They are Obama's favourite weapon:Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones.
Is war becoming like a video game?It's nothing like a video game
What's next for these robots of the battlefield?
We're in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The US Air Force have invited the mediato
Holloman Air Force Base. The main attraction is the Reaper,an unmanned
aerial vehicle. I don't know where to go to actually get a
shot of the Reaper taking off but we can provide extra B-Roll probably tomorrow.
First we meet the squadron commander.
This is a MQ-9, this is a Reaper. Why have drones or RPAs as you like to call
them become so popular with the US Air Force? Do you have an explanation?Yeh, they work.
They are a force multiplier and they save lives. You know I really believe that the
Remotely Piloted Aircraft, not drones because we are actually controlling them... But Remotely
Piloted Aircrafts save lives. This is a MQ-9, this is a Reaper.
What is it used for?It's used primarily for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance
and it does have a strike role too. What is the pay-load? The pay-load is what you see
on this airplane, on each side you can carry two hell-fires, you can carry a bomb and on
the other side you put another bomb, 500 pound class bomb and two hell-fires so you got four
missiles, and two bombs on each airplane.How long can this plane stay in the air?This airplane
can stay in the air for probably 16 hours. And that is a big advantage compared to an
M-16 or a fighter plane.It is, that's one of the advantages that this one has, it's
got persistence, persistence and it's always over the top if they are needing help from
above. You don't need to fly back to base to re-fuel you can just stay for 16...We can
stay for a long place for a long time, yes Like the colonel said, primary role is intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance. So to accomplish that we do have the primary payload, cameras
both day TV and night vision camera.Do you have a live video link from the aircraft back
to base?Yes sir.And how good is that quality? You can really see pretty good what's happening
on the ground?Yes sir, its very good quality.Can you give me your name and rank?No sir, uh,
my name is Majoy Trey.And your last name?Not able to divulge that.
This is an Air Force policy that we are following, so all were doing is following that policy
that's been set in place to protect our pilots since they are operators due to much of the
occupational security risks that they may face in their line of work.To your right is
McDonalds!Anything, nothing? It's early. The Americans claim the drones are vitalin
combating terrorism. They're much cheaper and easier.You can do
some serious damagewith them.They want to suppress Al Qaedathat way.
This is Anwar Al-Awlaki. The CIA say he was the leaderof Al Qaeda in Yemen. Yemen and
America are not at war.But the US sent a drone after this manand three fellow passengers
anyway. All of them were killed without trial or a
public presentation of evidence against them. They were killed when missiles were fired
from drones that were operated by the CIA or the US Military.
ACLU, a civil rights organisationin New York......is currently suing the state forsummary executions
with drones. I think there is certainly concern that the
United States is setting the precedent in it's use of drones that it would not be happy
with other countries using in the same way. Your absolutely right that the technology
of drones is not particularly complicated at its base. And there are dozens of nations
now that are developing or already have drone technology. And the United States now claims
the ability to use these drones to kill people all over the world. I suspect that the United
States will not be so happy if a country like Russia or China or Iran claims the same authority
and starts going after United States citizens or others, it's really a dangerous precedent.
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are controlledfrom these containers in America. The pilots don't
gointo the war zone at all. They drive to the base in the morning, kill some Al Qaedaor
Taliban fighters and go home for dinner at the end of the day.
It is a unique capability to be able to operate State side and then go home to your family.
It's kinda weird though, because half of your day your operating and performing missions
then you go home to be with your family and for some folks that can be a challenge, for
some of the younger guys but the Air Force does a very good job we have a lot of resources,
chaplains, medical personnel for any issues they may see they are well taken care of.
But are drones precision weapons,or do they cause civilian casualties?
I wanna make sure the people understand that actually drones have not caused a huge number
of civilian casualties. For the most part they have been very precise, Precision strikes
against Al-Qaeda and their affiliates and we are very careful in terms of how its been
applied so I think that there is this perception some how that were just setting in a whole
bunch of strikes willy-nilly this is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list
of active terrorists and so on. Mistakes like these, when an Americanchopper
pilot shot Iraqi civilians, should now occur less frequently. Drones are said to be more
precise.But that turns out to be not entirely true.
