Drones: a history of flying robots

 It was ten years ago this month, on February 4, 2002, that the CIA first used an unmanned Predator drone in a targeted killing. The strike was in Paktia province in Afghanistan, near the city of Khost. The intended target was Osama bin Laden, or at least someone in the CIA had thought so. Donald Rumsfeld later explained, using the passive voice of government: “A decision was made to fire the Hellfire missile. It was fired.” The incident occurred during a brief period when the military, which assisted the CIA’s drone program by providing active service personnel as operators, still acknowledged the program’s existence. Within days of the strike, journalists on the ground were collecting accounts from local Afghans that the dead men were civilians gathering scrap metal. The Pentagon media pool began asking questions, and so the long decade of the drone began.

 The CIA had been flying unarmed drones over Afghanistan since 2000. It began to fly armed drones after the September 11 attacks. Some were used during the air war against the Taliban in late 2001. But by February 2002 the CIA hadn’t yet used a drone for a strike outside military support. The February 2002 attack was a pure CIA kill operation, undertaken separately from any ongoing military operation. The drone operators were reported to have come across three people at a former mujahedeen base called Zhawar Kili—later, officials would never claim they were armed—including a “tall man” to whom the other men were “acting with reverence.” (On one previous occasion, a year before the September 11 attacks, CIA observers thought they’d seen bin Laden: a tall man with long robes near Tarnak Farm, bin Laden’s erstwhile home near Kandahar. This sighting by an unarmed drone was what had led to the first arguments among the White House and CIA about arming drones with missiles, a debate that simmered until it was snuffed out by the September 11 attacks.

After the February 2002 strike, military officials quickly acknowledged that the “tall man” was not bin Laden. But they insisted the targets were “legitimate,” although they struggled to explain why, using vague and even coy language to cover up what appeared to be uncertainty. Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clark said, “We’re convinced that it was an appropriate target.” But she added, “We do not know yet exactly who it was.” Gen. Tommy Franks told ABC News that he expected the identities of the three to prove “interesting.”
Pentagon spokesman John Stufflebeem spoke of the government’s being in the “comfort zone” of determining that the targets were “not innocent,” noting there were “no initial indications that these were innocent locals,” a curious phrase reflecting a presumption of guilt. “Indicators were there that there was something untoward that we needed to make go away…. Initial indications would seem to say that these are not peasant people up there farming.” Rumsfeld later chimed in, offering his signature pseudo-philosophical analysis to address the allegations that the dead were civilians. “We’ll just have to find out. There’s not much more anyone could add, except that there’s that one version, and there’s the other version.”

The government’s evasion was helped by the fact that Zhawar Kili, the site of the strike, was an infamous mujahedeen complex built with CIA and Saudi support by Jalaluddin Haqqani, the mujahedeen scion allied with the Taliban, then and now. In the 1980s CIA officers and journalists used to visit the base. It was the site of two major battles against Soviet forces in the mid-’80s. President Bill Clinton ordered a strike on the area with Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1998 after the two Africa embassy bombings, and the US military pummeled it with airstrikes beginning in late 2001. For a time the military thought that bin Laden and his Al Qaeda forces might have fled to Zhawar Kili after the battle of Tora Bora (a puzzling hypothesis because the area had already been hit by withering fire and was more exposed than Tora Bora). In January 2002 the military sent several search and demolition units there to gather leftover material with potential intelligence value and to blow up the caves.
By February 2002 the place had been deserted by militants for months. Several journalists headed to Zhawar Kili after the strike and spoke with local leaders and the families of the dead, who confirmed the identities of the men killed: Daraz Khan, the tall man, about 31, from the village of Lalazha, and two others, Jehangir Khan, about 28, and Mir Ahmed, about 30, from the village of Patalan. The New York Times’s John Burns was among those who spoke with the families, saw the men’s graves and confirmed their extreme poverty. The men had climbed to the mountainous area to forage for leftover metal from the US airstrikes, bits of shrapnel and bomb tail fins—scavengers could fetch about 50 cents per camel load. Although Daraz Khan was admittedly tall by Afghan standards—5 feet 11 inches—he was six inches shorter than bin Laden.
Reading about the strike later, I felt a slight connection with Daraz Khan. I am also 5 feet 11, and at around the same period I spent time foraging for bomb fragments in remote locations in Afghanistan. As a researcher for Human Rights Watch, working on an assessment of the US air war in the winter and spring of 2002, I had visited locations like Zhawar Kili. With colleagues I had climbed into craters, poked at the twisted tail fins of bombs, and interviewed witnesses and families of the dead. And I was the tallest among my colleagues. Perhaps I could have been mistaken for bin Laden too.
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Air warfare has been with us for a hundred years, since the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911, and the development of drones was in the works from the start. The reason is simple: even with all the advantages offered by air power, humans still needed to strap themselves into the devices and fly them. There were limits to the risks that could be taken. Whatever an airplane was used for, it ultimately had to return to base with its pilot. Not surprisingly, from the start of the development of airplanes for use in war, engineers labored to circumvent this limitation.

During World War I, the Navy hired Elmer Ambrose Sperry, the inventor of the gyroscope, to develop a fleet of “air torpedoes,” unmanned Curtis biplanes designed to be launched by catapult and fly over enemy positions. A secret program was run out of a small outfield in central Long Island, New York. A New York Times report from 1926, when the secret was revealed, said that the planes were “automatically guided with a high degree of precision” and after a predetermined distance were supposed to suddenly turn and fly vertically downward, carrying enough TNT to “blow a small town inside out.” The program ran out of steam because the war ended in 1918. In reality, according to a Navy history, the planes rarely worked: they typically crashed after takeoff or flew away over the ocean, never to be seen again.
In World War II a different approach was taken: the Navy launched a new program, called Operation Anvil, to target deep German bunkers using refitted B-24 bombers filled to double capacity with explosives and guided by remote control devices to crash at selected targets in Germany and Nazi-controlled France. Remote control technology was still limited—involving crude radio-controlled devices linked to motors—so actual pilots were used for takeoff: they were supposed to guide the plane to a cruising altitude and then parachute to safety in England, after which a “mothership” would guide the plane to its target. In practice, the program was a disaster. Many planes crashed, or worse. John F. Kennedy’s older brother, Joseph, was one of the program’s first pilots: he was killed in August 1944 when a drone-to-be that he was piloting exploded prematurely over Suffolk, England.
And here lies a small irony in history. The target of that particular mission of Kennedy’s was a Nazi site where scientists were working on technology in the same vein, the remote delivery of explosives: the world’s first military rocket program. Indeed, German engineers had switched to rocketry, given the difficulties in building full-scale pilotless airplanes. They worked extensively on rockets during the war, and after the war US and Russian governments carried on their work. (In the late 1940s and ’50s, hundreds of former German rocket engineers and other Nazi scientists were brought to the United States and granted citizenship in exchange for their help on rocket engineering efforts—some despite clear ties to Holocaust-related atrocities. Stanley Kubrick’s character Dr. Strangelove was a caricature of an expatriate Nazi scientist.)
 
