Automating Death and Destruction
Tags: Autonomous Cars, War, Technology, Science, Economy

1. Drone wars…

These are the suspect accounts of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Some reports have Fakhrizadeh leaving the car before being shot and killed. Some have his bodyguard leaping in front of Fakhrizadeh and being shot four times. Other reports claimed a gunfight erupted between Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards and the assailants.

IRGC Deputy Commander-In-Chief Ali Fadavi claimed an automated gun killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist, and said the gun had a camera which used facial recognition artificial intelligence (AI), and was controlled by satellite. Fadavi claimed this robotic gun fired thirteen times from 150 meters and shot Fakhrizadeh without harming his wife. Conveniently, the unmanned AI gun and the Nissan truck detonated after the attack, leaving no evidence.

Aftermath of the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (photo by Fars, Wikimedia Commons)

We don’t know if any of these accounts are accurate or reliable in any way.

The key point is that either the story is true and the technology enabled an AI assassination, or the story is false but plausible because the technology is now cheap and capable.

Another essential point is that the economics of the technology are so favorable that remote, automated weapons have trickled down to the most impoverished nations and found their way into their conflicts.

The disputed Caucasus region known as Nagorno-Karabakh has been fought over for millennia. But the conflict has taken a new turn in 2020 as the Azerbaijani army fought the local Armenians over control of the mountainous territory which occupies less than 2,000 square miles.

Azerbaijani drones, supplied by Turkey and Israel, targeted Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh soldiers and equipment, destroying their defenses, and forcing them to sign a truce. These drones, according to a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, are a “potential game-changer for land warfare”.

Azerbaijan benefitted from Turkey’s experience using drones against Soviet equipment in the Syrian civil war, and The Economist cited these conflicts as pointing to the future of warfare.

The cost of drones continues to drop rapidly as their capabilities and technology increase, making them affordable to small countries like Azerbaijan. When the U.S first deployed drones in the Gulf War in 1991, they were expensive cutting-edge technology. The first Predator drones armed with missiles to strike enemy targets were used in 2001–2. These drones cost about $4 million each in 2010, and were discontinued in 2018.

An article by Major Zachary Morris in the U.S. Army University Press noted that between 2002 and 2016, the U.S. killed about four thousand enemy combatants using drones in unconventional battlefields.

The unconventional battlefield emphasizes a key weakness of drones. The U.S. selected these combat areas for drone use because the airspace was uncontested. The U.S. military had air superiority — they ruled the skies. Morris noted that in the few instances when drones engaged in combat, they lost. This included the only known air-to-air combat where a manned fighter shot down a Predator drone in 2003, and in 2015 when a Predator drone was shot down by Syria’s “dilapidated air defense system”.

Morris also emphasized the cost/capability tradeoff for drones. As an example, he noted that an MQ-9 Reaper drone costs about $30 million each in 2011, more than half of the cost for an F-16 fighter at about $55 million. The F-16 fighter represents a much more versatile and capable combat aircraft, carrying four times the payload as the Reaper, and able to excel in missions the Reaper simply cannot do.

However, for wars among smaller countries without significant air assets or defense systems, like Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, drone warfare has clear benefits. The Israeli and Turkish drones purchased by Azerbaijan cost approximately $5 million each. Less than a tenth the cost of an F-16 fighter, and even less than the cost to train a pilot.