far outnumber
their larger kin, which are the size of piloted aeroplanes.
Global sales of UAVs this year are expected to increase by more
than 10% over last year to exceed $4.7 billion, according to
Visiongain, a market-research firm based in London. It estimates
that America will spend about 60% of the total. For its part,
Americas Department of Defence says it will spend more than $22
billion to develop, buy and operate drones between 2007 and 2013.
Following the United States, Israel ranks second in the development
and possession of drones, according to those in the industry. The
European leaders, trailing Israel, are roughly matched: Britain,
France, Germany and Italy. Russia and Spain are not far behind, and
nor, say some experts, is China. (But the head of an American navy
research-laboratory in Europe says this is an underestimate cultivated
by secretive Beijing, and that Chinas drone fleet is actually much
larger.)
In total, more than three dozen countries operate UAVs, including
Belarus, Colombia, Sri Lanka and Georgia. Some analysts say Georgian
armed forces, equipped with Israeli drones, outperformed Russia in
aerial intelligence during their brief war in August 2008. (Russia
also buys Israeli drones.)
Iran builds drones, one of which was shot down over Iraq by American
forces in February. The model in question can reportedly collect
ground intelligence from an altitude of 4,000 metres as far as 140km
from its base. This year Iranian officials said they had developed
a new drone with a range of more than 1,900km. Iran has supplied
Hizbullah militants in Lebanon with a small fleet of drones, though
their usefulness is limited: Hizbullah uses lobbed rather than
guided rockets, and it is unlikely to muster a ground attack that
would benefit from drone intelligence. But ownership of UAVs enhances
Hizbullahs prestige in the eyes of its supporters, says Amal Ghorayeb,
a Beirut academic who is an expert on the group.
Eyes wide open
How effective are UAVs? In Iraq, the significant drop in American
casualties over the past year and a half is partly attributable to
the persistent stare of drone operators hunting for insurgents
roadside bombs and remotely fired rockets, says Christopher Oliver,
a colonel in the American army who was stationed in Baghdad until
recently. We stepped it up, he says, adding that drone missions
will continue to increase, in part to compensate for the withdrawal
of troops. In Afghanistan and Iraq, almost all big convoys of Western
equipment or personnel are preceded by a scout drone, according to
Mike Kulinski of Enerdyne Technologies, a developer of
military-communications software based in California. Such drones
can stream video back to drivers and transmit electromagnetic jamming
signals that disable the electronic triggers of some roadside bombs.
In military parlance, drones do work that would be dull, dirty and
dangerous for soldiers. Some of them can loiter in the air for long
periods. The Eagle-1, for example, developed by Israel Aerospace
Industries and EADS, Europes aviation giant, can stay aloft for
more than 50 hours at a time.
(France deployed several of these aircraft this year in Afghanistan.)
Such long flights help operators, assisted with object-recognition
software, to determine normal (and suspicious) patterns of movement
for people and vehicles by tracking suspects for two wake-and-sleep
cycles.
Drones are acquiring new abilities. New sensors that are now entering
service can make out the electrical signature of ground vehicles
by picking up signals produced by engine spark-plugs, alternators,
and other electronics. A Pakistani UAV called the Tornado, made in
Karachi by a company called Integrated Dynamics, emits radar signals
that mimic a fighter jet to fool enemies.
UAVs are hard to shoot down. Todays heat-seeking shoulder-launched
missiles do not work above 3,000 metres or so, though the next
generation will be able to go higher, says Carlo Siardi of Selex
Galileo, a subsidiary of Finmeccanica in Ronchi dei Legionari,
Italy. Moreover, drone engines are smallerand therefore coolerthan
those powering heavier, manned aircraft. In some of them the propeller
is situated behind the exhaust source to disperse hot air, reducing
the heat signature. And soldiers who shoot at aircraft risk revealing
their position.
But drones do have an Achilles heel. If a UAV loses the data
connection to its operatorby flying out of range, for exampleit may
well crash. Engineers have failed to solve this problem, says Dan
Isaac, a drone expert at Spains Centre for the Development of
Industrial Technology, a government research agency in Madrid. The
solution, he and others say, is to build systems which enable an
operator to reconnect with a lost drone by transmitting data via a
bridge aircraft nearby.
In late June Americas Northrop Grumman unveiled the first of a new
generation of its Global Hawk aircraft, thought to be the worlds
fastest drone. It can gather data on objects reportedly as small
as a shoebox, through clouds, day or night, for 32 hours from 18,000
metresalmost twice the cruising altitude of passenger jets. After
North Korea detonated a test nuclear device in May, America said
it would begin replacing its manned U-2 spy planes in South Korea
with Global Hawks, which are roughly the size of a corporate jet.
