Nowhere To Run

Uploaded on 2024-10-21 in TECHNOLOGY--Developments, GOVERNMENT-Defence, FREE TO VIEW

On a quiet London evening in December 1944, a young member of the US Women’s Army Corp was walking out her office building near Marble Arch. She turned back to return some papers that she inadvertently took from her office. As it happened, some friends volunteered to do so in her stead.

A minute later, a German V-2 (Vengeance Weapon 2 – an intermediate range ballistic missile launched from 100 miles away) slammed into her office building killing all her friends.

Eighteen thousand other people would be killed by these V-2’s in less than six months. And countless others, like the young woman were left severely wounded in both body and mind for a life time.

Years later on, as she tearfully shared this story with her only son, my mother whispered that in modern warfare, there was nowhere to run, nor anywhere to hide. In those years of my childhood, she was speaking in terms of massive nuclear weapons and their destructive capabilities.

Today, the technology of terror is drones. Narrower in scope, but more focused in dealing out death and destruction. And is seems as drone technology has vastly improved and played out in the past few years from the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, to the Ukraine-Russia war, and most recently in Israel, my mother’s resigned statement is sadly now truer than ever before.

Killing As A Video Game

Today’s drones are long range, long dwell, and are moving from human directed targeting to pre-programmed targeting. The technology is cheap, easily produced, and easily used. All of which means it is not going away. And it will continue to spread in use and targeted lethality.

Social media has brought the use of these new vengeance weapons to everyone’s computer screens. Videos of drone attacks are frightening not only for the result but also the method.

They have become a deadly video game with long distance players. Chasing down combatants in the field of battle and civilians at home relentlessly. Clean killing. Dehumanizing killing. Reducing it all to a game.

And now, thanks to simple computer technology, swarms of drones can be directed in simultaneous targeted attacks in the same way.

An even more frightening form of hell -- the kind of hell warfare that was experienced in the terrorist and jungle wars of the mid to late 20th century. No front lines. Only sudden attack and death.

Long Range Terror Weapon, Sort of

Watching the advance of long range drones is equally terrifying. The ability to hit civilian targets deep in country – like in the current Middle East conflict or the Ukraine-Russia war - with near stealth capability is meant to kill and to damage in a limited fashion. But, this is also about terror and degradation of the morale of the population.

The problem with any “vengeance’ weapon is people become surprisingly inured to their attacks. As with the civilians of London in World War Two, the survivors went about their business knowing the attacks could occur at any time. And as we have seen in Kiev today, the attacks often strengthen the resolve of the local citizens – not damage morale.

No Going Back

So where does it leaves us – this increasingly automated and targeted drone warfare?

There is some talk that like landmines, for instance, nations could try to set international standards for drone warfare. However, in my opinion, it is likely such action is to be agreed to by few or simply ignored or paid lip service by the many.

I am afraid that for now, we are in a spiral of drone war with heightening defenses and increasing deterrence – one side keeps upping its defenses, the other side ramping up their capabilities.

Welcome to the mechanized hell of mid-21st century warfare.

Ronald A. Marks is a former CIA and Capitol Hill staffer and IT Executive. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Visiting Professor at George Mason University, the Schar School of Policy and Government where he teaches about cyber space and emerging technologies.

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