Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare

by William M. Arkin

  In the world of unmanned systems, Pioneer and Shadow are called small unmanned aerial systems (SUAS), that is, more than 4.5 pounds but less than 55 pounds.4 They are also sometimes called tactical unmanned aerial vehicles (TUAV): directly supporting those at the edge of combat. But neither title quite explains their position in the network of drones as so many more have emerged. These Shadows in the middle, not too large and not too small, are operated by a platoon of men to support the intelligence needs of a fighting brigade of some 3,000 to 3,500 men. The unit is assigned four drones, two ground control stations, one rail launcher, and eight HUMVEEs (a Shadow unit requires three C-130 air transports to deploy it).5

  “Medium” doesn’t mean just right, though, as each size has not just a different function at a different echelon in the military but also different owners and sponsors, each with their own priorities (and budgets). Shadows are thus far larger cousins of the Class 1 UAVs, or the small drones, and even there “small” doesn’t mean micro-or nano, which would come later. Their story begins with—if there is ever a beginning—Pointer, another patriarch introduced in the late 1980s. Pointer was a two-man-portable, hand-launched 8.3-pound drone, with a nine-foot wingspan—it was essentially a remote-controlled sailplane powered by a small electric motor. Pointer served with the army and marine corps in Desert Storm and was used by special operations command in the 1990s as a test bed for miniaturized sensors. The standard Pointer, with its tiny electrooptical and infrared camera, or alternatively with a chemical agent detector, had an endurance of approximately two hours flying at an altitude of about 500 feet, feeding its images directly back to its operators, where they were recorded on 8mm tape. One of the operators could also use a microphone to annotate the video while it was being recorded if it was to be further distributed.6 The first special operations units to go to Afghanistan in 2001 took the latest generation of Pointers with them, now integrated with a GPS-based autonomous navigation unit. Word soon spread that individual soldiers were successfully using and controlling their own drones in an austere environment, and the demand for personal eyes in the sky was created.7

  Pointer was also cousin to Flashlight, which was part of the Pathfinder tribe of experimental platforms, all hand-built prototypes born of 9/11 and made for special operations and shipped out into combat for the express purpose of testing and gaining user feedback; the plan from the very beginning was to spiral and spiral until a production model was finally determined. Along the way, Pathfinder begat Puma and WASP; and from other parts of the military and intelligence community came Buster and Silver Fox, which begat Swiper, which should not be confused with T-Hawk or Manta or Coyote or SuperBat or Urban Canyon, and which are all a different clan than Desert Hawk or gMAV; but I’m getting ahead of myself. Pathfinder begat Raven in 2002, a veritable monster at double Flashlight’s size, but the drone that would become the most ubiquitous personal ISR vehicle ever.8

  Puma emerged as a significantly upgraded Pointer, a spiraling off initially for special operations use, while Raven, a completely new design, was smaller, lighter, and more capable. Dragon Eye was selected as the marine corps replacement for Pointer and deployed the same year. Backpack-carried and battery-powered, it was used in the initial Iraq invasion as well, the marines planning to purchase 300 until it too was scuttled in favor of Raven. And then the ultraquiet Dragon Eye ATR version was demonstrated, flying off of a submarine two years later, providing security as it entered port.9

  I’ve never been much of a weapons buff, and I know all of these begats and ancestral genealogies could get a bit confusing and even tedious, but the details are important. I’m not directing your attention to what provides the usual fanfare in histories and press releases and news stories—the airframes and their performance stats and mankind’s ongoing love affair with flight—but to the black boxes and how each generation of drone, how each spiral of development within the same airframe, solidified the presence of the unmanned, infiltrated further into military and intelligence society, and consequently put more and more eyes on a truly global battlefield, which then demanded more and more care and feeding of the overall Data Machine. Moreover, the growing IED problem and frustrations in Afghanistan and Iraq led to an entire other class of unmanned systems to be developed: ad hoc, irregular, special, secret. To understand drones, then, and therefore to understand the world of Gilgamesh that has emerged, the details (and the chaos) of these hydra-headed developments are essential. The black boxes and their variety and versatility have been not just the hidden history but also, as we’ll see, the makers of the future.