The development of drones stagnated for decades because there was little need for them, thanks to developments in rocketry. By the late 1950s, the US military had developed, in addition to many rockets, a slew of slower but more guidable “cruise missiles”—which, in their own way, were like little airplanes. Cruise missiles maintain airplanelike “lift” on stubby little wings, unlike ballistic missiles, which move through a long curve of flight comprising a launch and rise followed by a guided fall.
Cruise missiles were, in a sense, proto-drones, miniature versions of what the military had attempted as far back as 1917. They could be dispatched and guided in flight; some had cameras; and, in some incarnations, could even change target midflight. But cruise missiles could not linger over a battlefield in the manner of a holding pattern, nor could they return to base. And their weapons delivery was blunt and inflexible; the delivery was the missile itself, its single warhead. So in the 1960s and ’70s, Air Force engineers continued to tinker with unmanned aircraft—in particular for use in surveillance flights, which don’t engage in complex flight maneuvers and require less sophisticated piloting. Only with major improvements in computing and electronic controlling systems in the 1980s and ’90s were modern-day drones made possible. And it wasn’t until the late ’90s that the Air Force began working on the technical aspects of arming unmanned aircraft with missiles.
The CIA, which had been using the drones for surveillance, became involved with the military effort to arm them after September 11. Although the agency had been authorized to support military operations even before the attacks, the legal parameters governing its involvement in military or paramilitary operations were murky, then as now. There were questions about who was allowed to “pull the trigger” and in what settings. Outright assassinations were illegal under a presidential executive order in the wake of CIA scandals from the Nixon period, and the laws of armed conflict contained complicated provisions on the circumstances in which civilian personnel—CIA officers not in uniform—could use lethal force.
So government attorneys worried back in 2001. Ten years later, the CIA works side by side with the military, launching kinetic strikes from Pakistan to Somalia. Few concerns are raised anymore, except by a handful of academics and activists who worry that the CIA is less accountable than the military for its targetting (and, as we saw in Zhawar Kili, for its mistakes). Still, many people seem to be leery of drones in the abstract—whether they are used in armed conflict or in targeted killings.

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What, in the final analysis, is troubling about the CIA’s use of drones? Drones are only one weapon system among many, and the CIA’s role, while disturbing, is not the primary cause for alarm. Certainly the legal identity of drone operators, CIA or military, matters little to the victims of a Hellfire strike. So what is it about the drone, really, that draws the attention of victims, insurgent propagandists, lawyers and journalists, more than other forms of kinetic violent force? Why do drones interest us, fascinate us or disturb us?
Perhaps one clue comes from the linguistics. The weapons’ names suggest ruthless and inhumane characteristics. The first drone aircraft deployed by the CIA and Air Force after 2001 was the Predator, a rather coarse name even for a weapons system, suggestive that the enemy was not human but merely prey, that military operations were not combat subject to the laws of war but a hunt. (Some of the computer software used by the military and the CIA to calculate expected civilian casualties during airstrikes is known in government circles as Bug Splat.) The Predator’s manufacturer, General Atomics, later developed the larger Reaper, a moniker implying that the United States was fate itself, cutting down enemies who were destined to die. That the drones’ payloads were called Hellfire missiles, invoking the punishment of the afterlife, added to a sense of righteousness.
But the real issue is the context of how drones kill. The curious characteristic of drones—and the names reinforce this—is that they are used primarily to target individual humans, not places or military forces as such. Yet they simultaneously obscure the human role in perpetrating the violence. Unlike a missile strike, in which a physical or geographic target is chosen beforehand, drones linger, looking precisely for a target—a human target. And yet, at the same time, the perpetrator of the violence is not physically present. Observers are drawn toward thinking that it is the Predator that kills Anwar al-Awlaki, or its Hellfire missiles, not the CIA officers who order the weapons’ engagement. On the one hand, we have the most intimate form of violence—the targeted killing of a specific person, which in some contexts is called assassination—while on the other hand, the least intimate of weapons.
This characteristic, the distance between targets and CIA executive officers at Langley, is the defining characteristic of drones. They are the zenith of the technological quest that runs back to the invention of slings and arrows thousands of years ago, efforts of the earliest perpetrators of violence to get away from their victims. That process, which brought catapults and later artillery, reached its first peak with the development of intercontinental nuclear missiles; but those are weapons of limited tactical use and have never been used. Drones allow all the alienation of long-range missions but with much more flexibility and capacity for everyday use. The net result is everyday violence with all the distance and alienation of ICBMs. This is disturbing perhaps because alienation is disturbing.

The work of animal behaviorists like Konrad Lorenz sheds some light on why. Lorenz—a onetime member of the Nazi party who later renounced his politics and won the Nobel Prize in the 1970s—spent much of his life studying violence in animals. His book On Aggression posited a theory whereby many animals, male and female, have a natural “drive” to be aggressive against opponents, including members of their own species.
The aggression drive, Lorenz posited, was often limited within species by a “submission” phenomenon, whereby potential victims turn off the aggressive drive in others by displaying signs of submission. In this way, most animal violence is checked before it occurs. Lorenz suggested that in humans, the submission safety valve was blunted by the technological creation of weapons, which emotionally “distanced” the killer from his victim. When a spear or sling is used to kill, victims lose the opportunity to engage in submission and trigger the aggression “off switch.” The drone represents an extreme extension of that process. Drones crossed into a new frontier in military affairs: an area of entirely risk-free, remote and even potentially automated killing detached from human behavioral cues.
Military research seems to back this up. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a psychologist and former professor at West Point, has written extensively on the natural human aversion to killing. His 1995 book On Killing contains a collection of accounts from his research and from military history demonstrating soldiers’ revulsion with killing—in particular, killing at close range. He tells the story of a Green Beret in Vietnam describing the killing of a young Vietnamese soldier: “I just opened up, fired the whole twenty rounds right at the kid, and he just laid there. I dropped my weapon and cried.” The most telling accounts are with the “close” kills of hand-to-hand combat. Grossman tells of a Special Forces sergeant from the Vietnam War describing a close kill: “‘When you get up close and personal,’ he drawled with a cud of chewing tobacco in his cheek, ‘where you can hear ‘em scream and see ‘em die,’ and here he spit tobacco for emphasis, ‘it’s a bitch.’”
Obviously the primary advantage of the drone is that it insulates its operators from risk. Yet one can’t help wondering whether aversion to the unpleasantness of violence is another factor making drones popular with the military and CIA. Drones make the nasty business of killing a little easier. Or do they?

There are reports of military drone operators suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and studies showing that those who conduct strikes or watch videos of strikes suffer from “operational stress,” which officials believe is the result of operators’ long hours and extended viewing of video feeds showing the results of military operations after they have occurred—i.e., dead bodies. Still, these reports pale in comparison with those of PTSD among combat veterans. And there is no public information about stress among those ordering the strikes—the CIA strike operators or the decision-makers at Langley.
A little-noticed 2011 British Defense Ministry study of unmanned drones discusses some of these points: from concerns about drone operators’ potential alienation from violence to the propaganda opportunities for enemies (noting that drones’ use “enables the insurgent to cast himself in the role of underdog and the West as a cowardly bully—that is unwilling to risk his own troops, but is happy to kill remotely”). The paper also discusses concerns raised by military analyst Peter Singer, who has written on “robot warfare” and the risk that drones might acquire the capacity to engage enemies autonomously. The report envisions a scenario where a drone fires on a target “based solely on its own sensors, or shared information, and without recourse to higher, human authority.”
The authors note that in warfare, the risks of the battlefield and the horror that comes from carrying out violence can act as controls on brutality. Citing the oft-quoted adage of Gen. Robert E. Lee, reportedly uttered after the battle of Fredericksburg, “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow too fond of it,” the authors then ask:

If we remove the risk of loss from the decision-makers’ calculations when considering crisis management options, do we make the use of armed force more attractive? Will decision-makers resort to war as a policy option far sooner than previously?

