Page 2 of 2 Drones: A slam-dunk weapons system
By Tom Engelhardt
All this would be possible without so much as touching the civilian population
(which would, of course, then welcome the US as liberators). And later, there
was "netcentric warfare", that Rumsfeldian high-tech favorite. Its promise was
that advanced information-sharing technology would turn a Military Lite into an
uplinked force so savvy about changing battlefield realities and so crushing
that a mere demo or two would cow any "rogue" nation or insurgency into
submission.
You know the results of this sort of magical thinking about wonder weapons (or
technologies) and their properties just as well as I do. The atomic bomb ended
nothing, but led to an almost half-century-long nuclear superpower
standoff/nightmare, to nuclear
proliferation, and so to the possibility that, someday, even terrorists might
possess such weapons.
The electronic battlefield was incapable of staving off defeat in Vietnam. That
impermeable anti-missile shield never came even faintly close to making it into
the skies. Those "smart bombs" of the Gulf War proved remarkably dumb, while
the 50 "decapitation" strikes the Bush administration launched against Saddam
Hussein's regime on the first day of the 2003 invasion of Iraq took out not a
single Iraqi leader, but "dozens" of civilians. And the history of the
netcentric military in Iraq is well known. Its "success" sent secretary of
defense Rumsfeld into retirement and ignominy.
In the same way, robot drones as assassination weapons will prove to be just
another weapons system rather than a panacea for American warriors. To date, in
fact, there is at least as much evidence in Pakistan and Afghanistan that the
drones are helping to spread war as that they are staunching it.
Yet, the above summary is, at best, only half the story. None of these wonder
weapons or technologies succeeded in their moment, or as advertised, but that
fact stopped none of them from embedding themselves in the American world. From
the atomic bomb came a whole nuclear landscape that included the Strategic Air
Command, weapons labs, production plants, missile silos, corporate interests,
and an enormous world-destroying arsenal (as well as proliferating versions of
the same, large and small, across the planet). Nor did the electronic
battlefield go away. Quite the opposite - it came home and entered the everyday
world in the form of sensors, cameras, surveillance equipment and the like, now
implanted from the US's borders to its cities.
True, Reagan's impermeable shield was the purest of nuclear fantasies, but the
"high frontiersmen" gathered and, taking a sizeable bite of the military
budget, went on a decades-long binge of way-out research, space warfare plans
and commands, and boondoggles of all sorts, including the staggeringly
expensive, still not operational anti-missile system that the Bush and now
Obama administrations have struggled to emplace somewhere in Europe. Similarly,
ever newer generations of smart bombs and ever brighter missiles have been, and
are being, developed ad infinitum.
Rarely do wonder weapons or wonder technologies disappoint enough to disappear.
Each of these is, in fact, now surrounded by its own mini-version of the
military-industrial complex, with its own set of corporate players, special
lobbyists in Washington, specific interests and congressional boosters. Each
has installed a typical revolving door that the relevant Pentagon officials and
officers can spin through once their military careers are in order. This is no
less true for that wonder weapon of our moment, the robot drone.
In fact, you can already see the military-industrial-drone-robotics complex in
formation. Take just one figure, Tony Tether, who for seven years was the head
of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which did its share
of advanced robotics research. When he left the Pentagon in September, it was,
according to Noah Shachtman, who runs Wired's Danger Room blog, to join "an
advisory panel of Scientific Systems Company, Inc, which works on robotics
projects for the Pentagon. In June, he joined the board of Aurora Flight
Sciences, Inc, developers of military unmanned aircraft". He has also become "a
part-time technical consultant and 'strategic advisor' for the influencers at
The Livingston Group" which represents some large defense contractors like
Northrup Grumman and Raytheon.
The drone industry, too, already has its own congressional representatives.
Republican Congressman and former House Armed Services Committee chairman,
Duncan Hunter, for instance, is a major drone booster. In April 2009, he
insisted that "we must also press forward with the development of the next
generation of UAVs, including the Predator C. During my service in the Marine
Corps, I engaged targets with the Predator A and B Series, and I recognize the
advantages offered by Predator C." In 2008, General Atomics, whose "affiliate"
makes the Predator drone, gave US$6,000 to Hunter's election campaign
committee, making it his 13th-largest contributor. That company was also the
number two contributor to his Peace Through Strength political action
committee.
In the American grain
This, then, is the future that you can see just as well as I can. When the
Obama administration decides to up the ante on drone use in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, as it's soon likely to do, it will be ensuring not the end of
al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but the long life of robot war within the US's
ever-more militarized society. And by the time this set of robotic dreams fails
to pan out, it won't matter. Yet another mini-sector of the military-industrial
complex will be etched into the American grain.
Whatever the short-term gains from introducing drone warfare in these past
years, we are now locked into the 24/7 assassination trade - with the US's own
set of non-suicide bombers on the job into eternity. This may pass for sanity
in Washington, but it's surely helping to pave the road to hell.
Haven't any of these folks ever seen a sci-fi film? Are none of them Terminator
fans? Are they sure they want to open the way to unlimited robot war, keeping
in mind that, if this is the latest game in town, it won't remain mainly an
American one for long. And just wait until the first Iranian drone takes out
the first Balochi guerrilla supported by American funds somewhere in Pakistan.
Then let's see just what we think about the right of any nation to summarily
execute its enemies - and anyone else in the vicinity - by drone.
Is this actually what we Americans want to be known for? And if we let this
happen, and General Atomics is working double or triple shifts to turn out ever
more, ever-newer generations of robot warriors, while the nation suffers 10.2%
unemployment, who exactly will think about shutting them down?
Note on Further Reading: For a fascinating, if under-appreciated history
of American dreams about ultimate weapons leading to world peace, don't miss
Bruce Franklin's remarkable little book (reissued in 2008 in an updated
edition),
War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination. On drones, the
piece to read is Jane Mayer's recent
The Predator War in the New Yorker.
Katherine Tiedemann and Peter Bergen's
Revenge of the Drones, a report from the New America Foundation, has a
particularly sensible discussion of a question that is, at present, impossible
to answer (because no reporters are around): How many civilians have died in
drone attacks in the Pakistani borderlands? Priya Satia's Nation magazine
report,Attack
of the Drones, is well worth checking out, too. ("Lord Bingham, a
retired senior British judge, compares hunter-killer drones to cluster bombs
and land mines, weapons that have been deemed too cruel for use ... Airstrikes,
manned or unmanned, regulated or not, cannot build a better Afghan future.")
And my earlier drone piece,
Terminator Planet, might be worth a glance. The website to keep your eye
on for the latest news on drones and other advanced military technology is Noah
Shachtman'sDanger Room, much
cited above.]
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
