SHORTLY AFTER SUNRISE on April 6th 2003, a mechanised unit of about 150 Iraqi forces near the northern town of Debecka attacked a smaller detachment of American soldiers and their Kurdish Peshmerga allies. Half an hour later, two US Navy F-14 fighter jets arrived. One, after a flyover, dropped a bomb not on the Iraqi enemy, but on Kurdish troops who had retreated behind their American allies. More than a dozen were killed. Accidents in the fog of war, however tragic, are nothing new. However, the commander who called in the air strike does not attribute the blunder to a lack of high technology, but rather to an excess of it.
Fighter jets fly so fast the pilot has only a few seconds on a flyover to identify the target, says Frank Antenori, a US Army sergeant at the time. Slow and inexpensive low-tech propeller warplanes would often be better and safer for attacking ground forces, says Mr Antenori, now an Arizona state senator. Numerous air forces, including America’s, are coming to a similar conclusion.
The story illustrates one of the main themes of this second part of the book, which is about air and space technologies for defence and intelligence. Cheaper and less-sophisticated aircraft and satellite technologies are often better. Drones and even militarised blimps increasingly outperform costlier conventional warplanes and satellites when it comes to spying, conducting electronic warfare, and delivering or guiding precision ordnance.
The following articles explore a broad range of technologies. Rocket boosters that accelerate bunker-smashing bombs could reduce collateral damage. Explosives-sniffing drones may help detect roadside bombs. Shoebox-sized satellites, called “cubesats”, can piggyback on launch vehicles for big satellites very cheaply by replacing ballast that a rocket would otherwise carry to improve its weight distribution. Grouping these articles together brings a few broad themes into clearer focus.
For a start, poor or small countries can use less-sophisticated or cheaper kit to obtain significant air or space capabilities. The advent of cubesats allowed Norway to launch its first government satellite in July 2010. Thanks to cubesats, many student groups have begun to build satellites.
“Less is more” technologies will provide some countries with more operational independence. Afghanistan lacks the expertise and infrastructure to operate conventional warplanes. But propeller warplanes are far easier to maintain and can take off or land in small fields. (One expert says only half jokingly that they can be “flown and maintained by plumbers”.) By supplying them to Afghanistan, America will find it easier to set up an Afghan air force and gradually withdraw in the next few years. Another benefit is that rival countries are less likely to consider this sort of defence co-operation as a threat.
New technologies are also greatly increasing the value of air power itself. Improvements in drone technology are illustrative. US Marine Corps colonel John Adams, a former National Security Agency expert on gathering intelligence with drones, says that during the first Gulf war America had only one model, the RQ-2 Pioneer, which sported a wooden propeller. Although its fuselage was only about the size of a man, the reconnaissance drone was so loud and conspicuous it resembled “a flying lawnmower”, says Colonel Adams. It remained in service, with upgrades, until 2007.
A much larger but stealthier bat-winged drone gathered intelligence above Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound before and during the May 2011 US Navy Seals attack. Reportedly Lockheed Martin’s more than 20m-wingspan RQ-170 Sentinel, it loitered undetected in airspace near sensitive Pakistani army and nuclear facilities protected with air-defence radar. (President Barack Obama and top national-security officials watched live imagery it provided during the raid.) Some spy drones in development will be little bigger than a large insect. Drones as big as a manned aeroplane launch missiles.
Remote-sensing capabilities for aircraft have become formidable. A Canadian-made turret not much larger than a motorcycle helmet can read a licence plate from a distance of 10km, work out the vehicle’s location and speed, and mark it with a targeting laser. Thanks to a new and clever configuration of envelopes for helium and ethane gases, a blimp in development could loiter in the stratosphere for months, surveying an area the size of France at far less cost than a satellite. Adversaries hounded by this sort of equipment are at a big disadvantage.
When armed forces with control of the air obtain more sophisticated capabilities, they are increasingly likely to consider, for good or ill, bombardment as a viable option. Better targeting technologies can reduce bombing blunders such as killing friendly forces or civilians. And new types of aircraft beget new opportunities for attacks.
Cessna, a Kansas maker of propeller warplanes, says booming deliveries are providing many countries without the budget or expertise for “sledgehammer” bombers with a new and inexpensive “flyswatter” option, in the words of Pat Sullivan, head of government sales. America’s Sikorsky, maker of the Black Hawk attack helicopter, has built a test model with extra rotors that is extremely fast. A collapsible mechanical cushion to protect helicopter passengers during a crash is being developed. And remote-controlled aircraft can keep pilots out of harm’s way entirely.
A perverse result of all this is that underdog forces have increasingly strong motivations to fight from civilian areas. Using non-combatants as human shields can help compensate for a lack of air power. In Libya, forces loyal to strongman Muammar Qaddafi were using civilian vehicles in a bid to avoid being killed by NATO aviation. Their armoured vehicles offered little protection against the ordnance anyway.
Despite the beguiling attractions of bombardment weaponry, time after time it has been shown that air supremacy provides no assurance of victory. Some fighting forces have little material or infrastructure that could be bombed. Distinguishing an enemy from civilians is often difficult. And a fighting force that accidentally kills civilians may strengthen an opponent’s resolve and public support.
Tricky legal issues have emerged along with new bombing technologies. Indiscriminate cluster munitions scatter bomblets over wide areas. Duds can explode after battles. A majority of the world’s nations banned cluster bombs in the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which became legally binding on August 1st 2010. Colonel Qaddafi’s regime was roundly criticised by America and other countries in April 2011 after its forces fired bomblets into the besieged city of Misrata, killing civilians. But the United States has not signed up, in spite of early indications that Mr Obama would push for a ban if he became president.
America has used cluster bombs in recent years in at least Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. This could pose problems for America’s signatory coalition partners. But new “sensor fused” bomblets with self-destruction mechanisms can improve targeting and reduce post-battle casualties. Calls for exceptions to the ban have increased accordingly.
The militarisation of space, another theme of this part of the book, raises new challenges. Space technologies provide great strength to space-faring nations, and the United States in particular. America is designing ground-launched hypersonic and non-nuclear “Prompt Global Strike” missiles that, guided by satellite, could hit almost any spot on Earth in less than an hour. But a nuclear power could conceivably mistake a non-nuclear ballistic missile zooming towards a target in a nearby country for an incoming nuclear strike on itself.
Beyond this additional risk of escalation, the more a country relies on space technology the greater are its vulnerabilities. At least half a dozen countries now have the technology to shoot down spacecraft, and India and Iran may soon join them. America, China and Russia have successfully destroyed orbiting satellites, and the debris can endanger spacecraft for decades. Efforts to protect spacecraft increase the cost of satellite services that have civil as well as military purposes. Crucially, efforts to control space weaponry have stumbled. As in the realm of cyberwar, verifying compliance would be extremely difficult. For good or ill, new know-how is further militarising the skies and space. As the technologies unfold, so does the future of warfare.