The issue is not that armed drones are more terrible or deadly than other weapons systems. On the contrary, the violence of drones today is more selective than many forms of military violence, and human rights groups recognize that drones, in comparison with less precise weapons, have the potential to minimize civilian casualties during legitimate military strikes.
Nor is the issue the remote delivery of weapons: alienation from the effects of violence reached a high-water mark in World War I. What makes drones disturbing is an unusual combination of characteristics: the distance between killer and killed, the asymmetry, the prospect of automation and, most of all, the minimization of pilot risk and political risk. It is the merging of these characteristics that draws the attention of journalists, military analysts, human rights researchers and Al Qaeda propagandists, suggesting something disturbing about what human violence may become. The unique technology allows the mundane and regular violence of military force to be separated further from human emotion. Drones foreshadow the idea that brutality could become detached from humanity—and yield violence that is, as it were, unconscious.

The U.S. military has been, and remains, a world leader in remote targeted killings. The drone has become central to U.S. national security strategy, which has switched from counterinsurgency in the city to counterterrorism from the skies. Whatever the size of the drone, they all essentially perform the same functions: providng war managers with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). The U.S. military’s fleet of drones varies by size, shape, and sophistication, from the army’s hand-thrown Ravens to the air force’s Global Hawk, which can reach altitudes of sixty thousand feet. The year before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, drone funding stood at around $284 million. By the fiscal year 2016, the Pentagon plans to spend close to $3 billion on drones. Indeed, between 2002 and 2010 the Pentagon’s inventory of drones increased forty-fold, and it now owns a fleet of some eleven thousand drones, hundreds of which are weaponized.
The MQ-1 Predator is perhaps the most well-known of all military drones used today. It has a wingspan of 55 feet, a length of 27 feet, and can reach speeds of up to 135mph. According to the U.S. Air Force, “The Predator system was designed in response to a Department of Defense requirement to provide persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information combined with a kill capability to the warfighter.” Its deathly name conjures images of a science-fiction dystopia where robots hover in the sky and exterminate humans on the ground. Of course, this is no longer science-fiction.

Drone operators sat in a Nevada desert, huddled in air-conditioned cubicles, now control a fleet of robots that can loiter above the landscape with advanced sensing capabilities. According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, up to 3,900 people have been killed in 422 strikes in Pakistan, where the drones are controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Dating back to 2004, the controversial program targets al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants, and generates fierce debate for its seeming violation of international humanitarian law and national sovereignty. Since then, the program of targeted killing – run jointly by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces (Joint Special Operations Command). As of 2013 the U.S. Department of Defense had 237 Predators and 112 Reaper drones, both of which can be remotely piloted from across the planet. And by the end of2015 these hunter–killer drones had been used over 500 times to kill an estimated 3,922 people outside traditional battlefields. The majority of these have been in Pakistan.

But we didn’t wake up in this brave new Droneworld overnight. Instead, there were a series of historical conditions and personalities that gave rise to this lethal atmosphere. The purpose of this essay is to review some of these key lines of descent.

The idea of the drone covers a lot of ground. Although we often associate it with the military robots of today, drones, in some form or another, have been used for decades. One of the first recorded uses was by Austrians in July 1849 after they launched around two hundred pilotless balloons mounted with bombs against the city of Venice. Less than two decades later in the U.S. Civil War, Confederate and Union forces both flew balloons for reconnaissance missions. In 1896 Samuel P. Langley developed a range of steam-powered aerodromes, unpiloted aircraft that were flown successfully along the Potomac River near Washington, D.C. In those ninety-second flights, a glimpse of the future could be seen in the hovering aerodrome. The practice of aerial surveillance later emerged in the 1898 Spanish–American War when the U.S. military fitted a camera to a kite, producing one of the first aerial reconnaissance photographs.

Drone long history. One of the first recorded usages of drones was by Austrians on August 22, 1849. They launched some 200 pilotless balloons mounted with bombs against the city of Venice. Less than two decades later in the U.S. Civil War, Confederate and Union forces both flew balloons for reconnaissance missions. In 1896 Samuel P. Langley developed a range of steam-powered aerodromes, unpiloted aircraft that were flown successfully along the Potomac River near Washington, D.C. In those ninety-second flights, a glimpse of the future could be seen in the hovering aerodrome. The practice of aerial surveillance later emerged in the 1898 Spanish–American War when the U.S. military fitted a camera to a kite, producing the first ever aerial reconnaissance photos.
In World War I, aerial surveillance was used extensively. Analysts used stereoscopes to hunt for visual clues about enemy movements on photos that were stitched together to form mosaic maps. For example, the Royal Flying Corps took over 19,000 aerial photographs and collected a staggering 430,000 prints during the five months of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. This visual analysis upturned the horse as the dominant technology of military reconnaissance. Indeed, the evolution of U.S. drones can be understood as the passage of five overlapping phases.

 First, the drone was used as a practice target for military forces in the early twentieth century. Second, in the interwar period and into World War II, the drone was imagined as a kind of flying bomb that could be delivered behind enemy lines. Third, during the Cold War the drone was seen as a viable surveillance platform able to capture intelligence in denied areas. Fourth, the drone, since the war on terror, has been weaponized, fusing surveillance and killing, therefore becoming a combined hunter–killer, or a predator. The fifth stage sees the drone refashioned as a policing technology in domestic law enforcement. The evolution of these trajectories points to a much more diffuse–and everyday–use of drones for state power, one that mirrors the increasingly amorphous boundaries of the contemporary battlespace.
 
It’s all about the radio…

In any case, remote control would not be possible without strides in radio technology. The telegraph heralded the start of the telecommunications revolution. In 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph was completed, marking a key annihilation of space by time. The first official message on August 16^th 1858 read, “Europe and America are united by telegraphic communication. Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill to men.” The planet had suddenly become smaller. But the submarine cable was fragile and slow, and communication was bound to the physical limits of terrain and cable. Radio, however, could travel through the atmosphere. The electromagnetic spectrum offered a radical liberation for human exchange.
Nikola Tesla first demonstrated the remote control of vehicles at the end of the nineteenth century. On a pond in Madison Square Garden in 1898, the inventor and showman remotely controlled a boat with a radio signal. This was the first such application of radio waves in history, meaning that Tesla’s Patent No. 613,809 was the birthplace of modern robotics. On that body of water floated enormous, and largely unrecognized, military potential.

