It is reported that on the night of
the 6 January 2018, the Russian airbase at Khmeimim was attacked by
more than a dozen drones. As yet unnamed militants used 10 armed unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) to target the Hmeymim air base located near the Syrian
city of Latakia and three more against the naval facility in Tartus. The
aircraft were reportedly defeated before inflicting any casualties or damage
Commenting on the attack Major General Aleksandr Novikov,
said that it showed the “emergence of a real threat of the UAV use for
terrorist purposes anywhere in the world.” The assessment of the drones also revealed
that any jamming countermeasures would be ineffective. “The research showed
that the avionics equipment mounted on the drones facilitated their fully
automated pre programmed flight and bombing, ruling out any jamming,” Novikov
said.
War, it has
been said, does not change but warfare does. The way in which wars are waged
changes constantly under the influences of technology and cultural forces.
Colonel
(PhD) Gjert Lage Dyndal writing in NATO Review describes autonomous drones as” drones that can act based on their own choice of options” Such
drones, he points out are programmed with a large number of alternative
responses to the different challenges they may meet in performing their
mission.
It is reported that the US and Chinese
militaries are starting to test swarming drones – distributed collaborative
systems made up of many small, cheap, unmanned aircraft. This new subset of
independently operating or “autonomous” weapons is giving rise to new
strategic, ethical, and legal questions.
The programming
of these drones may, oddly enough, be based on the swarming strategies employed
by some insects. Mathematical representations of ant behavior are widely used
in private enterprise to optimize complex logistics problems, like delivery
truck routing, computer network routing, and market analysis. Swarming
intelligence is all about data exchange. As well as the direct exchange of
information such systems can employ stigmergy, which is where individual parts
of a system communicate indirectly by modifying the local environment. (What a
submariner or his hunter might refer to as “flaming datum points”.)
While it
might seem odd to program weapon systems based on the behaviors of insects it
is important to remember that the insects that use these swarming strategies
most successfully are considered to be, like humans, an extirpator species-meaning
they deliberately seek out and destroy rival organisms (including their own
species) to maintain absolute control of their territory.
Ants that
utilize these stratagems are among the most successful organisms on the planet.
Some analysts even suggest
that such swarming strategies, when used by humans, have historically won
sixty-one percent of all battles-and an even greater percentage in urban
terrain. Examples would include Grozny, Stalingrad and Mogadishu of ‘Black Hawk
Down’ fame.
Discussing
what they refer to as Pervasive Semi-autonomous Systems in the 2009 publication
Projecting power - Canada's Air Force 2035 the RCAF suggested that such “ systems will become increasingly
interconnected and multi-tiered.” They
also noted that “Semi-autonomy or, in certain cases, complete autonomy will be
a feature of all future platforms and systems.”
They also believe that “. Since semi-autonomous and autonomous sensors
and equipment are at the heart of systems that collect data and assist in its
fusion, human agency will continue to
be a part of the controlling process of those systems.” It is not clear if they
believe that putting the word “will” in italics insures that the future will
unfold as they would like it to.
Gavotti’s
1910 attack caused little damage but is seen by historians as the first example
of what became the strategic bombing campaigns which have characterized warfare
since that time. A direct line can be
drawn from his raid to the dirigible bombing raids on London during WW1 to the
thousand plane raids on Berlin and Dresden of WW2 and on to the pervasive use
of airpower in our own century.
In the same
way the attack by what appear to be armed autonomous drones against Russian
positions in Syria, for all their lack of effect, may in the future be seen as
the beginnings of a new kind of warfare.
As with the
dropping of bombs from heavier-then-air aircraft it would appear that the use
of autonomous drones is limited not by the technology but rather the political
will to develop and use politically sensitive technology. In fact the
technology which would allow lethal machines to operate without being under the
direct control of humans is widely available. It awaits only its first successful
use.
After Gavotti’s
mission, as well as further Italian bombing raids, the Ottoman Empire issued a
protest. The dropping of bombs from balloons had been outlawed by the Hague
Convention of 1899, but Italy argued that this ban did not extend to
heavier-than-air craft. Needless to say, these protests had no effect.
Giulio Gavotti
Russian army repels attack
by 13 militant drones on its Syrian compounds
Threat of terrorist drone
attacks is real, says Russian military after assault on base in Syria
Autonomous military
drones: no longer science fiction
The upside and downside of
swarming drones
Swarming on the
Battlefield-Past, Present, and Future
Projecting power -
Canada's Air Force 2035
