Military Drones

Until recently most militaries tended to see moral issues through the lens of rules and regulations. Today, however, many armed forces consider teaching virtues to be an important complement to imposing rules and codes from above. A closer look reveals that it is mainly established military virtues such as honour, courage and loyalty that dominate both the lists of virtues and values of most militaries and the growing body of literature on military virtues. Although there is evidently still a role for these traditional martial virtues, it is equally evident that they are not particularly relevant to, for instance, military personnel operating drones. This chapter looks into the ethics of unmanned warfare from the perspective of military virtues and military ethics education, and addresses the question of what we need to solve that just-mentioned misalignment: 1) a new set of virtues; 2) a different interpretation of the existing virtues; or 3) a different approach altogether, that is, an alternative to teaching virtues? That we have to think about such questions is at least partly because unmanned systems bring risk asymmetry in war to a new level, making warlike virtues such as physical courage by and large obsolete. The last section of this chapter therefore addresses the question: to what extent does the possibility of riskless warfare makes drone use ‘virtue-less’?

In this chapter I take the killing of Osama bin Laden as a test case for considering the moral and legal status of intentionally killing individuals deemed a threat to national security, under conditions in which the object of the targeted attack is offered little or no opportunity to surrender to attacking forces. The target in such operations, in short, is treated as though he were a belligerent: a person placed on a kill list may be targeted in a way that would be legitimate if he were an enemy combatant. In such cases, we think of him as having no personal right to self-defense and we attempt to use the element of surprise to avoid affording him an opportunity to surrender or evade capture. But where we are targeting non-uniformed civilians, who do not possess all the trappings of an enemy combatant, is it legitimate to target them in the same open-ended way that we target co-belligerents? In particular, is it legitimate to target them in a way that deprives them of a right of surrender?

My assertion in this chapter is that bin Laden was a legitimate military target, and that the decision-makers involved in his killing had thoroughly considered the range of options available to stop bin Laden from further terroristic acts, and were warranted in the decision to lean towards targeted killing in lieu of a capture operation. I thus conclude that those who carried out the killing were within their scope of authority and responsibility for killing rather than for capturing bin Laden. The structure of the operation, then, and the set of moral prohibitions operating on any such plan, should in theory not require new rules or new law of war prescripts. This holds true, despite the short- and long-term implications of this use of force. What is critical is an abiding and firm moral force underlying this and every other form of warfare, regardless of any minor or significant changes to the legal or operational framework in which it may be undertaken.

Section I will examine the political and military necessity considerations that gave rise to the Neptune Spear “capture or kill” decision-making process at the very highest echelons of the Executive Branch, with the evolution of political will, expressed into military directive, reflecting a careful analysis of authority and opportunity to end bin Laden’s reign of terror. This will afford us an opportunity to distinguish between those who can be the permissible subject of “targeted killing” and those who cannot. Section II considers the operational and legal foundation for undertaking a war against one person via targeted killing. As to the targeted killing of bin Laden, this section will show the operation to be on a continuum of legitimate, operational options, from pursuit and capture under warrant-based targeting. Section III examines the moral foundations of foregoing war in favor of more isolated military operations, such as is involved in targeted killing. Section IV concludes with an examination of how the polarizing paradigm of Neptune Spear affects not only current contexts of counterterrorism operations but how it will shape U.S. and international political will to accept targeted killing over capture and prosecution, not just out of political pragmatism.

O  presente  artigo  analisa  os impactos  das  relacoes  Brasil-Israel  no processo de aquisicao de capacidades  para a  producao  nacional  de  Aeronaves Remotamente Tripuladas (ARPs)  no contexto da Base Industrial de Defesa (BID) brasileira. Desde o lancamento da Estrategia Nacional de Defesa em 2008 a BID se encontra em um processo de  revitalizacao  orientado para o acesso e  desenvolvimento  de  tecnologias  de  ponta.  A cooperacao internacional se torna um instrumento necessario para o conhecimento e compreensao  da  tecnologia  (know why)  e  de  como  desenvolve-la  e  adapta-la  para  suas  especificidades  e necessidades  locais  (know-how) das  Forcas Armadas  brasileiras. Neste sentido, o artigo indaga como a cooperacao Brasil-Israel no setor de ARPs insere a BID noutro patamar da escala de producao militar.  A estrategia de investigacao adotada no artigo foca nas relacoes no  âmbito  de  cooperacao  interempresarial, como a criacao de joint-ventures e o seus spillove...

This poster shows a new alternative propeller structure that can generate automatic kinetic energy for any large ship, airplane, and electric generators. The performance and efficiency are directly connected to the position of 28 propellers onto the large and single propeller respectively.