 In 1916, and across a shrinking Atlantic, the idea of remotely guided weapons sparked the interest of Captain Archibald M. Low, of the Royal Flying Corps in the U.K. Low oversaw the construction of a number of remotely piloted planes that were fitted with explosive warheads. This included the “Aerial Target,” which was first launched in March 1917 from the rear of a truck in England. But the lightweight wooden plane–along with successive incarnations–largely failed to maintain its altitude. Crucially, however, for the period in which they were airborne, the Aerial Targets did respond to radio control, thus launching Tesla’s 1898 “teleautomaton” into the skies.

Back in the U.S., two drones were enjoying more success. In 1917, Elmer Sperry, together with inventor and radio engineer Peter Hewitt, began construction of the radio-controlled “Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane” or “flying bomb.” The Automatic Airplane was able to fly 50 miles carrying a 300-pound bomb after being launched by catapult. Importantly, the pilotless plane was stabilized with the addition of Sperry’s gyroscopic technology. The success of this project led the U.S. Army to commission a second project, the rail-launched Kettering Aerial Torpedo “Bug,” developed by the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company. The Bug was essentially an aerial torpedo: pilotless and guided by preset controls. “After a predetermined length of time, a control closed an electrical circuit, which shut off the engine. Then, the wings were released, causing the Bug to plunge to earth – where its 180 pounds of explosive detonated on impact.” In Germany, a similar project was being pioneered by Dr. Wilhelm von Siemens between 1915 and 1918. The Siemens Torpedo Glider was a missile that could be dropped from a Zeppelin and then guided towards its target by radio. The flying bomb, the Bug, and the Torpedo Glider were all early forerunners to contemporary cruise missiles. But the existence of such planes remained at an experimental stage.
Throughout the 1920s, various remotely controlled ships were used for artillery target training. The late 1930s then saw a “rush of military interest in remotely controlled vehicles,” (Dickson, The Electronic Battlefield, p.181) out of which emerged the second generation “Bug,” as well as the “Bat,” a radio-controlled glide bomb used towards the end of World War II. The British-based “Queen Bee” (and later “Queen Wasp”) was also used for firing practice. In the mid-1940s the GB-1 Glide Bomb was developed to bypass German air defenses. It was a workable glider fitted with a standard 1,000 or 2,000-pound bomb. Made with plywood wings, rudders, and controlled by radio, the GB-1s were dropped from B-17s and then guided by bombardiers to their target below. In 1943, one hundred and eight GB-1s were dropped on Cologne, causing heavy damage. Later in the same war came the GB-4, or the “Robin,” which was the first “television-guided weapon.” Although potentially revolutionary, the crude image could only function in the best atmospheric conditions.

The English-located project known as Operation Aphrodite was one of the most ambitious drone projects in the Second World War. The plan was to strike concealed German laboratories with American B-17 “Flying Fortresses” and B-24 bombers that were stripped down and crammed with explosives. A manned crew would pilot these planes before parachuting out once they crossed the English Channel. At this moment, a nearby “mothership” would take control, receiving live feed from an on-board television camera. Despite the inventiveness of the U.S. Air Force and Navy, Aphrodite was a military failure. It even claimed the life of Joseph Kennedy Jr, after his B-17 exploded over the English countryside. But the military was not about to give up: the development of Aphrodite, together with the strides the Germans were making with the V1 and the more sophisticated V2 missiles, accelerated the development of U.S. unmanned projects. Set against this was the fact that around 40,000 U.S. aircraft were lost in World War II, together with 80,000 crewmembers. There was thus a financial and human drive towards a robotic air force: it was a cheaper, safer way to fight war.
In late 1946 a special “Pilotless Aircraft Branch” of the U.S. Air Force was established to develop three types of drones for use as training targets. Of the three, the airborne-launched Q-2 was the most important, becoming the “father” of a class of target drones built by the Ryan Aeronautical Company. The “Firebees” were first tested in 1951 at Holloman Air Force base. The early Firebee could stay in flight for two hours and was capable of reaching heights of up to 60,000 feet.

The Vietnam War

 One of the most important lines of descent for understanding modern drone warfare is the Vietnam War. The conflict birthed the most sophisticated program of drone surveillance in the history of flight. Moreover, according to James Gibson’s (2000) influential analysis, the Vietnam War was history’s first “technowar”: a war conducted according to technical principles, statistical models, and machinic systems. Of particular importance was the rise of the electronic battlefield. During the 1960s the U.S. Department of Defense began to automate and computerize the battlefield with remote sensors and supercomputers. The Vietnam War was a technologically intensive conflict fought with sophisticated electronic prosthetics, from remote sensors that listened to enemy movements to jet-powered Firebee drones that screamed through the skies.

It In May of 1964, the U.S. first began to consider sending drones to replace its U-2s in spying missions over Cuba. Lightning Bugs flown by U.S. Strategic Air Command were subsequently used for surveillance in so-called “denied areas” across an increasingly widening Cold War battlespace: including Cuba, North Korea, and the People’s Republic of China. In November 1964, The Washington Daily News reported that, “Communist China claimed to have shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane with no pilot.” Time also reported that, “Communist China held an official ceremony celebrating a “major victory” in the shooting down of ‘a pilotless, high-altitude reconnaissance military plane of U.S. imperialism’ over Central-South China.” The U.S. military remained quiet about the wreckage from the secret project: much like it would decades later after the Iranians captured an advanced CIA drone.

During the Vietnam War, Lightning Bugs were widely used over North Vietnam after Rolling Thunder officially ended in 1968. The “electronic battlefield” of the Vietnam War is pivotal to understanding the development of contemporary drone warfare. It marked the turning point in which drones morphed from being “targets” to remote “sensor” platforms that could survey the landscape below. According to Col. John Dale, who was director for Strategic Air Command’s 15^th Air Force headquarters, the Lightning Bugs continually confounded MiG fighters over China, North Korea, and Vietnam, by flying at very low altitudes. As Dale stated, “from October 1968 to November 1972 – four years – we were the only aircraft flying in North Vietnam,” adding that thanks to CIA support, “we were able to do so much for so long, because there weren’t any politicians involved.”
Between 1964 and 1975, Lightning Bugs flew over 3,500 combat sorties in Vietnam. The Lightning Bugs were, however, expensive. In 1969 low-altitude drone operations were costing $250 million a year to maintain (over $1.3 billion today) and were funded mainly by the deep pockets of the National Reconnaissance Office’s black budget. By 1972 surveillance drones were fitted with LORAN technology, which drastically improved.