  So even smaller than the family of drones in the mini category are the microdrones. The Wasp Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) is part of this family, just eight inches long and weighing 15 ounces (430 grams), with an endurance of over one and a half hours. Wasp can be manually operated or programmed for GPS-based autonomous navigation from takeoff to landing. Its synthetic materials act as both battery and main wing structure. The Battlefield Air Targeting Micro Air Vehicle (BATMAV) competition actually begat Wasp, which started as yet another experiment, spawning competitors and spiraling until it became its own first cousin. Wasp, of course, begat Wasp AE (all environment), which begat a slightly larger Wasp-III/BATMAV, weighing in at a lovely 16 ounces. Air Force Special Operations Command started getting Wasps in 2007, issuing them to ground controllers, the JTACs calling in airstrikes to give them greater situational awareness. It wasn’t a true micro, but most important, it was built to utilize the same common ground station as its larger and dominant cousin, Raven, and thus could become a full member of the Machine. Wasp is described as “expendable,” and “micro” sounds sexy and futuristic and conjures all sorts of science fiction images of a barely observable object weaving its way into rooms. But at $50,000 each, it is neither expendable nor sneaky.10

  Raven, all 4.2 pounds (1.9 kg) of smartdrone perfection, is certainly not as famous as any of the larger drones, yet it has become the drone—at least 14,000 Raven were deployed by 2014 around the world; three-quarters of the US inventory of all drones is Raven, the most common in all the world’s militaries. With a wingspan of 4.5 feet and a 3-foot length, Raven looks like a remote-controlled hobby plane. The drone flies day or night as high as 500 feet, manually via wireless link or autonomously through a set of preprogrammed GPS waypoints. At 27 to 60 mph maximum speed, Raven can range as far as 10 kilometers from its base station, with an endurance of 80 to 110 minutes from a single-use battery (the endurance drops to 60 to 90 minutes with a rechargeable, but then that battery can be recharged by a HUMVEE anywhere).

  At two-thirds of the size and weight of Pointer, and with 50 percent greater endurance at twice the altitude of Dragon Eye, it’s no wonder that Raven has become so popular.11 A single fully operational model still demands two people to carry, the multiple suitcase load including the airframe, camera, batteries, erectable antenna, laptop ground control station, mission viewer, network hub, cables, and spare parts. Raven can be prepared in the field in as little as fifteen minutes, the act of launching it sort of like heaving a javelin. One person prepares and controls the aircraft, the other the ground control station and antenna link. A triangular scope that looks like an old-fashioned slide viewer with an attached darkening eye cover is used to operate the drone and “see” exactly what the Raven sees, the handheld console (“hand controller”) about the size and shape of a video game controller, with three buttons on each side to manually fly it. The laptop incorporates an overlaid digital map and has a touch screen used to set the waypoints.12 The ground control station also observes the wind speeds and directions, and monitors the computer data from the drone itself: speed, altitude, battery level, magnetic heading, direction from the home waypoint to the drone, wind direction, and bearing to the target. Operators can take still pictures and transmit them or even go back in the motion imagery if they miss something. Raven shares its common ground control station not just with Wasp and Puma, but also feeding independently into Com
pany-level tactical command centers, where the imagery can also be simultaneously viewed.13

  Raven is so simple to use that any soldier can be trained in eighty hours to be a certified operator. The training is almost all hands-on, perfect for the digital natives. Raven operators say it’s all about flight hours and finesse to develop what they call “muscle memory,” getting to the point, like when they’re playing a video game, where they know where the buttons are and what to do without even thinking about it.

