DRONES // Zed Nelson
Summary: In the last few years, ‘drones’ have become synonymous with modern warfare. Impersonal, efficient, and deadly. Used for either surprise attack or invisible, drones are basically unmanned aircraft, carrying either a payload of explosives or surveillance technology.
The United States military first admitted to using armed drones in Iraq and Afghanistan in October 2002. Since 2007, the RAF has deployed an unmanned US aircraft known as the Reaper. Each aircraft, which reportedly cost around UK £5 million, can carry around 1,000lb of bombs and four Hellfire missiles. It is operated by a pilot at a ground station in the US.
BAE Systems manufactures and develops flying drones in the UK. They prefer to call them ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, or ‘UAVs’. The company supplies arms and aircraft to the British Ministry of Defence, the Pentagon, and a list of other client countries. The company drew criticism – along with the British government - for its controversial role in the Al Yamamah arms deals with Saudi Arabia.
Outside conflict zones, BAE Systems say drones can be used for counter-terrorism surveillance, to police borders, monitor immigration or perform search-and-rescue operations at sea. If they get their way, these silent unmanned aircraft could soon be cruising civilian airspace. BAE aims to sell them commercially to British police forces.
Currently in the UK, all aircraft and the airspace they fly in is regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). They will not sanction drones until it can be proven that the technology on board an unmanned aircraft is safe, and intelligent enough to deal with such potential risks as other air traffic, adverse weather conditions or equipment malfunction.
BAE Systems has developed a British drone called the Mantis, which they believe is superior to the US military Reaper. It is entirely autonomous; once the flight path is programmed, it takes off, flies and lands by itself. The Mantis is part of a UK £32 million aerospace programme called Astraea. The programme involves a number of British police forces, and the UK Border Agency, all of whom are looking into how UAVs could be employed in civil airspace.
It is Astraea’s job to prove to the CAA that drones are intelligent and safe enough to roam the already crowded skies without colliding with other air traffic. The Astraea team carry out these tests using a combination of virtual technology - using software to simulate potential danger scenarios in the lab - and by conducting actual flights with the software on board.
There are four tiers of drones. At the highest level, flying at around 60,000ft, sit giants like the US drone Global Hawk, developed for wide-area surveillance. Below that, at 40,000ft, are drones like Britain’s Mantis, followed by tactical aircraft, such as BAE’s ‘Herti’ at 20,000ft, a much smaller machine that was trialled in Afghanistan in 2007. At the lowest level, flying at 1,000ft, UAVs can be as small as 30cm wide, and are controlled like a remote-controlled toy plane with a hand-held unit, or programmed to navigate their way by GPS. These are used mainly by the army for reconnaissance.
When BAE first began working with Astraea, it declared its plan to have drones certified for use in British skies by 2012, in time for the Olympics. Astraea now says that from 2012 and beyond, the UK will be phasing drones into British airspace.
There are potentially vast profits to be made from drones. Experts predict that the global market‚ now at $5 billion annually‚ will rise to $40 billion in the next 10 years as the commercial market for drones takes off.
Beware the all-seeing eye.
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