This paper concentrates on the design, analysis, and development of fixed-wing hand launch unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This flight can able to carry the payloads of 0.8. The design process involves the conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design. This paper involves the investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics over the wing to enhance the aerodynamic design of the UAV. This analysis includes estimating the best gliding ratio to increase the flight mission and attain the maximum altitude. This simulation will be performed for subsonic flow with Mach number 0.04202(14.3m/s). The manufacturing of the UAV is done using composite materials like glass fiber of both (1mm and 2 mm) thickness, carbon fiber of 2mm, and carbon rod is used for connecting the empennage to the fuselage. The detailed design has been done in CATIA V5 and the analysis of the wing has been done using XFLR, ANSYS (fluent).

Latinoamérica e Israel presentan un largo historial de relaciones internacionales que distan mucho de ser inmutables e incluso similares entre los países de la región. Desde la fundación de Israel en 1948 y su admisión en el escenario político, los diversos países latinoamericanos han fluctuado desde el apoyo más irrestricto hasta patrocinando condenas internacionales en contra del sionismo,  y contra del mismo Estado de Israel. Asimismo, en sus 66 años de conflicto con los países árabes, así como la problemática palestina constituyen elementos sine qua non de la diplomacia extra regional.

This paper concentrates on the design, analysis, and development of fixed-wing hand launch unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). This flight can able to carry payloads of 0.8. The design process involves the conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design. This paper involves the investigation of the aerodynamic characteristics over the wing to enhance the aerodynamic design of the UAV. This analysis includes estimating the best gliding ratio to increase the flight mission and attain the maximum altitude. This simulation will be performed for subsonic flow with Mach number 0.04202(14.3m/s). The manufacturing of the UAV is done using composite materials like glass fiber of both (1mm and 2 mm) thickness, carbon fiber of 2mm, and carbon rod is used for connecting the empennage to the fuselage. The detailed design has been done in CATIA V5 and the analysis of the wing has been done using XFLR, ANSYS (fluent).

Currently the international military situation on the whole tend to ease, but the world is not peaceful, 21th century, international relations are complicated, various forces continue to divide the world in combination. Exchanges and cooperation, struggle and competition are intertwined, will be the basic form of the 21st century, the international security environment and military situation. With the extensive application of high technology in the military field, modern warfare has entered a high‐tech stage, due to extensive use of war weapons and senior technical leader role in the new doctrine, causing major changes in the form of war. Resulting in a change in the scale of war, styles and processes. War has been a simple contest of wisdom into a physical confrontation military geology research and explain, I published a number of one‐sided view, mainly from remote sensing technology, according to Dr. Zhang Qingxiang. Remote sensing technology is the sensor mounted on the platform, as an electromagnetic wave information media, objects in the earth's surface and a certain perception of spatial extent from distant places, the whole process ground to identify the object, he is airborne remote sensing, in the 20th century 60 years developed a new type of comprehensive immigration interdisciplinary, since the 1970s, with the launch of new aerospace remote sensing platforms, research, space remote sensing technology to develop new sensors. Applications developed from military applications to a global environment and resources for monitoring and research objectives of cutting‐edge technology.

Drone technology is further increasing in popularity and demand and drone education is already implemented in certain college courses. This paper presents a virtual simulation module that will cater to the needs of the senior high school level and that would lead to a module that is essentially less technical and more interactive. The virtual simulations module will be an integrated website which contains fundamental information on what a drone is and how to operate one. It will also incorporate an interactive game simulation wherein the drone model created from 3D printing will be integrated in. To verify the achievement of the goals of this paper, the researchers will conduct a survey among a randomized pool of senior high school students, which will include a pre and post-test about the module. Through this surveys that the participants answered, the researchers used t-test methodology to conclude that the module is indeed effective on delivering the information to the students with up to 90% positive response about the module. Additionally, the researchers have taken into account the preferences and suggestions of the students who participated.

