Visible Threats: Military Robots and Hypersonic Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles – UAVs or “drones” – and their military use in “drone warfare” are among the most widely – and controversially – discussed developments in the realm of conventional armaments today.

While the technology for these remotely piloted military vehicles actually dates back as early as World War I, back then these systems, such as the British Kettering Bug shown here, were way too imprecise and unreliable. In fact, they ended up as targets for shooting practice.

It was not before the Vietnam era that the ancestors of modern drones and cruise missiles eventually became useful aerial reconnaissance and surveillance assets. Toward the end of the 20th century, two key technologies – GPS and satellite communication uplinks – rendered military drones much more capable as they now could be piloted with precision from a great distance. The well-known MQ-1 Predator, for instance, was already used for reconnaissance in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It is worth noting that commercial technology fueled this development – and so, today, we see not only military drones but countless civilian drones in all shapes and sizes, too.

But technological development alone was not what gave rise to “drone warfare”. The political landscape was key. In fact, it was only after 9/11, that the Predator was armed. The goal was to be able to target specific individuals with missile strikes. A cornerstone of the so called “war on terror”.

Today, remotely piloted vehicles are used in the air, on and below the sea, on land, as well as in space. Technically speaking, all these unmanned systems could be called drones. But usually the term is reserved for flying unmanned weapon platforms. The second one of the two major trends visible – next to equipping drones with weapons – is to endow them with autonomy – a development especially salient in aerial and deep-sea vehicles.

The goal is to untether them from their remote control links. Since these communication links can be severed, jammed or even hijacked, moving as much functionality as possible into the system itself makes sense. Also, the latency between the system and its pilot – which can mean up to several seconds of delay – stops being an issue with autonomous systems. Lastly, with personnel being a major cost factor, getting rid of human remote operators promises an immense saving potential.

With humans this way moving out of the loop of control and decision-making, military technology can be described as currently being on a trajectory from the era of drones into the era of robots. And while it is true that the rise of military robots is closely connected to the development of drones, it is equally important to note the differences. Drones, according to the nomenclature we just developed, are remotely piloted. Robots, on the other hand, are autonomous, able to operate without human control or even supervision.