Shit happens,that's what they say in war.Murphy's Law. Things go wrong. And that goes for UAVs
as well as aircrafts.You think you've cornered an Al Qaeda fighter on a farm. So you send
a rocket out thereto kill him.When it's about to hit, whether froma manned or a unmanned
aircraft......his wife comes out the door.What do you do? The scenarios for such actionsare
unchanged. A drone might be a few inches more precise, but the consequences are the same.
So you have two people operating the aircraft?That's right, the pilot is flying the airplane, the
pilot commander is in charge and the sensor operator is operating the target pod, under
the direction of the pilot. You need two to maximize the capabilities of the aircraft
so as you can see, the sensor operator is actively involved in moving that targeting
pod around, finding the blue forces, convoy etcetera. It's pretty much a full time job,
allows the pilot to focus on not just maneuvering the aircraft to produce optimal imaging but
also to be in charge of the overall tactical scenario, how your going to employ the weapon
system.What is this joystick used for?That's the control stick, its not a joystick, it's
the control stick for the aircraft. It's just a big computer game.It's funny how
these pilots, although they are 'desk pilots', still wear flight suits, to make them look
like real pilots. Is war becoming like a video game?It's nothing
like a video game and the reason it's nothing like a video game is because this is connected
to a real airplane flying through the real air. These two crew members are acutely aware
of that, right and in fact and because they have an egocentric respective they actually
start to feel that they are on board the aircraft after a bit of time.
In a way the Americans alreadyreached a turning point in 2009, 2010.They trained more screen
pilots, than pilots physicallyinside an aircraft.And they purchased more unmannedplanes than manned
ones.Which is not surprisingsince they're much cheaper. So it's not science fiction,it's
everyday reality?It's everyday reality. This is the Step desk is what we call it and
the operation supervisor is in charge of all the missions that go on.Is that a civilian
car on the road?It is a civilian car here in New MexicoSo your training, locking on
to civilian cars?Were able to track them we do not simulate or actually engage those vehicles
it's just simply to track them to be able to follow a moving target.With or without
their permission?They do not know that we can see them but we are just following the
vehicle with a camera. You were in Afghanistan in 2008 what happened?I
was invited to an interview by a Taliban commander, I went to the interview with two afghan colleagues
and instead of interviewing us he kidnapped us and took us into the tribal areas of Pakistan
and held us prisoner there for 7 months.So you were a hostage.Yeah we were held in an
area called North Waziristan its part of the tribal areas of Pakistan, they train suicide
bombers there, there are foreign militants and also there are American drones circling
overhead in the sky all the time. It was amazing to be on the other side of a drone strike,
drones, circled all the time overhead in the tribal areas of Pakistan. These drone strikes
happened once every 10 days or 2 weeks and the militants would be angry when they would
occur. It was hard for me to tell what was happening but it did seem like militants were
being killed in attacks along with some Civilians. The closest missile strike was, we moved to
a small town in South Waziristan and there was a car driving next to the house where
we were being held and a missile strike hit the car and we were so close that pieces of
metal, pieces of shrapnel from the missile actually landed in the courtyard of the place
where we were being held. I was afraid that civilians had been killed, I was afraid that
I would be killed in revenge for the attack, it turned out that 7 foreigners and Pakistani
militants were in the car, all men and they had been killed. One of the things the Obama
administration has tried to do is have a light footprint that compared to a Bush style large
scale invasion with 100'000 troops in Afghanistan or Iraq; the Obama administration tries to
use smaller amounts of force, more precisely targeted against Al-Qaeda not other groups
and they think in the Obama administration that the drone strike does this. It doesn't
it's not a light precesne, it is a military weapon of war and when you use it, Pakistanis
or Yemenese get angry about it. It's not this precise thing that doesn't really bother people.