A condução da Guerra de acordo com princípios éticos, não só é moralmente correta, mas revela a humanidade da sociedade moderna. Ao confrontarmos a introdução de uma nova tecnologia no espaço de batalha com os princípios éticos e legais universalmente aceites, estamos a garantir os padrões morais das futuras gerações. A possibilidade de conduzir uma Guerra virtuosa, porque cirúrgica, consciente e escrupulosa, contrasta com o argumento de que se trata de uma Guerra virtual em que as imagens de vídeo reduzem o conflito a um distante jogo de consola.
Uma das maiores críticas apontadas aos sistemas aéreos não tripulados, quando comparados com a alternativa viável, a tripulada, é de que infligem danos desproporcionados e desnecessários, nomeadamente em civis, em resultado do afastamento físico e da eventual desconexão emocional dos seus operadores.
O estabelecimento de uma relação causal entre o distanciamento do combatente do ato de matar corpo a corpo, e a probabilidade de aumentar a eclosão da Guerra é difícil de determinar. Todavia, caso essa relação exista, então ela será sublimada pelo emprego de drones de combate, obrigando a uma diluição da perceção tradicional de combate. Importa por isso verificar se o aumento da distância poderá ser associado com abstração ou indiferença à morte. E numa era em que a Guerra Aérea Remota se ameaça transformar num instrumento de morte à escala industrial, será importante debruçarmo-nos sobre os efeitos morais de tal emprego generalizado.

On September 27, 2020, a short and decisive war in the Caucasus erupted that provides a glimpse of wars to come. Azerbaijan and Armenia clashed in a conflict in rough, mountainous terrain that lasted 44 days and ended in Armenia’s surrender and Azerbaijan’s triumph. The battlespace was the area of Nagorno-Karabakh, the contested region between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijanis executed their version of cross-domain maneuver to win a rapid and decisive victory against a defending and determined adversary. To achieve this, the Azerbaijanis invested a reported $24B+ to upgrade their forces, purchasing the latest Turkish and Israeli Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Loitering Munitions (LMs). The effective use by Azerbaijan of these weapons in the war was stunning. The unrelenting tempo, precision, and lethality of the Azerbaijani aerial top-attacks devastated and demoralized the Armenians and played a definitive role in Azerbaijan’s victory. These systems did not win the war by themselves, and UAVs have been over-hyped in many press accounts of the war, but the impact of the high-definition full-motion video (FMV) provided by top-attack systems categorized this conflict as “the war of the drones.” The Azerbaijanis used the secure FMV capabilities of their systems to enhance sensor-shooter integration, to obtain battle damage assessment, and for propaganda to win the information war. In these aspects, especially the use of secure tactical FMV video and data links, the conflict is a harbinger for wars to come.

Fin mars 2016, un reportage de la chaîne France 24 dans l’Extrême-Nord Cameroun fait état de l’usage des drones par l’armée camerounaise pour combattre Boko Haram. Ces engins, dit le responsable de la communication du ministère de la Défense camerounaise, permettent de réduire les efforts humains et de surveiller la frontière camerouno-nigeriane, devenue névralgique depuis le début de l’insurrection armée de Boko Haram en 2009. Le 17 février 2017, the Voice of America poste sur sa chaîne YouTube en langue Haoussa, une vidéo montrant de jeunes adolescents, combattants dans les rangs de Boko Haram en train de piloter un drone, à l’image des multiples prototypes qu’il est possible d’acquérir au détour d’un clic sur internet et dans des magasins de gadgets électroniques au Nigeria. Les insurgés à côté de ces pilotes de fortune, vraisemblablement impressionnés par l’objet, cachent mal leur joie à la vue du petit insecte dans les airs. Ces deux tableaux mettent en évidence l’usage des drones dans le cadre du conflit qui oppose les États du bassin du lac Tchad au mouvement djihadiste Boko Haram. Si ces deux fresques donnent à voir l’omniprésence des drones en ce début de XXIe siècle, cette situation masque au contraire la longue histoire de leur utilisation même si celle-ci est inégalement répartie en fonction des continents. L’Afrique est dans ce contexte la dernière frontière des drones. Sur le continent africain, les drones amorcent dans ce continent une percée autant à travers leurs applications civiles et militaires. Si cette tendance traduit un vent de nouveauté dans l’usage des nouvelles technologies, elle préfigure un nouvel impérialisme sur fond technologique. Réflexion de nature exploratoire, cette étude se propose de discuter l’utilisation des drones en terrain africain dans une perspective critique. On s’intéressera ainsi d’une part à l’usage civil des drones, sans les déconnecter des logiques néolibérales qui sous-tendent la conquête du marché africain par les constructeurs occidentaux et asiatiques, et d’autre part à l’utilisation de ces aéronefs sans pilote dans le cadre de la lutte contre le terrorisme dans le bassin du lac Tchad.