  Raven lands through what can only be described as a controlled crash (officially it’s called “stall and disassemble on impact”). The operator has a throttle button that can be kicked on and off, and there is an auto-land mode; but still, the airframe almost always breaks apart. But the all-important data link and camera are mounted in a Kevlar-armored coffee-cup-sized nose that is easily removable or can even be jettisoned. If there are any downsides, they are the noise, the vulnerability to ground fire, the restrictions in operating in poor weather or high winds, and, at 14,000 feet maximum, the launch altitude. In theory, Raven ought to be ineffective in a mountainous place like Afghanistan,14 since it was originally conceived as a system for urban use.15 In actual combat, however, operators found Raven far better suited for use in a rural environment “where interference from buildings and various electromagnetic signals were not as prevalent.”16

  Raven A, with separate daytime and nighttime camera mounts, was first flown in 2001 and fielded the next year. Raven A begat the Raven A+, which begat Raven B in 2005.17 AeroVironment, the California manufacturer, received its first full-production US Army contract in October 2005 to supply 2,358 basic Raven systems, each including a ground control station and three air vehicles. Since then, it has received dozens of additional production and spiral contracts. The marine corps, air force, and special operations command all started acquiring their own Ravens; and civil agencies like the US Geologic Survey also began using the drone. And Raven was purchased and started flying with the militaries of Australia, Burundi, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Iraq, Italy, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Thailand, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and Yemen. The official sticker price is $35,000 per drone, but the entire basic “system” costs upward of $250,000, making the cost per drone closer to $75,000. Gimbaled Raven, the latest, is almost double that in expense.18

  Another member of the Raven family, Puma, at thirteen pounds with a nine-foot wingspan, was introduced in 2001 to serve as a quiet alternative, allowing surveillance while avoiding detection. First fielded by the army’s 101st Airborne Division in Afghanistan, it was really intended for use by special operators who couldn’t accommodate themselves to the hum of the Pointer or the buzz of the Raven. Puma, while heavier, is also more portable, fitting into a set of rucksacks and thereby movable off-road without a vehicle. The drone has a communications range of 15 km and flight endurance of two hours; and it can be put into an autoloiter mode at a programmed sensor point of interest. Puma also incorporated the gimbaled sensor package—the rotating eye—so that it is able to fix on a designated point and provide a steady, constant image while compensating for airframe movement.19

  Formally, the army describes the family of small drones that includes Raven and Puma as occupying the bottom of the hierarchy; Shadow at the brigade level in the middle; and its own version of Predator—Gray Eagle—is at the division and above. Until it is fully retired, there is also Hunter, which today includes a signals intelligence black box and even a weapon and is assigned to four corps-level military intelligence units. Hunters are slated to continue flying until 2022, eventually to be replaced by Shadow or some Predator derivative.20

  As the Raven standard caught on, marine corps ground forces also gravitated closer to the army’s standard—WASP and Raven at the battalion level and Shadow at the top—but in the middle, they are adopting their own STUAS—small tactical unmanned aerial system—called Blackjack (Integrator). Blackjack is a 135-pound drone with a 16-foot wingspan, and as a “standard” piece of equipment intended to be assigned to every division, is more “expeditionary” than Shadow, which is to say, it doesn’t require a soccer field for recovery.21 But even there, it uses the same launch and recovery system as another drone called ScanEagle, which flies at the same echelon.

  The Boeing-produced ScanEagle had long been used by the United States in experimentation and is perhaps one of the most interesting cases in the flock, for though it starting flying combat in 2004, it was not even owned by the government. It was the first of the generation of drones rented by the hour from the contractor as “needs” on the battlefield outpaced the ability of the acquisition system to supply them. In Iraq, the United States began renting drones like ScanEagle (as well as manned reconnaissance aircraft), the promise being a surge capability that could be easily demobilized when the need disappeared. ScanEagle flew alongside the marines, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. The Australian army later rented it as well. Blackjack/Integrator was meant to be the permanent replacement for ScanEagle.22 But as the machine continues to move forward regardless of war, ScanEagle was purchased by the United States anyhow in 2012.23

  At this point, an eagle-eyed reader probably is asking why I’ve stressed the importance of the black boxes, yet have hardly mentioned them at all so far, nor described in any detail the sensors on all of these drones. In my defense, I say that even untangling the various tribal affiliations and the interlocking networks of all of these drones, to say nothing of the question of their actual roles and impact, is hard enough. It’s not as though drones just appeared. “Tribal representatives,” as General Jumper called the various operations, intelligence, and support communities, are made up of people in different career fields who each have their own ways and systems and their own interests.24 Nor were they whipped into a mad frenzy simply because of corporate tycoons intent on making money. More accurately, they emerged because people were dying, because there was a sense of threat and frustration, and because there was a need to protect people—to sacrifice anything other than a human being. One could chalk it all up to bureaucratic politics or the military-industrial complex or even technology run amok, but the very human striving of terror versus the machine and the machine versus terror is the most accurate genesis. War didn’t begin on 9/11, nor will the warring end anytime soon, so it is only fitting that the lineage of drones has become as zigzagged and irregular as the master they serve.