The robotic eyes in the sky were successful. “In Vietnam, the 147 drones [Lightning Bugs] were used so extensively and for such a variety of missions that Southeast Asia operations jocularly are referred to as the “Tonkin Gulf Test Range.” Between 1964 and 1975, more than 1,000 Lightning Bugs flew over 34,000 surveillance missions across Southeast Asia. Indeed, “Often unknown to both those who looked at them and those that published them, many of the aerial views of North Vietnam that appeared in the American press were taken by the drones” (Dickson, p.188). South of the seventeenth parallel, drones were being trialed as “electronic listening devices” in Igloo White. This included the QU-22B Beech aircraft (Pave Eagle), a prototype unmanned system that was ultimately beset by too many teething problems. But the war managers were not about to give up: thousands of U.S. airmen had died, and thousands of planes had been destroyed. As the Vietnam War was winding down, the robots were gearing up.
Indeed, in addition to funding the Lighting Bug through its proxy, the National Reconnaissance Office, the CIA developed other drones during the Cold War, such as the Aquiline and Axillary airplanes. These prototypes were created in partnership with the Douglas Aircraft Company in the 1960s and tested at Area 51, although they were tabled in the early 1970s

An emerging drone revolution was kickstarted by a May 1970 symposium sponsored by the Air Force and the RAND Corporation. After the second symposium in July, it was decided that the time was ripe for remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs). The Air Force launched the Compass Cope program in the 1970s to increase the range and electronic surveillance capabilities of RPVs. The program involved funding Boeing and Ryan to develop high-altitude, long-endurance drones. These prototypes were the most ambitious unmanned surveillance drones in Air Force history, capable of flying for over 24 hours and piloted from the ground. At the same time that drones were getting bigger– more like the U-2s they were replacing–a range of “mini-RPVs” were developed. An example would be the Praeire prototypes, which were capable of carrying laser designators and TV cameras. In addition to surveillance drones, the Air Force began experimenting with weaponized Firebees. In May of 1973, the Philco-Ford Corporation developed a laser designator that could be attached to a Ryan BGM-34B Firebee drone, with the aim of creating a “strike drone.”
The 1970s were defined by a mixture of unease, skepticism, speculation, and outright hyperbole about the end of the human pilot. Some of the unease stemmed from the day a human pilot was “defeated” by a drone. In 1971, a Ryan official challenged John Smith, then commander of the Navy Fighter Weapons “Top Gun” School to fly against a drone. The F-4 Phantom and its pilot could not keep pace with the inhuman twists and turns the robot was pulling.C ontrolled by pilots on the ground, the Firebee managed to score several “hits” on the F-4 The 1980s saw the robotic torch pass to Israel. It used Pioneer drones in the early 1980s against Syrian forces, leading to the formation of the joint Pioneer UAV Corporation (uniting Israel Aircraft Industries with the AAI Corporation). Nearly all the pieces were in place for the Predator Empire. Except, of course, the Predator. It would take decades before the next phase: the drone as weapon.
In the next section, I want to explore this phase, tracing the historical rise of the Predator drone, beginning in the 1980s. In particular, I want to explore how the American drone became an object of power in tandem with a series of legal objects. While advancements in drones were driven by the requirements of cartographic intelligence, these unmanned objects were very much bound to a series of legal objects that enabled their deployment. In other words, the relationship between technology and law is extremely important in charting the rise of the Predator drone: both come together in the production of geographic knowledge and surveillance, target acquisition, and wider economies of life and death. This relationship between technology and law is embodied in two contrasting figures that did more than most to fuel the motors of the Predator Empire: An Israeli engineer called Abraham Karem and a Saudi jihadist called Osama bin Laden.

The Birth of the Predator

“Rare is the technology that can change the face of warfare. In the first half of the past century, tanks and planes transformed how the world fought its battles. The fifty years that followed were dominated by nuclear warheads and ICBMs, weapons of such horrible power that they gave birth to new doctrines to keep countries form ever using them. The advent of the armed drone upended this calculus: War was possible exactly because it seemed so free of risk. The bar for war had been lowered, the remote-controlled age had begun, and the killer drones became an object of fascination inside the CIA”. (Mark Mazzetti, 2012, ‘The Way of the Knife’, p. 100)

Abraham Karem was born in Baghdad, the son of a Jewish merchant. His family moved to Israel in 1951, and by the 1970s, the young Karem was already building aircraft for the Israeli Air Force, during which time aviation engineers were attempting to satisfy the need for real-time intelligence. In 1980 he emigrated from Israel to Los Angeles and started to build aircraft in his garage. A year later he wheeled out a bizarre, cigar-looking aircraft called the ‘Albatross’ that would change the face of warfare forever.

At Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Karem demonstrated that his Albatross could stay in the air for 56 hours straight. This was somewhat of a revelation. During the Vietnam War, U.S. drones were programmed to fly a pre-programmed route and take still-photographs. But they could only stay in the air for around two hours. The flight of the Albatross led to funding from DARPA, the military’s research and development department. The first outcome from this seed money was a drone called the Amber, developed by Karem’s company Leading Systems Incorporated. Although the Amber enjoyed much success, including demonstrating a flight endurance of 40 hours by 1988, it soon became apparent that the Amber was insufficient for prolonged surveillance: it was unable to carry large quantities of fuel or sophisticated sensor equipment. Leading Systems responded to this deficiency by rolling out the GNAT-750 in 1989. The GNAT improved on the Amber in a number of ways: it was equipped with GPS navigation, which allowed for autonomous missions of up to 48 hours, and also housed infrared and low-light cameras in a moveable sensor turret under its nose.
Karem’s company found itself in fiscal trouble when the military decided not to pursue large-scale development of the Amber. The U.S. Congress had become impatient with UAV development, and by 1990, the Pentagon was forced to consolidate its UAV research into a single Joint Program Office, which wasn’t budgeted for any research. Congress also banned DARPA from supporting UAV projects outside of the jurisdiction of the Pentagon’s JPO, which effectively killed off UAV development, including the embryonic Amber and GNAT programs. Financially stretched, Karem sold his company to Hughes Aircraft, which in turn sold it to San Diego-based General Atomics in 1990. General Atomics decided to continue development of the GNAT-750, and Karem was made part of the company’s subsidiary called General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

 In 1993, three years after General Atomics assimilated Karem’s team, the Pentagon issued a requirement to support UN peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia. What is often referred to as the Bosnian war took place between 1992 and 1995, and resulted in around 100,000 people killed, tens of thousands of women raped, and millions more displaced. In the serenity of the skies however, the GNAT-750 was flown to provide overhead surveillance for NATO convoys and for spotting Serbian artillery.
Because of the urgent need for surveillance as the war unfolded, existing, cumbersome, military acquisition procedures were controversially skipped over. The CIA was able to circumvent the Congressional block on UAV development because it operated outside of military jurisdiction. To recall, drone development in the military been effectively halted through the Congressional JPO. And this presented the perfect opportunity for the CIA. By 1993 the agency had become frustrated with poor quality satellite intelligence over Bosnia. Woolsey, then director of the CIA, was already acquainted with Karem, and looked to General Atomics for a plane that could provide a persistent aerial presence and real-time surveillance. Under the codename LOFTY VIEW, the CIA would operate the GNAT-750 in total secrecy. The GNAT first flew over Bosnia in February of 1994 from nearby Albania (according to Mark Mazzetti – the hangar was rented in exchange for two trucloads of wool blankets, and money came from Representative Charlie Wilson). According to the CIA director, “I could sit in my office, call up a classified channel and in an early version of e-mail type messages to a guy in Albania asking him to zoom in on things”.
But codename LOFTY VIEW was not a real success. The GNAT was vulnerable to inclement weather. And the biggest impediment was the communication device housed in the aircraft’s fuselage: the C-band line-of-sight data link only had a range of around 150 nautical miles. This meant that the drone could only be controlled from a relatively close proximity; seriously restrict its surveillance capabilities. The CIA initially tried to overcome this by using an intermediary aircraft to relay the data, thereby extending the flight orbit of the GNAT. But this relay did not solve the GNAT’s data problems. The surveillance imagery produced simply had too far to travel: from a GNAT-750, to a relay aircraft, to a ground station in Albania, to a satellite circulating the planet, and then finally, onwards to the CIA headquarters in Langley.

