Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force

8. Drone Warfare

141 8 drone Warfare over the past five years, the Predator drone has become the face of American airpower. drones, operated by all of the services and by the CIA, have played a steadily larger role in American military aviation over the last decade. Best known for their use in the decapitation campaign against alQaeda in Pakistan, drones have quietly performed most of the missions normally associated with airpower during the War on Terror. evolutionary in process and revolutionary in implication, the development of drone warfare threatens to upend the traditional categorization of airpower missions and potentially even the concept of military identity itself. Air forces have employed drones since the Second World War, but with technological improvements their use expanded dramatically during the War on Terror. The attraction of drones has increased because they offer more for less: more information, more presence, and more coverage for lower cost. drones also offer, for the moment, politically palatable options for the projection of power across national boundaries. The increasing use of drones by the united States has not gone unnoticed on the international stage, with global criticism of drone employment growing nearly as fast as global drone procurement. This chapter examines the growth of American drone warfare from the Clausewitzian perspective developed in the introduction. How do drones contribute to the disarming of the enemy? does drone warfare place technological novelty ahead of political applicability? Finally, how do drones change our approach to the fog of war? The answer in all three cases is that, while much remains to be learned, drone warfare suffers from many of the same problems associated with traditional airpower theory. 142 Grounded Definition of Drones The term drone generally applies to systems or vehicles that operate without human passenger-drivers. These vehicles either pilot themselves (through use of an internal computer) or are controlled by pilots in remote contact. While many different robotic systems (including ground and sea, and undersea vehicles) can fall under the term “drone,” this chapter concentrates on unmanned aerial vehicles (uAVs). uAVs are what they sound like: aerial vehicles that do not carry pilots in the airframe. This definition includes a wide variety of different vehicles, from formerly manned vehicles (such as old fighter aircraft converted for use as targets) to craft nearly indistinguishable from toys to huge planes capable of remaining aloft for a day or more. The best-known drones include the rQ-11B raven, a small reconnaissance craft that soldiers launch into the air by throwing, the rQ-1 Predator, a twenty-seven-foot, 1,200-pound uAV capable of reconnaissance and attack missions, and the rQ-4 Global Hawk, which can carry out intelligence collection missions for up to twenty-eight hours.1 Cruise missiles with internal or external navigation systems (such as the BGM-109 Tomahawk) are suicidal drones in the same sense that kamikazes were suicidal manned aircraft. Indeed, cruise missiles have played (and continue to play) many of the roles currently associated with drones, including long-range strike into and through unfriendly airspace. However, the ability of uAVs to conduct surveillance (communicating information back to their operators), fly multiple missions, and unite strike and surveillance missions within a single airframe sets them apart in terms of utility. Organization of American Drones Armed and unarmed drones play a major role in the future of the air force’s conception of the air-ground team. unarmed reconnaissance drones identify targets and maintain observation of combat areas, while armed drones provide local close air support. With long loiter capacity, armed drones also undertake interdiction and strategic missions by observing and targeting enemy movement well away from points of contact. drone Warfare 143 Service control of the drones depends on a complex set of agreements dictating drone usage between the army and the air force, but in general uSAF drones bear the brunt of attack duties.2 As of mid-2012, the uSAF operated roughly 270 large and medium-sized drones, including the MQ1B Predator, the rQ-4 Global Hawk, and the MQ-9 reaper.3 However, as with manned aircraft, the air force lacks a monopoly over drone aircraft. In 2001, the u.S. Army operated 54 drones, a number that grew to over 4,000 by 2010. Army drones focus mainly on reconnaissance and intelligence collection in support of fielded forces, although the army has also pursued some drone options for sustainment and close air...