A variety of ethical objections have been raised against the military employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs, drones). Some of these objections are technological concerns
over UAVs abilities’ to function on par with their inhabited counterparts. This paper sets such concerns aside and instead focuses on supposed objections to the use of UAVs in principle. I examine several such objections currently on offer and show them all to be wanting. Indeed, I argue that we have a general duty to protect an agent engaged in a justified act from harm to the greatest extent possible, so long as that protection does not interfere with the agent’s ability to act justly. UAVs can afford precisely such protection. Therefore, we are obligated to employ UAV weapon systems for a justified mission if it can be shown that their use does not significantly reduce a warfighter’s operational capability. Of course, if a given military action is unjustified to begin with, then carrying out that act via UAVs is wrong, just as it would be with any weapon. But the point of this paper is to show that there is nothing wrong in principle with using a UAV and that, other things being equal, using
such technology can be, in fact, obligatory.

Image-guided military operations embed soldiers into a complex system of image production, transmission and perception, which on the one hand separate their bodies from the battlefield, but on the other hand mediate between them. Especially in remotely controlled operations of so-called unmanned aerial systems (UAS) navigation and intervention require the synchronization between human actors and technical sensors in real-time, as the knowledge of a situation, the so-called situational awareness, relies almost exclusively on the visualization of sensor data. This human-machine entanglement corresponds to a new operative modality of images which differs from previous forms of real-time imaging such as live broadcasting, as it is based on a feedback-loop that turns the observer into an actor. Images are not simply analyzed and interpreted but become agents in a socio-technological assemblage. The paper will draw upon this functional shift of images from a medium of visualization towards a medium that guides operative processes. Based on the analysis of vision, architecture and navigation in remote warfare it will discuss how real-time video technology and the mobilization of sensor and transmission technology produce a type of  intervention, in which action and perception is increasingly organized and determined by machines.

This technical manual covers all aspects of having to counter the full spectrum of unmanned aircraft and their respective system components. It should serve to bring together both civilian and military experts by initiating thought and emphasizing NATO’s approach to a comprehensive solution for countering unmanned aircraft systems. We hope that you will find this book useful and a valuable addition to the academic body of work published by the JAPCC on Joint Air and Space Power.

A new powerful military weapon has appeared in the skies of world and with it a new form of warfare has quickly emerged bringing with it a host of pressing ethical questions and issues. This book brings together some of the best scholars currently working on these questions and provides timely and important arguments on many of the most significant and previously unexplored areas of this recent debate. Essays range from broad theoretic questions regarding the moral permissibility of killing by drones to specific examinations of particular uses of unmanned weapons such as their role in counterinsurgency operations, humanitarian interventions, and their controversial use in “targeted killings.” Some scholars engage remarkably vexing issues such as what happens to classic military virtues such as bravery for the warriors who fly remotely controlled drones from complete safety, half a world away from the combat in which they operate. Others wrestle over the future of such technology and...

lccn 2019032477 (ebook) isbn 9781478005872 (hardcover) isbn 9781478006572 (paperback) isbn 9781478007272 (ebook) Subjects: lcsH: Artificial intelligence-Military applications. | Robotics-Military applications. | Armed Forces and mass media-United States. | War in mass media. | War in literature. | Military art and science-Technological innovations-Social aspects. Classification: lcc ug479 .p33 2020 (print) | lcc ug479 (ebook) ddc 355.40285-dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032476 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032477

Judging by recent media reporting and pronouncements by senior
US military and security officials, the use of drones by militant
groups is both reshaping conflict between armed non-state actors
and state parties and now presents a grave and direct threat to
nations in the West and elsewhere. But does this threat warrant
the attention it is currently receiving? To answer this question, this
article surveys how various militant groups have used drones both
tactically on the battlefield and for wider strategic purposes.
Closely examining how drones have been employed and by
whom provides a basis for understanding variation in adoption.
The article shows how drone usage or non-usage is highly
contingent on the setting of the conflict, the aims of different
groups, and the capacity of groups to adopt the technology.
Though advances in drone technology could make the use-case
more appealing for militant groups, drones will be subject to the
same back-and-forth, techno-tactical adaptation dynamic between
adversaries that have accompanied prior military innovations.

In order to enter symmetrical relations of force in a war, the two opposing sides need to have some balance in technology (and overall power). When such balance is not there in a war, e.g. like the Gulf War in the early 1990s, it transforms into, what Jean Baudrillard calls, a non-war. In other words, he questions the occurrence or reality of a non-war. Along the lines of Baudrillard's critique of the Gulf War, we register critique of the ongoing drone war on the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland. We argue that the technological imbalance is even worse in this drone war. Accordingly, there is higher level of asymmetry in the relations of force, which has transfigured the nature/reality of this war. We apply and test a set of Baudrillard's concepts to explain this transfigured nature of the drone war.