 While loitering over Tarnak Farm near Kandahar on September 7^th, 2000, the Predator photographed what appeared to be bin Laden: a tall man dressed in Arab robes surrounded by a ring of armed bodyguards. Almost a year before the 9/11 attacks, the Predator had captured what the agency strongly believed to be the al-Qaeda leader. But at this time, the Predator was just a surveillance plane. And as winter fell in December, winds gathered in North Afghanistan and the Predator’s small engine struggled to fight the headwind gusts, which forced the drone to keep drifting back towards Uzbekistan. The CTC had no choice but to halt the operation. During this hiatus, Cofer Black hoped that lawyers would allow the CIA to fix missiles to the Predators. After years of searching, they had probably located bin Laden at Tarnak Farm, but were unable to take the shot. And yet, Tarnak Farm inside of Afghanistan was a complicated legal and ethical target. Clinton’s administration still had not labelled the Taliban a terrorist organization, and other government officials worried about the geopolitical fallout from striking a target that housed civilians—estimated to include perhaps one hundred women and children. For now at least, the Predator remain leashed.
In February 2001, under a newly elected Bush Administration, the U.S. State department’s lawyers waived concerns that an armed drone might violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This legislation was signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and prevented ground launched ballistic and cruise missiles. As well as rubber stamping the Predator program, Hellfire missiles tests were successfully completed in exercises conducted in May and June. But the Bush administration wasn’t completely sold on drones or on Afghanistan, despite lobbying by the CIA.
By now of course, the armed Predator was virtually a CIA invention: a technology that perfectly embodied the agency’s desire to survey in secret from high in the sky. And yet, even by July 2001, the U.S. went on record to denounce Israel’s use of targeted killings. The U.S. ambassador to Israel said: “The United States government is very clearly on record as against targeted assassinations.… They are extrajudicial killings and we do not support that.”

In the 20th Century, military research precipitated many widely used technological innovations. Surveillance satellites enabled the GPS-system, and defence researchers developed the information swapping protocols that are fundamental to the Internet. UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) fall into a similar category. Designed initially for reconnaissance purposes, their para-military and commercial development was often out of sight of the public.  - See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/drones-history-flying-robots#sthash.bfVKV6L0.dpuf

In the 20th Century, military research precipitated many widely used technological innovations. Surveillance satellites enabled the GPS-system, and defence researchers developed the information swapping protocols that are fundamental to the Internet. UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) fall into a similar category. Designed initially for reconnaissance purposes, their para-military and commercial development was often out of sight of the public.  - See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/drones-history-flying-robots#sthash.bfVKV6L0.dpuf

In the 20th Century, military research precipitated many widely used technological innovations. Surveillance satellites enabled the GPS-system, and defence researchers developed the information swapping protocols that are fundamental to the Internet. UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) fall into a similar category. Designed initially for reconnaissance purposes, their para-military and commercial development was often out of sight of the public.  - See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/drones-history-flying-robots#sthash.bfVKV6L0.dpuf

In the 20th Century, military research precipitated many widely used technological innovations. Surveillance satellites enabled the GPS-system, and defence researchers developed the information swapping protocols that are fundamental to the Internet. UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) fall into a similar category. Designed initially for reconnaissance purposes, their para-military and commercial development was often out of sight of the public.  - See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/drones-history-flying-robots#sthash.bfVKV6L0.dpuf

New Solo Update

This week we’ve rolled out some important updates that will go a long way toward making your Solo experience even more smooth and easy. This includes updates for both Solo and the Solo app—remember, the Solo app will do all of the update work wirelessly, without any need to connect to Solo with cables. For a walkthrough of that workflow, see the bottom of this post.

Here’s a quick summary of what the new updates include and what that means to you.

Solo 1.05

This is an update for Solo’s onboard software, basically an update for the copter itself. Mostly this round involves tuning and improving Solo’s GPS functionality. With these updates, Solo has better GPS acquisition, which means good things for your in-flight experience. Here’s what we’ve done.

 

Solo will now fly better in environments where GPS signal may be less accessible or more sensitive, such as areas with peripheral objects like buildings and trees that can interfere with reception. But even with this improvement you’ll want to be mindful when you choose where to fly. Please stick to wide open places without nearby trees or structures that could occlude or interfere with the satellite signals Solo relies on for its GPS lock. This is especially important for new users who might not yet be comfortable flying in FLY:Manual mode.

Speaking of which, Solo now detects when GPS starts to decay and automatically switches you into FLY:Manual mode when the signal drops below a certain threshold. (In FLY:Manual, Solo automatically holds its altitude for you, but you’re responsible for controlling its position in space; it’s like Solo’s on a skating rink in the air.) The Solo controller will vibrate and let you know when you have good GPS again, and will automatically put you back into regular FLY mode. If you’re flying for a while without GPS, Solo won’t automatically switch you back into FLY; however, the controller will vibrate and let you know the option is again available.

These updates also improve Solo’s GPS checks. Solo measures GPS quality and ensures the lock is strong and steady before takeoff. If it doesn’t have a good signal, the controller will say “Searching for GPS”; if you really want to fly, you can flip into FLY:Manual, but be aware that Solo’s home location will be set in the first spot where it gets a good GPS lock.

And remember: When GPS is lost, neither “pause” nor “return home” functions are available because they’re position-based. For this reason, we strongly urge all users to spend time in an open space getting comfortable with FLY:Manual*. This way, if you fly into an environment with poor GPS reception, you’ll still feel comfortable controlling Solo.

Lastly, if Solo’s in Land mode—such as if battery is running low or you’ve hit RTL—you can reverse its descent just by increasing the throttle. This means that if you want to break control of an auto-land or a failsafe, you have the option to—but be careful and always pay attention to what Solo tells you, because you might be in a failsafe mode and not know it.

DJI Introduces Next-Generation Matrice 600 Aerial Platform

DJI on Sunday introduced the Matrice 600, its next-generation aerial platform, marking a new era for professional aerial photography, filmmaking and industrial applications. 

The M600 integrates DJI’s brand-new A3 flight controller onboard and features advanced Lightbridge 2 video-transmission technology that offers high frame rates and HD live-streaming capability at distances up to five kilometers. 

“The M600 is the most-powerful and easiest-to-use professional platform DJI has ever produced,” said Senior Product Manager Paul Pan. “We’ve pre-programmed all M600 platform data and information into the A3 flight controller, remote and transmission system to minimize setup and get you flying as quickly as possible.” 

The M600 is a six-rotor system with a maximum payload of 6.0 kilograms, making it ideal for the full range of DJI’s Zenmuse gimbals, including the Z15 series and the Zenmuse X series cameras, which are unmatched in providing stabilized aerial imagery. The M600’s carrying weight also allows it to fly the Ronin MX, DJI’s newest handheld and aerial three-axis gimbal. The M600’s propulsion system is dustproof to simplify maintenance and increase durability. It has actively cooled motors for more-reliable flight, and its landing gear is retractable for full 360-degree, unobstructed imaging. 

