The proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicle technology has brought up questions of how to best defend against them.
Hobbyists can build rudimentary aerial drones. Model airplanes have been available in toy stores for decades. Meanwhile, dozens of countries have developed their own technology, or are considering starting programs.
China has developed its own UAV technology and flew its aircraft to provide security at the Olympics last year. In March, a U.S. fighter aircraft tracked, intercepted, then shot down an Iranian UAV that had allegedly strayed into Iraqi airspace, according to press reports. Iran also allegedly provided unmanned aircraft to irregular Hezbollah fighters during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006.
Such technology in the hands of terrorist organizations has caused some concern. One Air Force general said before his retirement in 2005 that he believed that UAVs may one day be used as an improvised weapon. However, there are skeptics that pilotless aircraft will be flying around with explosive devices strapped on.
Larry Dickerson, a UAV analyst with Forecast International, said Hezbollah used the Iranian drones for intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance. The technology was more valuable to them as a means to peer down on Israeli positions than a way to kill soldiers. Plus, Hezbollah has large stockpiles of mortars and rockets. Along with being plentiful, they’re a much cheaper means to deliver explosives than a relatively more costly UAV. And they deliver about the same amount of explosives.
As far as protecting troops, “if you can defend against mortar shells, you can defend against a UAV,” Dickerson said. While they could potentially be more accurate than a mortar, unmanned aircraft are not stealth weapons. They are slow and require noisy propellers. Traditional air defenses, or even a .50 caliber machine gun, should be able to knock them out of the sky, he said.
Jim Tuttle, director of the Department of Homeland Security science and technology directorate’s explosives division, said DHS has examined the possibility that UAVs could be used as a delivery system for IEDs.
“That has been considered … but the threat seems minimal from that standpoint because of the payload of those UAVs,” he said at a National Defense Industrial Association homeland security science and technology conference.
“If you have a Predator, okay. But what terrorist is going to have a Predator?” he said, referring to the Air Force’s medium-sized aircraft. The more ubiquitous smaller aerial drones can only carry a pound or two of explosives. His division is concentrating its efforts on threats that could deliver higher quantities and claim dozens of victims.
Dickerson said there are concerns that the largest high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft such as the RQ-4A Global Hawk could be outfitted to deliver weapons of mass destruction.
These aircraft travel at altitudes of 65,000 feet and have demonstrated the ability to fly nonstop from Australia to California. There is concern that one could potentially be outfitted to carry a nuclear weapon. That’s why they fall under U.S. export control regimes. Trusted allies such as Europe or Japan may receive them, but not others, Dickerson said.
“It is a reconnaissance platform, but it makes people nervous,” he said.