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This is too US-centric, especially as it implies that drone proliferation will slow down if the US stops its own development. This is nonsense. Fact is, the US
by _djo_ 12y ago
This is too US-centric, especially as it implies that drone proliferation will slow down if the US stops its own development. This is nonsense.
Fact is, the US was a late adopter to more modern drones, or UAVs, having fallen behind countries like Israel and South Africa who had developed propeller-driven surveillance UAVs and used them operationally in combat from the late 1970s.
Both gained much experience in the use of drones to evade surface to air missiles and developed stealth prototypes, including the South African Flowchart, and began early work on weaponising them. As a result, both Israel and South Africa were early exporters of drones, selling to dozens of countries and remaining major sellers. When the US needed to acquire tactical UAVs in the 1980s, it acquired Israeli Tadira Mastiffs. It wasn't until nearly a decade later that the first Predator flew, in 1994.
Both the above countries have armed drones for sale, though refuse to publicise their sales. So even if the US were to scale back its drone research massively, it would not do anything to slow down this pace of development elsewhere, which has only increased with more countries and companies building drones and their subsystems.
It was only in 2001 that trials were first carried out to arm Predators with Hellfire missiles. Not because they were more effective weapons platforms than manned aircraft, but because the idea was to shorten the time needed between spotting a target on the UAV's cameras and hitting it with a bomb or missile.
As such, most countries don't actually need armed drones. They're slower and more vulnerable than manned combat aircraft, are not designed to dash to target areas quickly and are typically more expensive to operate than aircraft like the Embraer Super Tucano or Aerosud AHRLAC because they need more ground equipment and a ground control station. The market for surveillance drones, especially those that can provide some level of persistent surveillance, is huge and growing bigger. The number of countries specifically requesting armed drones, however, remains low.
- Jtsummers 12y ago> This is too US-centric, especially as it implies that drone proliferation will slow down if the US stops its own development. This is nonsense. Where do you get that from? Some quotes from the article: Virtually every country on Earth will be able to build or acquire drones capable of firing missiles within the next ten years. Armed aerial drones will be used for targeted killings, terrorism and the government suppression of civil unrest. What’s worse, say experts, it’s too late for the United States to do anything about it. “Once countries like China start exporting these, they’re going to be everywhere really quickly. Within the next 10 years, every country will have these,” Noel Sharkey, a robotics and artificial intelligence professor from the University of Sheffield, told Defense One. Singer cautions that while the U.S. may be trying to wean itself off of armed UAV technology, many more countries are quickly becoming hooked. So, what option does that leave U.S. policy makers wanting to govern the spread of this technology? Virtually none, say experts. “You’re too late,” said Sharkey, matter-of-factly. The rest of your post, other than the comments on earlier-than-US use of drones, is a rehash of the various points in the article.
- _djo_ 12y agoIt's underscored by one of the quotes used to end the piece off: Less impressed, Sharkey said the U.S. still has time to rethink its drone future. “Don’t go to the next step. Don’t make them fully autonomous. That will proliferate just as quickly and then you are really going to be sunk.” And the opening premise of the article is not only that armed UAV technology is spreading, but that the reader should somehow be concerned that the US is unable to stop it. It speaks about what options are available to US policy makers to govern the spread of the technology, correctly answering 'none' but not once mentioning that the US never had any ability to govern the spread of UAV technology. Especially because it was not the originator of it. The rest of the article is ok, particularly the quotes attributed to Singer (an excellent writer on the subject), Sam Brennan and Mary Commings and the maps showing which countries are using or developing armed and unarmed UAVs. I just feel it's let down by the editorial slant and US-centric focus.
- gregpilling 12y agoThanks for this. I was always curious about the influence of Israeli tech in the drones here in Arizona in the late 90's. At that time I was the technical rep for Snap-on Equipment, and I was called by TRW outside of Ft Huachuca. They needed equipment that could diagnose the computer system used in a drone, but the engine was a Moto Guzzi from Italy, and it had fuel injection on it that had been supplied by the Israelis. The fuel injection system had been stripped of all the diagnostic capability for some reason, so TRW was having a hard time diagnosing the system. I sold them a Simutech, which was this big octupus of wires that let you tap into all the PCM signals at once.