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In recent times I have noticed that people have been writing and speaking of UAVs – Unmanned Ariel Vehicles in US Military Speak, “Drones” to others, in terms of morality concerning their use which is an extraordinary dumb approach to any weapons system.

The “why” this has come about is fairly obvious because for some time the CIA and US Military have used them to “assassinate” Taliban Commanders in the mountainous regions of Pakistan’s Tribal Region that borders Afghanistan. However to talk in terms of morality is little short of bizarre in that a dumb iron bomb dropped on a house from a plane is no more nor less moral than a missile fired from a UAV.

Questions of Morality

If we go back to the Cold War and the presumed threat of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, one might question the “morality” of the European NATO countries in not putting more effort, men and budget into conventional armed forces and that time so that NATO would have had to “Go Nuclear” very early on in such a war which would have had dire consequences for the whole world.

Morality and weapons are difficult bedfellows. Whilst Cluster Munitions and Land Mines which can lie around in an unexploded and volatile condition for many years after a conflict and continue to kill and maim innocent people are obviously of questionable morality, technology can sometimes turn issues on their head.

The UAV or Drone

I have long been a fan of these weapons both for surveillance and attack operations, they are something that as a country with a Defence Industry, we should have been into years ago.

It is wrong to see Predator or “Drone” aircraft as only of value in assassinations, they are far more valuable than that. Their key asset is their persistence in terms of patrol duration, some versions can stay on station for 10 hours although the armed ones I suspect for shorter times due to payload. As the crews that fly them are thousands of miles away and can run short shifts, for surveillance and attack operations, they are far more viable than fast jets for the majority of operations.

In fact, I can remember the Commander of the base in the US where these are “piloted” from talking about the Predators in quite glowing terms. A former F16 fighter pilot his main comment was about the flexibility it gave any field commander just by its ability to loiter over the potential target area for hours on end. No these are not fast planes, they don’t need to be but providing you have enough deployed, they are likely far better for feeding intelligence back in real time over the battle space than any satellite can be.

Pilots Are Expensive

The most expensive component of a manned aircraft is the pilot who probably cost 5 years to train, only then do you add in the £70-100 million for the aircraft. You can replace the plane with one fresh out of the factory but you can never recover the 5 years that were lost when the pilot was shot down. As I’ve written before, the real difference between winning and losing the Battle of Britain in 1940 wasn’t aircraft shot down, it was crew recovered and back flying again, the Germans lost more aircrew.

The top German Fighter Ace during WWII was Adolph Galland and in his memoirs he writes about the latter stages of the war when the Germans were producing their finest fighter planes from highly advanced FW derivatives to jets and yet as he said, they were all useless because they had lost too many experienced pilots by that stage. The available rookie pilots were as likely to crash on take off on their first mission as to get airborne and bother the enemy.

Where the UK Should Be Heading

Although we can no longer develop manned jets alone, it is surprising that we cannot build our own Drones, we do have some aircraft design and build capacity right across the required technical spectrum in the UK. With 7,000 miles of coastline to defend and keep under observation in defence, policing and search and rescue roles these are an ideal solution to the UK controlling its waters and airspace.

Perhaps the most stupid idea currently in defence spending are the two super aircraft carriers and the US built JSF planes that they will fly, giving a British Admiral a large poop deck to pace, is hardly a good reason for building these two ships. For all the talk about “force projection” this is definitely a case of Champagne tastes but only Beer Money because their very existence will reduce our surface fleet dramatically.

The small aircraft carrier design of Illustrious and her sister ships, is likely the model to follow, all three may have extended life after a refit. We need to be able to deploy Helicopters and drone aircraft so for a fraction of the price of the two super carriers, Britain could have a real Naval capability and reach.

The design of Illustrious could be quickly modified in the light of 30 odd years of operating these type of ships and one of the other two currently in reserve, could be used to mock up the revised design so that two new carriers of that size could be put into production very quickly thus ensuring work in the shipyards of the UK plus, the current three, one by one could go through a refit. The net result would be 5 carriers with helicopters and a substantial complement of surveillance and attack drones many of which could be stored in crates on board and only assembled as required.

The Current State of Play

General Dannat called for a squadron of Predators and even if they weren’t missile carrying, surveillance patrols on a 24/7 basis would probably catch most bomb planting Taliban teams in the act and identify where they are planted. As a life saving measure to protect our troops on the ground, it is so obvious that only the Donkeys we have in this Government and the Civil Servants on the procurement side of Defence, are the obstacles that stand in the way of common sense.

As weapons systems, drone or, UAVs are a key strategic military tool not least because mass produced, they offer tremendous defence in depth because they are far cheaper than fast jets, don’t carry a pilot to worry about and, you can afford the inevitable operational losses. We could probably buy 18 Drones for every single copy of the Joint Strike Fighter which we will not get in vertical take off mode anyway as predicted some years ago by the Americans and much to the chagrin of the Rolls Royce workers building the engine for it and who will likely lose their jobs as a consequence.