by 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.
Among the changes brought by Egypt's political transformation in 2011-12
has been that international journalists find it easier to enter Gaza. In turn
this ensured much greater media reporting from within Gaza of Israel's assault
in mid-November 2012 than had been the case over Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09. A largely
unreported aspect of this situation was that many of these journalists had
immediate experience of frequent and intense Israeli drone-flights over Gaza
during the week-long conflict.
Suddenly, a large number of journalists was made aware - possibly for the first
time - of the kind of situation villagers in northwest
Pakistan had long been subject to:
the sound of a drone in their vicinity, buzzing above their head, compounded by
a fear that it is armed and could, at any moment, unleash a Hellfire missile at
a nearby house or compound.
The use of drones in Pakistan
and Gaza (over which Israel routinely deploys drones, even when there is no
armed confrontation) is best seen as a signal of the emerging era of warfare by
"remote control" (see "Remote
control, a new way of war", 18 October 2012. It is too little
realised, though, that many countries are already embracing drone technology;
that it is becoming a substantial feature of the international arms trade; and
that there is a particular trend towards armed drones (see "Suicide-bombs
without the suicides: why drones are so cool", 13 September 2012).
A worldwide boom
In recent weeks, military journals have been full of reports
of new "products" and deployments. Britain's first squadron of Reaper
armed drones has been flown from bases in Afghanistan, under the control of an
RAF team at Creech air-force base
in Nevada; it will in due course be run from RAF Waddington, near Lincoln in
eastern England (which already controls a second
squadron of drones) (see Tim Ripley, "Reaper
ops move to UK", Jane's Defence Weekly, 24 October 2012).
Japan, meanwhile, is purchasing Israeli drones and adapting them to fill a gap
in its missile warning system (see James Hardy, "Japan
plans IR-equipped UAV as part of BMD shield", Jane's Defence Weekly,
14 November 2012); and Russian state media report that Sukhoi - one of the
major Russian aerospace companies - is responding to President Putin's call for
Russia to catch up with the west by focusing on
drones rather than manned combat-aircraft.
China now has two design bureaux working on drones similar to the United
States's Reaper (see Wendell Minnick, "China's
Unmanned Aircraft Evolve From Figment to Reality", Defense News,
26 November 2012. There are strong indications that it will prioritise exports
(see Bradley Perrett, "Chinese
Aerospace Plants See Profits in Civil Work", Aviation Week, 28
November 2012).
Iran's story
All these developments involve countries that have either been working on
drones for many years or have large aerospace industries that can develop
new products. What is perhaps more interesting, not least because of the
regional implications, is that Israel is not the only country in the middle
east that is heavily involved in drone development. Iran is in there too - in a
programme that started thirty years ago and has continued throughout
all the country's political changes.
By coincidence, in the very week of the intense Gaza war where Israel made
concentrated use of drones, one of the first substantial unclassified reports
on the Iranian programme was published (see Jeremy Binnie, "Rise
of the Pahpad", Jane's Defence Weekly, 21 November 2012). The
programme has its roots in the Iran-Iraq
war of 1980-88 whose greatly destructive battlefield stalemates resembled
the western front's trench-warfare of 1914-18. In the effort to counter Iraqi
capabilities, Iranian technicians developed crude drones that could undertake
aerial photo-reconnaissance of Iraqi forces. The development of an indigenous
drone industry had begun.
By the end of the 1990s, an arms exhibition in the United Arab Emirates
included an Iranian exhibit
of modest size, Ababil-2 (Swallow). The vehicle was around 2.7 metres in
length with a 3.3-metre wingspan, had a top speed of around 280 kilometres per
hour, and could reach a height of 3,300 metres. Iran then created the Mohajer
(Emigrant) series with greater
endurance. By early 2000, drones were being used to observe the anti-government
Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MeK) rebels living in eastern Iraq and reportedly
being supported by the Saddam
Hussein regime.
These systems were far less sophisticated than those being developed by the
United States and Israel. In any case, to "fly" drones over any
distance requires real-time direct-communications links via satellites. Iran
doesn't have
such systems, and to maintain links would either need forward-operating units
or have to "buy" time on commercial communications satellites.
A new phase
Yet the Iranian drone programme has a twofold significance. First, it is a
mature programme developed over some thirty years - perhaps often rather crude,
but showing a commitment and ability that may well be shared
with others. Jeremy
Binnie, for example, reports that the Sudanese government has used Iranian
drones, and that Venezuela has received Iran's assistance in developing its own
drones (see "An
asymmetrical drone war", 19 August 2010) .
Second, a revealing Israeli experience
occurred on 6 October 2012. It seems, as far as the details can be pieced
together, that a drone was assembled in southern Lebanon from components
supplied by Iran; launched by Hizbollah,
possibly aided by Iranian personnel; then "piloted" to fly offshore
down the Mediterranean coast of Israel before turning east over land towards
the northern part of the Negev desert. An Israeli
Defence Forces statement says that the drone was spotted off the coast of
Gaza, implying that it had initially evaded
Israeli coastal-surveillance systems, and was eventually shot down in the Yatir
forest area near the West Bank.
Israeli sources say the drone was observed for some time
before being shot down when it was approaching sensitive areas. This seems
implausible, since it could have been armed and could have diverted very
quickly towards a town or village at any stage.
What is more interesting is that since the drone flew a substantial distance
there must have been some way in which it could be kept in communication with
its operating base in southern Lebanon. This suggests that Iran had either
found a way of using commercial satellite links or else had personnel
established in Gaza that could maintain
communications, coordinating their activities with those in that Lebanese base.
None of this is particularly threatening to a state as powerful as Israel.Yet
it adds a symbolic dimension - a worrying sense of impotence - that follows the
impact of the rockets fired
from Gaza to the very end of the conflict.
Furthermore, it is one part of a longer-term process that is more advanced than
many people think (see "Hizbollah's
warning flight", 5 May 2005). Such is the nature of drone technology
that states with intermediate technical capabilities are likely to become
serious forces in the drone-orientated world soon to emerge. 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?
The use of armed drones by the Americans, Israelis, British and others may seem
hugely attractive in the short term. But it sets a precedent that may be
followed much sooner than might be expected. If that proves the case, then
Iran's thirty-year drone programme may have done much to bring it about.
Paul Rogers is professor in the department
of peace studies
at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international-security
editor, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28
September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford
Research Group.
His books include Why We’re Losing the War on
Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing
Control: Global Security in the 21st Century(Pluto
Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers
This article first appeared on openDemocracy November
29, 2012
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