  In the spring of 2004, General John Abizaid, the CENTCOM commander who followed Tommy Franks, wrote to Secretary Rumsfeld calling for a “Manhattan-like Project” to counter IEDs, which were the “number one killer of American troops” (and of Iraqi civilians) at the time.25 Insurgent attacks sharply increased after August 2003, tripling by December 2004, remaining at the high level after the Battle of Fallujah, and including suicide bombings and hostage beheadings.26

  At every level all the way down to the platoon and company, the priority became immediate and preemptive lifesaving, each unit focusing on its own challenges.27 The more distant high-value target search effort for the 9/11-related terrorists was given over to the CIA and the growing world of black special operations. At home, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO, pronounced “jy-aid-oh”) was created and large IED-oriented task forces were established in Iraq and Afghanistan to focus the effort. Nothing was seemingly outside the purview of the new counter-IED crusade, and JIEDDO became the premier off-budget sponsor. Task Force ODIN in Iraq (Observe, Detect, Identify, and Neutralize), first established in 2006, and then other counter-IED task forces, overt and clandestine, ended up being a mini-US government and a mini-United Nations. They built up their own air and ground force, their own intelligence establishment, their own research department, their own special operations, their own schoolhouse, their own interrogators, even their own police and bomb squads with laboratories and evidence rooms, the grander theory being that “giving lower-ranking tactical commanders the real-time pe
rsistent surveillance typically reserved for senior leadership and strategic decision makers” would turn the tide.28

  The drone ranks opened to almost any volunteer. Standards were lowered and widened because IEDs had become so lethal. The perfect example is ScanEagle itself. Initially developed by Insitu Group (eventually partnered with and then bought by Boeing) in 2002 to be another begat in the medium competition, it was the smallest drone equipped with a stabilized gimbaled camera with more than twenty-four hours of endurance.29 It just didn’t get any traction with the Pentagon. That is, until the demand for more eyes in the sky, and a sense that the air force was holding back on its Predator support for the troops, led to the idea of a fee-for-service drone. Contractors would fly and maintain the thirty-eight-pound ScanEagles, while the military would supply the mission commanders and analyst support. Fee-for-service caught on; the military didn’t have to buy the platforms, it could lease them. For JIEDDO, it was also all their own: imagery, the signals, the data—anything that would support the new boundless appetite of the counter-IED war. For NATO countries, leasing reconnaissance was capability without commitment to fill the gap until they acquired their own large systems.30

  It isn’t the origin of every irregular or unconventional drone like the ScanEagle, but scratch the surface of Aerosonde, Buster, Swiper, Shrike, Tiger Hunter II, GhostBat, Silver Fox, Golden Eye, Green Dart, Tigershark, T-Hawk, Freewing, Scorpion, Hummingbird, gMAV, or Rmax and you will find birth or rebirth in some IED justification. Each platform and each black box, regular or not, off-budget or leased, open or secret, constituted a “host” for yet more data gathering, even as they also meant an enormous human investment as much to operate as to incorporate into the Data Machine. JIEDDO wasn’t averse to buying or using the standard-issue Shadows or Ravens or Pumas, but it was intent on creating its own focused capability. Thus it would take a Puma and put its own experimental counter-IED black box on it: hail CEASAR (the Communications Electronic Attack with Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and VADER (the Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar), each another warrior thrown into the fight. Nor were drones some cowardly emissary: slow-flying manned aircraft were also purchased and stuffed with “modular” equipment, black boxes: ARMS, MARSS, Highlighter, Liberty.31 The black box, more than the platform, determined where manned or unmanned would go. Soon enough, the army and marine corps, air force and navy, special operations community, JIEDDO, and “other government agencies” were doing the same, buying their own “special” capabilities to pry open and go into the enemy underworld.