Warfare is changing, and training is not keeping pace. Recent combat actions in Libya, Syria, and especially in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, demonstrated the value of unmanned systems in conducting precision strikes. According to confirmed drone video footage, during the recent 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan destroyed at least 1,021 Armenian military systems 1

Der Trend zu immer größerer Automatisierung bis hin zur Autonomie in der Militär- und Waffentechnik ist ein Selbstläufer. Die Entwicklung hin zu einer Situation, in der Roboter über das Leben von Menschen entscheiden, kann nur durch aktives Eingreifen verhindert werden.

Cet article étudie les représentations ambivalentes que la trilogie Iron Man (2008, 2010, 2013) propose du rapport entre masculinité et technologie en les replaçant dans le contexte états-unien du tournant des années 2010. Il s’agit de montrer en quoi le mélange de technophobie et de technophilie qui caractérise ces films, s’enracine dans les contradictions générées par le développement spectaculaire des technologies militaires et l’usage qui en a été fait par l’armée américaine dans le cadre des guerres d’Afghanistan et d’Irak suite aux attentats du 11 septembre

The lessons of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War represent a significant change in the methods of war.  This war has significance similar to the impact of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The lessons of the 1973 War influenced the development of tactics and weaponry during the Cold War and beyond. For example, the US military conducted a thorough study of the Yom Kippur War, derived a new doctrine called AirLand Battle, and developed new systems, the “Big 5” — the M1 Main Battle Tank, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, Apache Helicopter, Black Hawk Helicopter, and Patriot Air Defense System. These warfighting platforms, although significantly upgraded, remain the mainstay of the US Army’s striking power today. The methods of war, however, are changing and the recent fighting in the Caucasus provides insights for wars to come. As the first war won primarily with unmanned systems, we neglect the study of the Second Nagorno- Karabakh War at our own peril.

The risks of military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) being subjected to electronic attack are well recognised, especially following high-profile incidents such as the interception of unencrypted video feeds from UAVs in Iraq and Israel, or the diversion and downing of a UAV in Iran. Protection of military UAV assets rightly focuses on defence against sophisticated cyber penetration or electronic attack, including data link intercepts and navigational spoofing. Offensive activity to counter adversary drone operations presumes a requirement for high-end electronic attack systems. However, combat operations in eastern Ukraine in 2014-16 have introduced an entirely new dimension to UAV and counter-UAV operations. In addition to drones with military-grade standards of electronic defence and encryption, a large number of civilian or amateur UAVs are in operation in the conflict. This presents both opportunities and challenges to future operations combating hybrid threats. Actual operations in eastern Ukraine, in combination with studies of potential criminal or terrorist use of UAV technologies, provide indicators for a range of aspects of UAV use in future conflict. However, apart from the direct link to military usage, UAVs are rapidly approaching ubiquity with a wide range of applications reaching from entertainment purposes to border patrol, surveillance, and research, which imposes an indirect security and safety threat. Issues associated with the unguarded use of drones by the general public range from potentially highly dangerous situations such as failing to avoid controlled airspace, to privacy violations. Specific questions include attribution of UAV activities to the individuals actually directing the drone; technical countermeasures against hacking, interception or electronic attack; and options for controlling and directing adversary UAVs. Lack of attribution and security measures protecting civilian UAVs against electronic attack, hacking or hijacking, with the consequent likelihood of unauthorised use or interception, greatly increases the complication of each of these concerns.

This report sheds light on how dual-use
technologies can contribute to EU efforts in
civilian conflict prevention and
peacebuilding. This research performs an
empirical analysis of the selected dual-use
technologies owned by EU Member States,
namely satellites and Remotely Piloted
Aircraft Systems (RPAS). By examining the
use of these technologies in the context of
CSDP missions and operations, the study
aims to provide an assessment of their
possible use in current and future EU
conflict prevention and peacebuilding
missions.

The dissertation investigates how military UAV’s (unmanned aerial vehicles), or so-called drones, are represented within the aesthetic field as a “drone imaginary,” reflecting radical changes in the history of warfare. Using the imaginary as a conceptual framework, the drone is analyzed as a cultural construct fueled with ideological and political imagination, including, above all, promises of liberation from the burdens and vulnerabilities of human lives and bodies in war. The main goal of the dissertation is to critically analyze how the drone imaginary builds on a fantasy of the perfect weapon which is, essentially, cruel. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s thoughts and ideas, my claim is therefore that the social and cultural imagination of drone warfare follows a logic of cruel optimism. This means that the object for these desires, the drone, becomes an obstacle for its own flourishing by actively impeding the goal it promises to fulfill. In other words, my aim is to show how the popular attachment to drones is formed by fantasies and imaginations that are “cruel” in so far as they compromise themselves and obstruct their aims through a negative feedback loop, which constantly negates the promises these very same machines seem able to deliver on regarding a higher and safer mode of warfare.

