Drone Wars

The age of robot or remote controlled warfare has begun and the world finally seems to have noticed –five years into the war.
The United States has been using unmanned robot airplanes or drones in attempts to kill Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq since at least 2004. The most controversial attacks have been in Pakistan where drones have killed both Pakistani civilians and Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives.
These attacks present an interesting new development in warfare on a number of level. First because acts of war are being carried out purely by machine and second because the United States is waging war on enemies in a foreign country and that country’s government has done little or nothing to stop the attacks.
The Pakistani government has claimed the drone attacks are a violation its sovereignty yet the Pakistani Air Force doesn’t seem to have shot down a single drone. Since the drones are slow moving machines with limited armament I imagine they’d be little more than target practice for Pakistani fighter planes yet Pakistan’s fighter pilots can’t seem to find them. Call me a cynic but this sounds like a case of very selective blindness on the part of Pakistan’s military.
The drones of course represent a disturbing new development in warfare. They are cheap, easy to deploy and best of all: expendable. The drones give the US government plausible deniability and the ability to wage war without putting American lives at risk. If one crashes or gets shot down by a Pakistani fighter plane there is no great loss. There is no prisoner and little controversy.
The Pakistani government is presumably going along with the drones or at least tolerating them because they kill it’s enemies. Some media reports indicate that the drones are actually operating out of Pakistani air bases. So the Pakistani government may be in control. Pakistani officials have even asked the US to hand control of the drones over to them. The same Pakistani government that is deploring the drone attacks is - not surprisingly building it’s own drones with the help of the Italians according to media reports.
The drone attacks raise a host of legal issues, for example; the CIA and not the Air Force is operating them so civilians are waging war. An interesting development that may not be legal. UN officials have raised the legality of this tactic and been ignored by the US and Pakistani governments. So the drone war is a legal black hole which nobody wants to talk about.
Of course the drone situation could be even murkier than we suppose. There is no guarantee that at least some of the drones might not be coming from India. After all Al Qaeda has targeted India and India certainly has the technology to create drones of its own. An Indian drone could easily slip in and attack and nobody would be none the wiser. Since Indian Drones could have no markings there would be no way to tell whether it was an American or Indian attack. Or for that matter an attack staged by Russia or NATO countries like Britain, Germany and France which certainly have the technology to create drones of their own.
Since nobody can tell where the drone comes from or who sent it out drone warfare is the perfect covert warfare. We can expect to see a lot more of it in the years ahead.
Today’s drone flies through the air, drones that drive or walk across the ground can’t be far behind. Also coming will be small drones some of them the size of insects. When that happens nobody will be safe from drones and drones will be the perfect warfare. What is happening in Pakistan looks like the future of warfare.