Drone swarms: coming (sometime) to a war near you. Just not today
Drone swarms: coming (sometime) to a war near you. Just not today. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Maaike Verbruggen | February 3, 2021 The world got a sneak peek at the future of war last fall when two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus Mountains launched a high-tech barrage of loitering munitions as well as Turkish-, Israeli-, and locally-made drones at each other during a six-week fight over a region disputed by Azerbaijan and Armenia. Media and think-tank writers covering the battle frequently conveyed an eye-popping assessment: Warring factions had used futuristic swarms of drones in the skies over Nagorno-Karabakh. But does this apparent technological leap in warfare mean that such swarms will be a mainstay in conflict?
To spoil the surprise: No, don’t expect a swarm buzzing over your head any time soon.
While militaries are developing the technology, we shouldn’t call the drone formations on the contemporary battlefield swarms. Unlike true swarms, which use artificial intelligence (AI) to operate autonomously, today’s swarms are pre-programmed or remotely controlled. The individual drones neither communicate within the swarm nor do they adapt to their environment. However, at a time of fast-paced drone proliferation, militaries around the world are actively pursuing research and development in swarms.
Even though no one has developed true, autonomous drone swarms yet, we should still be concerned about their humanitarian implications. Just as militaries are preparing for the future of war by developing counter-swarm technologies, the arms control community should start thinking about where to draw the boundaries around their use.
The swarm is coming. In 2017, the US Department of Defense launched a swarm of micro-drones over California where more than 100 vehicles made decisions without human help. The year before, a Chinese academic and corporate partnership reportedly pulled off a similar feat with 67 drones. There is no doubt that the people behind the US Strategic Capabilities Office’s swarm of Perdix drones or the Chinese partnership’s aerial drones do hope to develop fully-fledged swarms—but they are not there yet. We can say the same about the United Kingdom’s drone swarm squadron, Russia’s Flock 93, Chinese naval swarms, and a Turkish “swarm concept,” as well.
According to the swarm robotics literature, swarms are a group of systems that operate as a collective. In a swarm, the individual units interact with each other and have common goals. They execute them as a collective while responding to their environment. “They are going to do their own thing,” a US Air Force official who oversaw the Perdix program told reporters, according to Air Force Magazine. …………….
Swarms and arms control. Swarms pose several potential humanitarian problems. First there is the issue of whether people will have meaningful control over the multiple units in a swarm. Commanding a swarm will be cognitively complex for the operator……….
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Swarms don’t exist yet, despite frequent claims in the media. But militaries are clearly making advances. It’s time for the arms control community to deal with the potential problems that swarms might pose. Most arms control treaties aim at controlling individual weapons, but the harm of swarms does not stem from the units themselves, but rather from their indirect and collective nature. Arms controllers will need a new conceptual toolkit to think about and deal with the risks. Militaries have long moved away from valuing only military assets that are individual, physical, and weaponized and toward a network-based frame. Maybe the arms control community should follow suit. |
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1.This Month
So far, the nuclear lobby has bought the hearts and minds of governments, but has not won the hearts and minds of the people. In a propaganda war, as in all wars, truth is the first victim. But there are many journalists and others out there who will counter the lies of the nuclear industry.
Today, across the world, the nuclear industry is unpopular. It is particularly unpopular with women, and with indigenous peoples. It’s unpopular with those who have suffered from it, such as the veterans who attended nuclear bomb tests, and the ‘downwinders’ who suffered from those same tests. It’s unpopular with families afflicted with cancer from uranium mining. It’s unpopular with Ukrainians and Japanese whose lives have been disrupted by nuclear disasters.
he nuclear industry is also unpopular higher up in the social food chain. Many academics, economists, scientists, and doctors are concerned about the dangers of all kinds that are intrinsic to the nuclear industry.
So who does like the nuclear industry? – careerists in the nuclear industry, careerists in politics, academia, careerists in the Murdoch media, highly paid uranium workers, communities that exist only because of mining, – (the latter can’t really afford not to support it).
The nuclear industry, following in the footsteps of the tobacco and asbestos industries will now blanket its servant mass media, and any other possible avenues – such as education, and politics, – with propaganda.
The main focus of the nuclear lobby’s propaganda? This will now be CLIMATE ACTION .
They’re spending an awful lot of money on this. Despite this huge investment in deception, the nuclear lobby is not winning.
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