The M600 is powered by six DJI Intelligent Batteries. The customized battery-management system and power distribution board allow all six batteries to be turned on and off with the push of one button and keep the system aloft, should a single battery fail. The M600 will fly up to 36 minutes with a Zenmuse X5 camera attached and up to 16 minutes with a larger camera, such as a RED EPIC. Flight time will vary for different cameras, gimbals and a number of other conditions. 

Integrated A3 Flight Controller 

Setting the M600 apart is its integrated A3 flight controller. It uses sine-wave-driven, intelligent electronic speed controllers to ensure the M600 performs accurately, safely and efficiently. Meanwhile, self-adaptive flight systems adjust parameters automatically, based on different payloads.  

It’s upgradable to the A3 PRO system, which features advanced diagnostic algorithms that compare sensor data from three Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) units and three inertial measurement units.  

The A3’s GNSS system can also be optionally upgraded to DJI Real-Time Kinematic technology, offering centimeter-accurate positioning to allow for complex maneuvers in an industrial setting and so that cinematic shots can be precisely replicated. The RTK technology can also withstand magnetic interference. 

The M600 supports the DJI GO app, which includes a live video feed, battery and redundancy status, transmission strength and other data to keep the user informed of flight status at all times. The app also provides access to aperture, shutter speed, photo and video capture on any Zenmuse X-series camera, plus remote focus on the Zenmuse X5 and X5R cameras. 

The M600 is a top-quality development platform, compatible with the DJI Onboard Software Development Kit and Mobile SDK to work with different industrial applications. It has dual parallel CAN and API ports for connecting DJI devices, including the Guidance sensor system, RTK GPS units or third-party components. 

The M600’s retail price, including the integrated A3 flight controller with Lightbridge 2 and a full set of batteries, is $4,599.  

Works Seamlessly with Ronin-MX 

When paired with the new DJI Ronin-MX, the M600 offers best-in-class three-axis aerial video stabilization. The latest in the Ronin line is also the most-versatile, working both on the ground and in the air with minimal setup.  

The Ronin-MX works perfectly with the M600, as a fully integrated system that includes the A3 flight controller, Lightbridge 2 transmission system and gimbal in the air. It’s the first universal aerial gimbal DJI has made that communicates with the onboard DJI flight controller. 

It’s fully compatible with a rich selection of DJI accessories for long-distance focus and aperture control and features remote start/stop controls and video transmission. The Ronin-MX is built for convenient, handheld use, but it also has multiple operation modes, including underslung, upright and briefcase. Apart from the M600, it’s also compatible with video cranes. 

“For film directors, the M600 is a game-changer. There are other options out there, but none that integrate a top-class flight controller, video-transmission system like Lightbridge 2 and support for a wide range of cameras and gimbals,” said DJI Executive Creative Director Sheldon Schwartz. “If you go with the new Ronin-MX on the M600, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to get unparalleled stability and cinematic-quality shots.” 

The Ronin-MX has a built-in, independent IMU module, a Bluetooth module and a 2.4GHz receiver. It operates through the DJI GO app and has settings for SmoothTrack and gimbal-tuning for various cameras, including some of the RED series, DSLRs and other professional camera. It also operates in multiple modes, including aerial and car mount. 

Mounted on the M600, the Ronin-MX’s CANBUS port allows all flight controller data to pass through to the Ronin-MX, meaning the gimbal is positionally aware and able to keep the horizon level. The Ronin-MX can pan 360 degrees, tilt +45 to -135 degrees and has redundant slip rings, offering enhanced reliability for operators. With an optional accessory, the Ronin-MX can transmit video real-time from a mounted camera, making full use of the M600’s Lightbridge 2 capabilities. It will also be compatible with the DJI Focus, through a wireless adapter mounted to the Focus remote. 

The Ronin-MX is powered by a 4S Ronin-M battery. Third-party cameras mounted on the Ronin MX can be powered by an optional onboard DJI battery. 

The Ronin MX is compatible with a wide range of cameras from Arri, Black Magic, Canon, Panasonic, RED, Sony and Nikon. Its maximum load weight is around 4.5 kilograms.  

The Ronin MX retails for $1,599. Bundled with the M600 and integrated A3 flight controller and Lightbridge 2, it will sell for $5,999. 

U.S. Police Forces Ponder Drone Buys Amid Legal Concerns

As public-safety agencies worldwide continue to discover more and better ways to use drones (examples here, here andhere), American police officials wrestle with questions regarding whether or not their departments should take the UAV plunge given so much ambiguity regarding drone regulation at the state and municipal level.

In Rochester, Minn., the local police department thinks drone deployment could help quickly locate a suspect immediately following a crime. Led by Officer Rey Caban, the department isrequesting one drone to be used for “missing or endangered persons cases, hostage situations, dangerous apprehensions or even in natural disasters.”

Although the department has not decided on a specific model yet, officials say they want to spend $15,000 for a drone that can fly for at least 30 minutes to be equipped with thermal and night-vision camera capabilities.

“The main goal of having a UAV for the department is to save lives, it’s not to spy on people,” Caban told the Post-Bulletin. The measure must be approved by the county commission after a public hearing.

Currently, Minnesota has no laws dealing with drone use by police — however, as writer Taylor Nachtigal points out: “Changes will likely come after legislationwas introduced in the Minnesota Legislature last session that would regulate drone use and ban their use for gathering ‘evidence or other information on individuals.’”

Meanwhile in Snohomish County, Wash., the chief pilot of the sheriff’s office is advising public safety agencies in the region to delay making any drone purchases for now as the Evergreen State’s own legislature contemplates new UAV rules. Sheriff’s Officer Bill Quistorf believes there are too many privacy concerns under debate.

“We’re not even close to using it for law enforcement,” Quistorf said in an interview with The Herald of Everett, Wash. “There are larger hurdles to clear if we have any proposed plan to use it for law enforcement.”

Currently, the state legislature is still reviewing drone policy. In 2014, Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed lawmakers’ first effort to regulate UAVs. Quistorf told reporters that he predicted “public agencies eventually will be required to keep archives of drone flight logs, operator information, aerial photos and videos. All of that information could be disclosable under public records laws – that raises concerns because drones are likely to capture images of people’s faces, license plates and other data, he said. Those issues need to be sorted out.”

Of course, any new state laws concerning drones may be rendered moot after the FAA released a Fact Sheet in December warning that the federal agency retained sole “authority to regulate the areas of airspace use, management and efficiency, air traffic control, safety, navigational facilities, and aircraft noise at its source.”

We see ourselves as the vanguard': the police force using drones to fight crime

The video begins with a suspect in a red car screeching to a halt outside an abandoned farmhouse with two police vehicles, sirens blazing, in hot pursuit. 

The suspect makes off on foot, waving a large handgun in front of him.

Then something unusual happens. Out of the back of a police car, officers grab a gadget about the size of a suitcase, assemble it within seconds and then launch it buzzing into the air. It hovers directly over the suspect, streaming images of the man from a high-definition camera down to a mobile computer screen. “I have a visual of the suspect,” an officer says into his radio device. “Positive ID of a gun in his right hand – proceed with caution.”