Each of the chapters in the dissertation contains examples that demonstrate how these fantasies and promises in turn prove to be flawed or imperfect. Using the realm of aesthetics as prism, the analyses expose the darker side of this drone imagination focusing on its inherent cracks and frailties that altogether undermine the legitimacy as well as soundness of the fantasy of the drone as a new wonder-weapon. For instance, the analyses show how figurations of drone automation is uncannily non-human; how drone invincibility also entail trauma; how dreams of total vision become blurred by immensity; and how the myth of surgical precision ends up as carnage. Thus, each chapter specifically examines one of these drone figurations in order to show how they are con-figured into the larger drone imaginary.

Based on strategies of close-reading in combination with a cross-disciplinary conceptual approach, the dissertation offers new insights to the rapidly growing field of academic drone research. While this field has, however, so far mostly focused on the political, juridical, and ethical aspects of drone warfare and less on imaginary, literary, and aesthetic constructions and configurations vibrating beneath these debates, the dissertation contributes with an alternative cultural drone imaginary.

The risks of military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) being subjected to electronic attack are well recognised, especially following high-profile incidents such as the interception of unencrypted video feeds from UAVs in Iraq and Israel, or the diversion and downing of a UAV in Iran. Protection of military UAV assets rightly focuses on defence against sophisticated cyber penetration or electronic attack, including data link intercepts and navigational spoofing. Offensive activity to counter adversary drone operations presumes a requirement for high-end electronic attack systems.

However, combat operations in eastern Ukraine in 2014-16 have introduced an entirely new dimension to UAV and counter-UAV operations. In addition to drones with military-grade standards of electronic defence and encryption, a large number of civilian or amateur UAVs are in operation in the conflict. This presents both opportunities and challenges to future operations combating hybrid threats. Actual operations in eastern Ukraine, in combination with studies of potential criminal or terrorist use of UAV technologies, provide indicators for a range of aspects of UAV use in future conflict.

But in addition to the direct link to military usage, UAVs are rapidly approaching ubiquity with a wide range of applications reaching from entertainment purposes to border patrol, surveillance, and research, which imposes an indirect security and safety threat. Issues associated with the unguarded use of drones by the general public range from potentially highly dangerous situations such as failing to avoid controlled airspace, to privacy violations.

Specific questions include attribution of UAV activities to the individuals actually directing the drone; technical countermeasures against hacking, interception or electronic attack; and options for controlling and directing adversary UAVs. Lack of attribution and security measures protecting civilian UAVs against electronic attack, hacking or hijacking, with the consequent likelihood of unauthorised use or interception, greatly increases the complication of each of these concerns.

This paper evaluates the crucial role of unmanned aerial vehicles –UAV's-(or Drone) in the case of natural disasters response and relief humanitarian aid. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate how unmanned aerial vehicles – UAV's-(or Drone) in the present and near future can play a crucial role to help survivors in the case of a tsunami, earthquake, flooding, and any natural disaster. Basically, we need to assume that in any natural disaster always exist the high possibility of damage in the infrastructure, transportation systems, telecommunications systems access, and basic services immediately. We propose in three areas the uses of unmanned aerial vehicles –UAV's-(or Drone) in the case of natural disasters response and relief humanitarian aid: (i) the aerial monitoring post-natural disaster damage evaluation; (ii) the natural disaster logistic and cargo delivery; (iii) the post-natural disaster aerial evaluation. 1. A General Review about the Origins of the U...

Extensive Bibliography on Drone Warfare.
Textbooks and General Overviews
Conceptual Questions
Drone History and Historical Research
Debates and Controversies
Ethics
US Politics
International Implications
International Politics
Geopolitics
Nonstate Drone Use
Critical Literature
Geography
Public Opinion

In measure to the development of projectile weaponry, the conduct of modern war has accorded perception with destruction, marshalling and enfolding human vision into ever more sophisticated sociotechnical assemblages of targeting. Drawing upon Paul Virilio’s notion of a “logistics of perception”, this article charts the four successive orders of targeting constituted by the alignment of the line of sight with the line of fire (aiming), the measurement of distance to a target (ranging), the trailing and prediction of a target’s movement (tracking), and the directed navigation to a target’s position in space (guiding). Alongside the functional specification of each of these orders are concurrently drawn out the accompanying corporeal regimentations of the living organisms thus imbricated. With its capillaries now spanning the wider ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, the contemporary war machine has simultaneously extended its sensorial reach far beyond the confines of its original human strictures. Its culmination may well lie in the advent of laser technology and the promise of a weaponisation of light through which the definitive coincidence of perception and annihilation will be realised, even as it dispenses with the ocular orb that initiated their convergence.