A lot of people thought:Obama is in power now.He's not such a cowboy as Bush was.He
probably won't do such things.But precisely because unmanned systems are so clean and
outside our scope, and able tohunt down individual terrorists, many Americans think: Go ahead,
do it, and don't tell us the dirty details. So even a liberal president does it.He probably
thinks:This is already a controversial war. I'd better not endanger my pilots and my special
forces.What else do I have? Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Deploy them.
Drones aren't only popularwith the army. Police and security services alsouse them on their
own territory, to find criminalsand combat illegal immigration.A privacy organisation
from SanFrancisco is suing the state for this. So why are you suing the Government?Well we
are suing the Government because were very concerned about the use of drones domestically
in the United States. We already know that the State and local law enforcement are using
drones but we don't know much about how or why. Drones have the capability to include
al different types of privacy invasive technologies, they are able to use thermal imaging technologies
to see inside buildings, there able to use communication intercept technologies, to listen
in to our phone calls, location tracking technologies to track where we've been, where were going.
For all these reasons I think drones are of real privacy concern.
Privacy is an issuein Europe too. If our air forces buy drones,the police can use them
too. In the Netherlands last year a small drone was deployed justto find an arsonist.
What would your advise to the Dutch people be?My advice would be to think through these
issues. Spend a little time before Authorising the Government to purchase drones and just
go out and use them. Come up with policies about what kind of information can be collected
and whether a court order needs to be sought before the information can be collected where
drones could be operated legally. I think all of these are important issues.
In the Netherlands there are plans to invest funds into drones. There is almost no debate
about the legal or the moral issues surrounding them, does that surprise you?There's been
very little debate here in the United States and one of the criticisms is that if a republican
president had done this many drone strikes as Obama did there would be much more protest
from the left. I think Obama and his administration need to do a better job of making the drone
strikes public and explaining why they are doing them.After 7 months in captivity, how
did it end?We were desperate we thought they would hold us for years and while our guards
were asleep we used a car toe-rope I had found to lower ourselves down the wall of the house
where we were being held prisoner and we walked to a Pakistani military base. We were nearly
shot at the base, they thought I was a suicide bomber; I had a beard down to about here.
But a moderate Pakistani military officer let me on the base. My Afghan colleague, the
guy I was kidnapped with brought me to the base sp those two moderate Afghan and Pakistani
men saved my life and that's the reason why I'm still home today.
At about 30 pounds, the man portable 3-10 SUG V Robot is lightweight enough to fit inside
a molly or alice pack. It's compact and can be taken anywhere. Designed by iRobot and
the Boeing company, the 3-10 SUG V performs dismounted operations like surveillance, reconnaissance,
EOD and route clearing missions with ease. And these robots are advancing. The Air force,
army and navy are all using them more and more regularly. This is a small spying vehicle
with four cameras and night-glasses. And this is a sort of pack mulecarrying communication
equipment.
What robots are for in general are jobs that are dull dirty and dangerous. Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief
of "Wired", a big technology magazine. Every month it discusses the advance of robots in the military.
In general keeping people's boots of the ground and keeping people out of conflict seems like
a good thing by and large. You know, to the extent that drones again keep humans out of
harms way, I think that's probably good. Were here at Wired's office but you also have a
company, whats that about?Well we don't just write about technology, we live with it. Were
here in the middle of Silicone Valley and we can't help but participate, drones are
my passion, robotics is my life so were doing something about it.You have a company producing
drones.I do yeah. Anderson's company is calledDIY Drones.It
produces small helicopters withmanual and automatic controls and a recording camera.
The reason unmanned vehicles can be so cheap, just a couple hundred dollars at this point
is because of these things. The smart-phone revolution has taken sensors and wireless,
it has gyroscopes and accelerometers and GPS and radio all that sort of stuff. So inside
your phone is everything you need for an autopilot. I can write an 'app' that will allow your
phone to fly a 747 with the right cable.