Big drones are, however, hugely expensive. With their elaborate
sensors, some cost as much as $60m apiece. Fewer than 30 Global
Hawks have been bought. And it is not just the hardware that is
costly: each Global Hawk requires a support team of 20-30 people.
As the biggest UAVs get bigger, they are also becoming more expensive.
Future American UAVs may cost a third as much as the F-35 fighter
jet (each of which costs around $83m, without weapons). The Neuron,
a jet-engine stealth drone developed by Frances Dassault Aviation
and partners including Italys Alenia, will be about the size of the
French manned Mirage fighter.
Small drones, by contrast, cost just tens of thousands of dollars.
With electric motors, they are quiet enough for low-altitude spying.
But batteries and fuel cells have only recently become light enough
to open up a large market. A fuel cell developed by AMI Adaptive
Materials, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, exemplifies the progress
made. Three years ago AMI sold a 25-watt fuel cell weighing two
kilograms. Today its fuel cell is 25% lighter and provides eight
times as much power. This won AMI a $500,000 prize from the Department
of Defence. Its fuel cells, costing about $12,000 each, now propel
small drones.
Most small drones are launched without airstrips and are controlled
in the field using a small computer. They can be recovered with
nets, parachutes, vertically strung cords that snag a wingtip hook
or a simple drop on the ground after a stall a metre or two in the
air. Their airframes break apart to absorb the impact; users simply
snap them back together.
With some systems, a ground unit can launch a drone for a quick
birds-eye look around with very little effort. Working with financing
from Italys defence ministry, Oto Melara, an Italian firm, has built
prototypes of a short-range drone launched from a vehicle-mounted
pneumatic cannon. The aircrafts wings unfold upon leaving the tube.
It streams back video while flying any number of preset round-trip
patterns. Crucially, operators do not need to worry about fiddling
with controls; the drone flies itself.
Send in the drones
Indeed, as UAVs become more technologically complex, there is also
a clear trend towards making their control systems easier to use,
according to a succession of experts speaking at a conference in
La Spezia, Italy, held in April by the Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), an industry association. For
example, instead of manoeuvring aircraft, operators typically touch
(or click on) electronic maps to specify points along a desired
route. Software determines the best flight altitudes, speeds and
search patterns for each missionsay, locating a well near a hilltop
within sniping range of a road.
Next year Lockheed Martin, an American defence contractor, begins
final testing of software to make flying drones easier for troops
with little training. Called ECCHO, it allows soldiers to control
aircraft and view the resulting intelligence on a standard hand-held
device such as an iPhone, BlackBerry or Palm Pre. It incorporates
Google Earth mapping software, largely for the same reason: most
recruits are already proficient users.
Whats next? A diplomat from Djibouti, a country in the Horn of
Africa, provides a clue. He says private companies in Europe are
now offering to operate spy drones for his government, which has
none. (Djibouti has declined.) But purchasing UAV services, instead
of owning fleets, is becoming a strong trend, says Kyle Snyder,
head of surveillance technology at AUVSI.
About 20 companies, he estimates, fly spy drones for clients.
One of them, a division of Boeing called Insitu, sees a lucrative
untapped market in Afghanistan, where the intelligence needs of
some smaller NATO countries are not being met by larger allies.
(Armed forces are often reluctant to share their intelligence for
tactical reasons.) Alejandro Pita, Insitus head of sales, declines
to name customers, but says his firms flights cost roughly $2,000
an hour for 300 or so hours a month. The drones-for-hire market is
also expanding into non-military fields. Services include inspecting
tall buildings, monitoring traffic and maintaining security at large
facilities.
Drone sales and research budgets will continue to grow. Raytheon,
an American company, has launched a drone from a submerged submarine.
Mini helicopter drones for reconnaissance inside buildings are not
far off. In China, which is likely to be a big market in the future,
senior officials have recently talked of reducing troop numbers and
spending more money developing informationised warfare capabilities,
including unmanned aircraft.
There is a troubling side to all this. Operators can now safely
manipulate battlefield weapons from control rooms half a world away,
as if they are playing a video game. Drones also enable a government
to avoid the political risk of putting combat boots on foreign soil.
This makes it easier to start a war, says P.W. Singer, the American
author of Wired for War, a recent bestseller about robotic warfare.
But like them or not, drones are here to stay. Armed forces that
master them are not just securing their hold on air superioritythey
are also dramatically increasing its value.
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