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in military operations
is currently among the most hotly debated topics in the national
and international media. While at first few showed interest in
this military technology, the increasing number of missile strikes carried out via UAVs in remote areas of Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia by the United States Armed Forces and the CIA has raised public awareness. [...]
The four books reviewed in this essay are all motivated by the belief that “the precipitous increase in drone use we have witnessed over the past few years represents just the beginning of the proliferation and widespread use of UAVs, across many contexts.” Disagreement may reign over whether or not this development is positive; however, the authors agree on one point: drones are here to stay.

Τα μη επανδρωμένα αεροσκάφη ή Drones όπως είναι ευρέως γνωστά,  έχουν χρησιμοποιηθεί για στρατιωτικούς σκοπούς αλλά και στο πλαίσιο επιστημονικών και ερευνητικών πρωτοβουλιών από τη δεκαετία του 1960. Ωστόσο, την τελευταία δεκαετία έχουν γνωρίσει σημαντική ανάπτυξη, κυρίως λόγω της ραγδαίας τεχνολογικής εξέλιξης, αυξάνοντας κατακόρυφα και το ενδιαφέρον για την αξιοποίηση τους σε πλήθος εφαρμογών της καθημερινότητας. Το «Βιβλίο των Drones» περιέχει όλες τις απαραίτητες γνώσεις για τις τεχνολογίες που χρησιμοποιούνται στα Drones, εξειδικευμένες πληροφορίες για τα συστήματα με τα οποία είναι εξοπλισμένα καθώς και στοιχεία για τις εφαρμογές τους σε διαφορετικούς τομείς της σύγχρονης κοινωνίας.

Στην πρώτη ενότητα του βιβλίου, γίνεται μία σύντομη ιστορική αναδρομή της εξέλιξης τους, παρουσιάζονται οι εξειδικευμένοι όροι που χρησιμοποιούνται, καθώς και οι κατηγορίες τους ενώ στην συνέχεια περιγράφονται τα βασικά στοιχεία της αεροδυναμικής, των επικοινωνιών αλλά και των συστημάτων αυτομάτου ελέγχου που χρησιμοποιούν. Παρουσιάζονται επίσης οι αρχές λειτουργίας και οι πληροφορίες των οργάνων πτήσης τους, τα βασικά στοιχεία της εναέριας φωτογράφισης καθώς και τα χαρακτηριστικά του ελέγχου και της κατεύθυνσης τους.

Στην δεύτερη ενότητα γίνεται μία ολοκληρωμένη επισκόπηση των πληροφοριών, που αφορούν κρίσιμους τομείς, οι οποίοι επηρεάζουν σημαντικά την αξιοποίηση των μη επανδρωμένων αεροσκαφών, όπως το θεσμικό πλαίσιο στην Ελλάδα και την Ευρώπη, ο έλεγχος εναέριας κυκλοφορίας αλλά και βασικά στοιχεία μετεωρολογίας που επηρεάζουν τις πτήσεις των Drones. Επίσης παρουσιάζεται η επίδραση του ανθρώπινου παράγοντα, η ασφάλεια πτήσεων καθώς και οι προκλήσεις στα θέματα ιδιωτικότητας και δεοντολογίας από την αξιοποίηση τους.

Στην τρίτη και τελευταία ενότητα παρουσιάζονται όλες οι σύγχρονες εφαρμογές των μη επανδρωμένων αεροσκαφών, στις στρατιωτικές επιχειρήσεις και αποστολές, στην ασφάλεια και την πολιτική προστασία, στην τηλεπισκόπηση και την φωτογραμμετρία, στην γεωργία ακριβείας αλλά και στην δημοσιογραφία και τα μέσα μαζικής ενημέρωσης ενώ στο τέλος περιγράφονται οι δυνατότητες προστασίας από την κακόβουλη χρήση τους.

An Electric Ion Propulsion craft that is completely untethered and achieves free flight with an onboard power supply. Traditionally a device known as an ionocraft is a propulsion device based on ionic air propulsion that can fly without moving parts, uses only electrical energy, lifts its own weight, not including its own power supply, the described invention is an improvement whereby the craft is completely untethered and achieves free flight with an onboard power supply with or without the help of additional thrust as derived from wind currents as in a glider or other known means based on current art.