The film is an elaborate piece of theatre, replete with hard-rock soundtrack, designed to show off the law enforcement potential of the Qube, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The gadget – which has four rotor blades, is three feet long and weighs 5.5lbs – is at the forefront of the use of drone technology by police forces in the US.

Among the early adopters experimenting with drones is the Grand Forks sheriff’s department in North Dakota. It now has a fleet of four UAVs, including a Qube, another quadrotor called a Draganflyer, and a fixed-wing Raven.

That puts Grand Forks, a town of just 50,000 people close to the Canadian border, in the thick of one of the most hotly contested questions in modern policing – whether drones are a powerful way to improve public safety or a threat to individual privacy. Few places are as far advanced in addressing the issue as Grand Forks – so far, only about a dozen police departments across the US are thought to be fully equipped and trained to use the aircraft, and Grand Forks was the first in the nation to be given federal approval to fly at night.

“We see ourselves as the vanguard of the safe use of small UAVs for law enforcement,” said deputy sheriff Alan Frazier.

Since the local department began testing drones about 18 months ago, it has flown 11 active missions with the unmanned aircraft. None of them, it must be said, was anything like as dramatic as the scene in the Qube publicity video.

Five of them involved putting a drone up over a crime or traffic accident scene to take digital photographs that might provide detectives with useful intelligence from an aerial perspective. Two of the missions were related to the threat of flooding from the Red river, which is an annual hazard in the region. A further three of the events were searches for missing people – two victims of drowning and the third a person concussed in a car crash who wandered away from the scene in a daze.

Of the remaining two missions, one involved a search for two suspected criminals who had escaped from a local jail. It was thought that the men were hiding out in one of the giant fields that fill this part of the northern Great Plains.

The field was covered in corn stalks rising seven or eight feet high that made visibility on the ground impossible, and it would have taken a Swat team many hours to search it on foot. So instead they launched over the field a Qube fitted out with a thermal-imaging device that could detect any live presence through body heat. The field was quickly traversed, and found to be empty – though the suspects were not there, the automated search freed up police officers to look elsewhere and the suspects were soon picked up in the surrounding area.

The final mission came in an investigation into the rape of two students in their college apartment. Sheriffs wanted to test out a theory that the suspect had stalked his victims for some time, so they flew a drone outside the window of his apartment to show that he had a clear line of sight to the women’s premises. The footage, taken by high-definition camera, was of high-enough quality that it could be presented in court as forensic evidence.

Frazier is a proselytizer for law enforcement drones. He believes they add to the police officer’s toolkit in 
fighting crime. He also stressed how cheap they are to run – when he worked with manned police helicopters in his previous job in Glendale, southern California, the unit cost $12m a year to sustain, while his current drone unit in Grand Forks costs just $10,000 annually.

As interest in drones has grown among police agencies, so too have fears about the downsides. Debates have raged across the country about whether the technology could lead to a vast expansion of police surveillance on individuals.

Such concerns have been fueled by plans floated by police departments for blanket surveillance. The city of Ogden, Utah, came in for a lot of criticism when it proposed putting a blimp semi-permanently on patrol.

At a recent police trade show in Oakland, California, called Urban Shield, drone companies were marketing UAVs equipped with high-definition cameras. One firm, HaloDrop, said it was developing software that would facilitate the filming of a face from as much as 300 meters away, using stabilised imaging that could then be passed through police face recognition databases.

Debates around the appropriate limits to police drones have in turn led to legislative action. In the most recent and high-profile case, the California legislature passed a new law that would impose a strict requirement on all law enforcers that they must acquire warrants before launching drones in all 
 but emergency situations.

Jay Stanley, an expert on technology-related privacy issues at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that so far the small number of police forces that have adopted drones appear to be using them in relatively sensible and cautious ways. But he warned against complacency about the future.

“Whenever there’s a powerful new technology – license plate readers are a good example – the police vigorously adopt it. And they often try to keep it secret,” Stanley said.

“We are in the very early days here. The current baby steps the police are taking to use drones will be replaced by a much broader use if we don’t act first to put in place commonsense regulations.”

Frazier believes that the privacy fears around police drones are overblown. He thinks media sensationalism, coupled with public confusion about military drones, has given civilian unmanned aircraft a bad name.

“There’s been a lot of misnomers about these craft as covert spy tools. ‘Drone’ has become a negative term. We don’t use them covertly at all – we only use them for events that are totally overt or where individuals have no grounds for privacy such as those two fugitives hiding out in a corn field.”

But some aspects of the arrangements in Grand Forks might give civil liberties advocates grounds for concern. Asked how long the police stored images and other data gathered by its fleet of drones, Frazier gave the vague reply: “We keep it as long as an investigation is ongoing”.

He said that in his experience the experiment with police drones has been enthusiastically received by the public. The contention is borne out by research conducted by the state’s Unmanned Aerial Systems Research Compliance Committee, which was set up two years ago specifically to set ethical and privacy boundaries on drone research in North Dakota as part of the creation of the country’s first official drone test site.

The committee has carried out its own opinion survey of people living in the north-east of the state and found that most citizens are strikingly relaxed about the idea of unmanned police drones buzzing through the famously open skies of North Dakota.

About nine out of ten respondents supported the use of drones in a hostage-taking scenario, a search for missing children or adults, or for disaster response. Similarly overwhelming support was shown for police using drones to hunt for crime suspects or for those illegally crossing the nearby border with Canada or the southern border with Mexico.

Most respondents withdrew their approval of drones, however, when it came to enforcing traffic violations – suggesting that people become flustered about the technology when it could potentially be used against them. In a similar vein, the deployment of police drones to detect illegal hunting or fishing garnered support from only 58% of participants.

“People seem to get less keen on the idea when it gets a little closer to home,” said Thomasine Heitkamp, chair of the compliance committee.
That might explain the paradox that the idea that most upset respondents in the survey was precisely the area that has attracted most interest from big corporations – commercial deliveries to the home. As Google, Amazon, FedEx and many others scramble to develop delivery-by-drone services, the opinion poll made clear people’s wariness about the concept, with 80% opposing alcohol deliveries to the door and 60% saying no to take-out food being dropped by quadcopter.

Packages of the sort that Amazon and FedEx would deliver by drone did somewhat better, with 40% opposition, but that was still greater than the 30% approval rate.

It is arguable how much North Dakota – a solidly conservative state that last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1964 – is representative of the attitude towards drones in the rest of the US. It is unlikely, for instance, that more liberal parts of the country would agree with the 70% of respondents who said they were comfortable with drones being used by the military within US borders.

Heitkamp said she would like to expand the survey to more urban areas on the coast. “Would people respond differently in LA than they did in Langdon, North Dakota?” she said she wondered.

Whether or not North Dakota is out of step with other parts of the US, Frazier plans to carry on developing drones because he is convinced they add a whole new layer of aerial support to officers on the ground. “We made a decision,” he said. “While other agencies sat on the fence, we decided there were no hoops we weren’t going to jump through to make this happen. We persisted.”