EOTO Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

 DRONES 

Drones can range from being a fun harmless toy that parents get their child for Christmas to a weapon of mass destruction set out on a mission.

History

In November 1782, Joseph Montgolfier was at home thinking at his fireplace about how the French could take over his town, Annonay. He noticed the heat coming up from the fire and considered manipulating air could be the answer to his worry, which led to him discussing with his brother (Étienne) to bring his idea to life. By using taffeta and wood he created a hollow sphere and used a small basket as the base. Then, he twisted paper at the ends and lit them with a match as his first prototype. The miniature model hot air balloon did rise, so he and his brother began working on how to make it bigger. 

In September 1783 they had the royal reveal which Benjamin Franklin attended and got the idea of using it for war. 

“Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each, could not cost more than have ships of the line; and where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief, before a force could be brought together to repel them?” -  Benjamin Franklin 

This was becoming a common idea because later that year an English pamphlet was published proposing that hot-air balloons “aeronauts could observe and report on enemy strength and positioning as well as monitor the movements of one’s own troops.”  

The Founding Father of UAV Technology

Abraham Karem moved to Israel in 1951 when he was 17, and from a young age he has a passion for aeronautics. At 14 he began building model aircrafts. He continued his education and graduated from The Technion (Haifa, Israel) as an Aeronautical Engineer. He built his first drone in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War for the Israeli Air Force.

In the late 70s he immigrated to the U.S. and saw the UAVs the U.S. was using which lasted about 2 hours in the air before crashing, but Karem wanted “them to fly 40 hours”. He found the problem was that those UAVs had an operator error which made them too difficult to fly and required a different set of protocols. He eventually partnered with Jack Hertenstein, an electrical engineer, to create standard procedures for flying a drone. By 1981, his team was flying a full prototype, called Albatross, for 56 hours at a time. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started paying attention to them and provided them with funding to further develop the technology.

The Success

Gnat-750

Karem accomplished more in a few years than the 18 years U.S. defense agencies had put in which cost around $4.4 billion dollars. In 1994, a contract was made with General Atomics to produce the Gnat-750 which is a scaled down version of the Amber (a past drone Karem worked on). Two were bought by the CIA Director at the time, Jim Woolsey, to fly over Bosnia for surveillance missions. Eventually the name was changed to “Predator”. “I was not really thinking about arming UAVs,” said Karem, but in 2001 the U.S. military added missiles.

This addition of missiles changed drone technology and war forever because it could help not only the United States, but other countries fight from afar. Currently, the U.S. and Israel not only produce the most drones but also sell the most drones in the world, but Turkey is fighting to keep improving their drones so they too can become a top competitor.

Predator

The Impacts

Positives

• Military drones provide intelligence, surveillance, & reconnaissance by locating threats and dangers

Sometimes it can be too risky to have a team stake out an area or specific building, but drones have made it possible for that to be done without putting people in danger. Also, drones have been useful outside of the armed forces use by helping locate sources of California wildfires.

• Drones are cheaper compared to humans

The MQ-0 Reaper (used for attacks in Pakistan) had a single unit cost of $6.48 million with an operational cost of close to $3 million. In 2012, when soldiers were sent to Afghanistan, each soldier cost the U.S. government $2.1 million. Besides the costs for equipment, basic necessities, other things needed a price cannot be put on human life. The usage of drones does help save human lives by keeping them out of the line of fire or in a hostile situation.

Negatives

• The killing of the innocent

As part of the war against the Taliban (after 9/11) the CIA started using the Predator to fly over Afghanistan. In February 2002, the first “drone-based killing” was directed at a suspect believed to be Osama Bin Laden. However, it was quite the opposite, it was Daraz Khan who was unarmed and innocent collecting scrap metal with friends.

• Secretive drone strikes interfere with human rights

Since they are secretive there is no true legal oversight compared to ground devices that have regulations. It is understandable why these strikes have to be kept secret but when does the line get drawn or more regulations in place to protect people.

• Ease and disconnection

Having the controller of a drone, that is going to cause mass destruction, be separated from the effects of the strike takeaways emotions. They are not there to see firsthand what the war is doing in that community which could make it easier for another strike to be sent out.

Karem’s take: “Wars are destructive… to win with the minimum casualties to other, both us and them And I think armed UAVs being able to…look at the targets for a long time and throw a small missile, can do that better than an F-16 coming with a 2,000-pound bomb.”