Trabajo de Seminario presentado ante la Cátedra de Filosofía del Derecho dirigida por el Prof. Eduardo Luis Tinant de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales - Universidad Nacional de La Plata - Argentina - Dic 2017

En este trabajo de seminario se presenta de manera introductoria el concepto de inteligencia en sus tres variantes: animal, humana y artificial, distinguiendo en ésta última entre la inteligencia artificial de dominio específico y la inteligencia artificial general. Se analizan los peligros concretos que presenta la inteligencia artificial actual, en particular el uso de vehículos autónomos, drones militares y robots sociales; y los potenciales peligros existenciales para la vida humana que podría representar la aparición de una súper inteligencia general en lo que se ha denominado Singularidad Tecnológica. Se expone una serie de dilemas morales que la filosofía y el derecho intentan resolver frente al uso de las nuevas tecnologías y se estudia la responsabilidad civil y penal de las máquinas.

In this seminar paper it’s introduced a preliminary concept of intelligence and its three varieties: animal, human and artificial, distinguishing among the last one between artificial intelligence of specific domain and general artificial intelligence. It’s analyzed the concrete risks that contemporary artificial intelligence shows under the today’s use of driverless cars, military drones and social robots; and the potential risks for the existence of human life that the appearance of a super intelligence could arise, in the so called Technological Singularity. A series of moral dilemmas are exposed and its implications for philosophy and laws before the use of new technologies. Civil and criminal responsibility of machines are finally studied.

Drone vision is intimately uncanny, a technicity of perception that both escapes and extends the human. In this the drone is the paradigmatic figure of emergent perception in the contemporary networked world. A mediating technology of anxious ambivalence, the drone is bound up with witnessing in fluid ways irreducible to the content of images alone. Surveilling scenes of violence, activism and the everyday extraordinary, this chapter argues that the drone's-eye view constitutes an emergent mode of affective witnessing, inseparable from the digital mediations of the social media age and yet uncannily beyond the human in its capacities of perception. CHAPTER TEXT The eye of the drone captures landscapes of war and ruin, of the urban and the wild, of the beautiful and the terrible. Its vision is intimately uncanny, a technicity of perception that both escapes and extends the human. From the drone's-eye view, objects, environments and bodies flatten and bend, captured in the digital and transmitted across technical assemblages of signal, device, operator, code, relay, interface, environment, and data. In this the drone is the paradigmatic figure of emergent perception in the contemporary world, a mediating technology of anxious ambivalence that dissolves distinctions between war and domesticity, human and machine, mediation and space.

Digital and data technologies are actively transforming the archives of contemporary warfare. Bringing together a range of scholarly perspectives and artistic practices, (W)archives investigates digital archiving as an integral technology of warfare and how artists respond to these changes. Throughout the book, the (w)archive emerges as a term to grasp the extended materiality of war today, wherein digital archiving intersects with images, bodies, senses, infrastructures, environments, memories, and emotions. The essays explore how this new digital materiality of war reconfigures the archival impulses that have shaped artistic practices over the last decades, and how archives can be mobilized to articulate political demands, conjure new forms of evidence, and make palpable the experience of living with war.

Contributions by DANIELA AGOSTINHO, HEBA Y. AMIN, ARIELLA AZOULAY, SVEA BRAUNERT, ANTHONY DOWNEY, SOPHIE DYER, ANDERS ENGBERG-PEDERSEN, SOLVEIG GADE, CRISTIÁN GOMEZ-MOYA, SOFIE LEBECH, AIMÉE ZITO LEMA, KATHRIN MAURER, KEVIN MCSORLEY, DIMA SABER, ORAIB TOUKAN, SARAH TUCK, LOUISE WOLTHERS, ARKADI ZAIDES

https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/warchives/

The trend in ISR is to merge ISR and strike capabilities into the same platform. Future ISR systems will be smaller, lighter, unmanned, and armed with long-range-precision-guided munitions. (Turkish Defense Industries SSB photo) In the fall of 2020, the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War provided a glimpse of what the next generation of Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) will become: precision-guided munitions with active sensors. In the past, ISR platforms primarily found targets for other systems to destroy. The recent fighting in the Caucasus, which involved two, near-equal medium powers, has shown how ISR and Precision-Guided Munitions (PGMs) are now blending to become one. During this conflict, the Azerbaijani forces used strike systems, Unmanned Air Combat Vehicles (UCAVs) and Loitering Munitions (LMs) for ISR. These systems had high-end, active sensors that generated real-time intelligence during combat. In addition, they provided accurate, real-time, battle damage assessment. In the next decade, strike systems will become smaller, less expensive, and better networked. The lessons learned for next generation ISR from this conflict is dramatic, and was a key factor in Azerbaijan's decisive victory. Some of the primary systems used by Azerbaijan, principally the TB2 UCAV and the HAROP LM, provide an important insight into the future of ISR systems.