Drones, Automated Weapons, and Private Military Contractors

Abstract

The development of unmanned aerial vehicles and increasingly autonomous weapons systems is radically reshaping the nature of modern warfare. The US military now depends on unmanned aerial systems, often referred to as drones, to provide intelligence and surveillance, while armed drones that can drop bombs on terrorists form a core part of the US arsenal in the war on terror. From the longstanding Phalanx system, deployed by the US Navy to automatically detect and neutralize missiles that breach a warship's protective envelope, to the Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) system, the US Army's comparable landbased defense, to the X-47B drone that can fly by itself during takeoff and landing, the United States has relied increasingly on weapons systems that are unmanned or have at least some autonomous capability. Other countries have developed such systems as well, from Israel's Harpies, which autonomously ferret out enemy radar and then dive-bomb to destroy them, to South Korea's robotic sentries protecting the border. 1