Dawn of the Drones
Dawn of the Drones
Once the exclusive domain of the US and Israel, UAVs are today in the arsenals of 70 countries — as Saturday’s incursion into Israel indicated. Iran is 20-plus years off the cutting edge, but it’s learning fast
In December 1998, in Kandahar, the CIA received actionable information regarding the location of Osama bin Laden. The source was only somewhat reliable, however, and the strike, by cruise missiles, could result in the death of as many as 300 bystanders. The Pentagon and the CIA chief at the time, George Tenet, decided to hold fire. The 9-11 Commission reported that, “After this episode Pentagon planners intensified efforts to find a more precise alternative.”
The result: the weapons-bearing unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone.
Today, drones are utilized by law enforcement to monitor borders and by environmentalists to track Japanese whaling boats. Meteorologists want to use them to penetrate into the eye of storms. Paparazzi are trying to develop them to spy on celebrities. They can be controlled by iphone. They can be bought over Amazon. They can weigh as little as four ounces. Yet the military ones that buzz over the skies of Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Gaza and Israel are the bulk of the world’s unmanned aerial vehicles and they are changing the face of war.
For Israel that means more attacks like the one this Saturday, when an apparently outdated and relatively primitive surveillance drone came over the Mediterranean and, perhaps in an attempt to masquerade as part of Israel’s own aerial traffic, flew over Gaza toward the Israeli desert. The drone was shot down some 18 miles north of Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona.