Just Finished Reading: Kill Chain – Drones and the Rise of High-Tech Assassins by Andrew Cockburn (FP: 2015) [259pp] 

It has always been the dream of militaries around the world to be able to dispel the ‘fog of war’. This conceptual fog is the inability to see ‘over the hill’, around corners and behind enemy lines at will. To be able to see, god-like, the whole battlefield and know, precisely, where every unit (both friendly and enemy) was exactly located would, in most instances, mean that you could win every battle and dominate every encounter – or at least you could if you could deny such an ability to the enemy. Naturally, with the demand for such omnipotent gaze so high we would expect that companies would offer just such an ability to their military masters – for a cost. 

They tried it in earnest first in Vietnam. The US military at the time couldn’t understand how their low-tech enemies both continued to resist and managed the feats of logistics they evidently were capable of. The culprit was the so-called Ho-Chi-Min Trail. But even with the largest and most powerful air force in the world they couldn’t simply bomb a winding jungle trail 24/7 and hope for the best. They needed accurate and timely intel so they could respond ‘Just In Time’ for most effect. Enter the high-tech sensors designed to pick up human smells, human footfall and the rumble of truck engines. Or so the manufacturers promised. But that was a lot of remote data that needed processing so computers (or a sort) were designed and built to process the data and determine exactly what was going on along the Trail and tell the air force exactly where and when to bomb. Or so the manufacturers promised. Of course, it turned out that the sensors, even when they worked and even when they actually landed anywhere near the Trail, couldn’t differentiate between a Viet-Cong and a local peasant or between a truck and a wild pig. Nor could the computer program supposedly designed to do just that. But the air force had its targeting data, so planes flew and bombs, lots of bombs, fell as did Saigon sometime later. 

Not deterred by failure, the manufacturers of high-tech equipment eventually delivered the iconic ‘drone’ which was, in their minds at least, the all-seeing eye that could provide ‘real-time’ intel and, in later iterations, launch instant precision strikes. The military dream had finally been achieved – they could view any battlefield anywhere on the planet and, with the touch of a button or a word over a phone bring down hell (or at least a Hellfire missile) on a helpless enemy. Or so the manufacturers promised. Unfortunately, things were never that straight forward. For one thing the drones couldn’t really take off or land in strong winds, or actually in light winds. Their light construction meant that they were easily damaged and needed constant maintenance. Their sensors, supposedly god-like, were nothing of the sort and, at the height they usually operated at, couldn’t easily distinguish between types of vehicles or identify people on the ground by age, gender or whether or not they were carrying a weapon. This naturally meant that any strike had a high chance of collateral damage – AKA dead women, children and innocent bystanders. Also naturally, the military LOVED their new toys and demanded more of them with longer ranges, higher payloads and longer loiter times. All of which the manufacturers promised to provide – at ever increasing costs.  

I’ve never been a fan of drones and the more I read about them the less I like them. Not only are they a very questionable weapon system for a whole host of reasons they have been used, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen, as essentially tools of targeted assassination which isn’t, as far as I’m aware, what they were originally designed for. The ethical problems with this approach are huge and the result are, as we are now only too aware, questionable at best. If you ever wondered how we arrived at this situation this is most definitely a book for you. Told with an apparent deep, often inside, knowledge of the equipment, the companies that make them and the organisations that buy them this is a totally fascinating (if at times almost blood-boiling) of why ‘drone strike’ and ‘hellfire missile’ have become common terms in the media and beyond. Drones are definitely here to stay (as we’re presently seeing in Ukraine) and as their advertised abilities grow so will their usage around the world. Watch the Skies and pray for cloud. Recommended.