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, is working on the latest flying
robots. They perform complex tasks without any human intervention at all. These drones
can build a tower on their own. Right now if you wanna build a big structure
like that you need scaffolding but if you use flying vehicles, you don't need scaffolding
anymore so that was really a demonstration of how the technology could be used in ways
that people hadn't really thought of beforeHow intelligent are these creatures?I would say
that they're not very intelligent. As human beings define intelligence. You know, they
can't make sophisticated decisions on their own. Most of the time they have to have been
programmed to react in a certain way and if something unanticipated happens you may not
get the results you desire. Drones also learn to danceto music here, play
a game of tennis, perform a taskworking together as a trio, and obey their master.Are you controlling
it with your hand?I am, we have a commercially available game sensor called a 'Kinect' which
is used to track human motion, so right now its tracking my hands, my arms, my whole body
gesture actually. And then we interface that information to the system which allows me
to then tell the vehicle exactly where to go and I can even tell it to do things like
tell it to go up, do a flip, come to me, move it around in general. Many people are doing
research with autonomous flying vehicles and there are many potential applications including
search and rescue, people want to use these vehicles to go into spots that human beings
would find it difficult to go into. For example in disaster areas, perhaps its radioactive
so you want to sent in drones to monitor the area and provide information that humans can't
directly access. People are even thinking about using flying vehicles to deliver material
across the world in undeveloped arrears and of course theres the military applications
the people think of aswell. The Japanese army developed this flying ball.
And the Americans are working on drones that operate in swarms. How interested is he Military
in this technology? They are extremely interested. In the short term, it gives them a leg up
on what the opponents can dos, so it's just a way to get an advantage. You see that's
the problem with it too because it leads to an arms race. They develop this technology,
they deploy it and the opponents, develop their technology and deploy it. Before you
know it we have all of this technology being deployed in warfare and it just raises the
overall level of how technology is used in warfare and I think there are a lot of negative
effects of having this escalation.In fact the arms race has already started. China and
Turkey have UAVs. And Iranian president Ahmadinejad recently presented his first drone. It looks
like a Thunderbirds rocket, but it hits distant targets with deadly accuracy. Iran also laid
hands on this American espionage drone. It crashed or was brought down.Some even say
it was hacked.That would explain its gentle landingin Iran. The Iranians are very interested,and
perfectly capable of copying the technology. We know right now that about 45 countries
are using drones and have their own drone programs so I think t hat the risk of somebody
we don't want to be using drones is pretty high and we just don't know that much about
the programs right now Is this the start of a new arms race?- Yes.
In this respect too. Future drones will be able to independentlysearch
for targets, and decide whether or not to attack.The software is being developed in
America right now. I personally think that we should seriously
consider putting limitations, self imposed limitations on how much autonomy these weapons
could have. Simply from preventing an escalation. As artificial intelligence technology becomes
better and more accessible will we have the specter of unmanned drones that fly themselves
without even an operator over watching them. That carry missiles and fire them based on
their own calculations it's entirely possible that their will be a continuing escalation
of the technology that will raise even more chilling questions.
That's the one place where I would try to keep humans in the loop as long as possible.
That's a judgement. I mean computers are very good at mechanically executing instructions
but judgement, you know, right or wrong, top priority or low priority to really is the
one place where humans should continue to be in.
Soldiers must always know exactlywhat they're doing. If you give 90% of that responsibility
to an autonomous robot, that's a problem.You need new regulations at the very least. I
think ethically and operationally it's a bad thing. It makes war so remote, it becomes
a game, an electronic spectacle. The one thing that should be able to limit war, is human
logic and human morals. If you overrule that, it will get easier, to leave the killing to
technology. That's a bad idea. I see that there's a map of Kabul, so you're
actually training for an Afghanistan situation. A lot of our training scenarios take place
in Afghanistan. And what happens if us troops pull out?
Then we'll change the scenario.