[MUSIC PLAYING]
SIMON OSTROVSKY: So this is the Heron TP.
It's actually really loud.
It's a propeller plane.
It's not Israel's biggest, but it's apparently their
best-selling product.
And it's about to taxi off to do a test run.
Funny thing is, they don't want to tell us that the other
thing besides cameras that they can put on it is rockets.
And that's the main thing that people are buying it for.
But you'll never hear an Israeli official admit that.
UAVs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, better known as
drones-- they're big business, especially in Israel.
In fact, Israel is the biggest exporter of
drones on the planet.
And with the technology getting lighter and more
sophisticated, drones are being used for spying and
surveillance like never before.
But of course, drones are most infamous for their targeted
killings performed in multiple conflict
zones around the world.
So drones are saving human soldiers from getting hurt.
But does their pilot's remoteness to the field make
killing too easy?
There are like two dozen drones in here.
I think this is what the future is going to feel like
when Skynet takes over and they become self-aware.
We are at Israel Aerospace Industries' hangar, meeting
with a representative of the drone division known as Malat.
ZVIKA KALRON: Malat is one of the most veteran and
experienced UAV manufacturers.
Our models are operational all over the world.
UAVs, the idea was a lesson from the 1973 war.
Egyptian division crossed the Suez Canal.
We were caught unready.
There were drones that were taking aerial photographs.
But to develop such a photograph takes
six to eight hours--
too much time.
Because the battlefield is dynamic.
If we had, at that time, a model drone flying over the
Suez Canal, bringing us real-time intelligence, the
results of the war would be much different.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: So do you see in the future a video game
where operators in different countries are flying UAVs that
shoot each other down like fighter pilots used to do?
ZVIKA KALRON: UAV systems are going to
replace manned aircraft.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Zvika says, by the year 2035, drones will
comprise 95% of the airborne fighting force.
So can your drones fire rockets, do targeted
assassinations?
ZVIKA KALRON: Well, I would be much happy to
answer you that question.
But if I tell you about anything to do with the
armament in the UAVs, I'll have to kill you.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: We're heading to an airfield in the north of
Israel where we're going to watch a drone take off.
And this airfield is called [INAUDIBLE].
It's not even on Google Maps.
So we've been lost for the last 15 minutes, but it looks
like we finally found it.
And apparently, it does exist.
So here we are.
We're from Vice.
We've come to film the drones.
-Show me the passport.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: As confused as the soldier on guard duty
seemed on our arrival, our handler quickly showed up to
set out the terms of our visit.
-Good morning.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: She asked not to appear on camera.
-Hi, Simon.
This is the Israeli Air Force Base, OK?
Just want to have a short preview--
we have over 50 customers, five-oh, 50
customers around the world.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Are they all countries?
-Yes, no--
no, because if you take a coast guard and an army, it's
two customers, but one country.
So it's a good question, so 50 customers, not 50 countries.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: 50 clients is a lot of business, especially
when most of them have national budgets backing their
appetites for weaponry.
One of the drone operators, who didn't want us to show his
face on camera, introduced us to one of the drones
manufactured by IAI.
-OK, first of all, we're looking at a Heron UAV.
It's maybe the main bird that we sell to different customers
around the world.
Wingspan is approximately 17 meters.
The payload it is possible to carry is 250 kilos.
And it can fly up to 36 hours in operational mode.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: So what are the uses of
this particular drone?
-OK, generally, operationally wise, you can use your
imagination, OK?
250 kilos of payload, you can use different radars, a
C-radar or SAR radar, and of course, the camera against
every scenario on the future battlefield.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: It doesn't carry weapons?
-As you can see, this is the specific, let's say,
configuration.
And you can see, it has nothing on
board except the camera.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Right now, I mean but next to Gaza,
[INAUDIBLE]
looking over during the last conflict that they had there,
you could really hear the drones in the sky.
It was like a chorus of lawn mowers circling overhead.
-Again, it depends.
In Gaza, you're not sure that what you heard was UAVs, so
you can't really say.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: No?
-It's as I see it.
And again, when people hear the drone or the UAV or
anything that flies above, they have a tendency to not do
bad things.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: Gaza is ground zero for
Israel's drone invasion.
The hum of their propellers fill the sky day and night.
During the heaviest fighting in Gaza in 2008 and 2009,
human rights groups reported 87 civilians killed during the
42 drone-assisted attacks.
In November 2012, the military leader of Hamas, Ahmed Jabari,
was assassinated in a drone-assisted strike.
The Israeli military released this footage from the drone
hovering over the attack site.
So we're about to see one of Israel's
best-selling drones take off.
It's called the Heron TP.
It's made by the Israeli Aerospace Industries.
Look ma, no pilot.
After the operator on the tarmac gets the drone in the
air, flying duties are handed off to a sort of portable
control room.
So this container is where they actually
pilot the drone from.
I'm going to have a look inside.
-OK, this is the flight field.
We have the artificial horizon here.
Also, you can control the heading of the UAV.
This is the compass that you can use.
Blue arrows are the commands.
Green ones are the reports from the UAV.
You can control the speed here.
SIMON OSTROVSKY: They can choose a spot on the screen
that they want the drone to circle around.
And then these circles show the ground
traffic that it follows.
Basically, it can circle around that point so that it
can get the best images of that area possible.
And it pretty much functions autonomously after that point.
Right now, it's just circling by itself without anybody
essentially controlling any of what it's doing.
I wonder what the red button does.
It's true that the Heron TP rarely carries
weapons of its own.
But it's often used to guide weapons fired from elsewhere
by locking onto targets for them.
And for all the claims of precision supporters of the
use of drones make, a recent study found that strikes
carried out by drones are 10 times more deadly to civilians
than strikes by manned aircraft.
So what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen on one of
these test flights?
-There is a story about a person that was on an
instruction flight that was above his house, above the
town that he lives in.
And he saw a car that he didn't recognize.
Nobody was supposed to be in the house.
When he called, somebody answered.
This is how we discovered that his wife was cheating on him.
-Come on, not on film.
[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]?
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE].
SIMON OSTROVSKY: The strangest thing about the guys in the
control room is that they don't even have to be there.
It's only Israeli laws that require drones to have
spotters to man the equipment in case of a malfunction.
Otherwise, the drones can pretty much operate
independently.
Drones are fully automaticcc programmable robots that can
take off, land, taxi, and even put themselves away.
I'm going to try to see if it can see me.
Hello, hi drone.
It dawned on me that the drones would soon be able to
select and engage targets autonomously.
In fact, the technology is already here.
We've only to make the decision to take humans out of
the loop and turn our remote controlled
weapons into killer robots.
I sure can't see it.
I guess that's kind of the point.
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