Page 67 - ICE BUSINESS TIMES February 2020

to watch the war they are waging on "General Atomics is the top vendor
ACCORDING TO A
REPORT FROM THE
CENTER FOR THE STUDY
solution to the Zeppelin menace. In
the autumn of 1916 these bullets OF THE DRONE,
were used to shoot down one of these PREDATOR DRONE
marauding airships, finally ending TECHNOLOGY HAS
their reign of total aerial supremacy. SPREAD TO 95
The success of the bullets removed COUNTRIES, A MASSIVE
the need for an uncrewed aircraft to
attack airships. However, by then INCREASE OVER THE
Low’s team had made such ONLY 60 COUNTRIES
encouraging progress with their THAT POSSESSED THIS
'drone' remote control system that KIND OF TECHNOLOGY
the military continued to support this ROUGHLY A DECADE
innovative project.
The first trial of the drone was held AGO. THE U.S., ISRAEL,
on Wednesday 21 March 1917 at the CHINA, IRAN AND
RFC Central Flying School base at RUSSIA ARE THE
Upavon on Salisbury Plain. The 'pilot' SUPERPOWERS THAT ARE
was none other than Henry Segrave,
who would later go on to hold both LEADING THE RACE IN
the land-speed and water-speed TERMS OF DEVELOPING
world records, not to mention a AND DEPLOYING
knighthood. The first drone failed to PREDATOR DRONES FOR
launch correctly; but the second one
THE BEGINNING somehow managed to hover in the THEIR NATIONAL
The man responsible for creating the air. And that is how, 14 years after
first predator drone would be British the Wright Brothers’ flight and two
inventor Dr. Archibald Low. Dr Low was years into the first World War, the
recruited into the Royal Flying Corps to first ever radio-controlled drone
develop the control system for an finally took off. first remote-controlled aircraft named
Radioplane OQ-2. This is marked as
uncrewed aircraft, covertly named
‘Aerial Targets’. In these desperate times DEVELOPMENTS the world’s first mass-produced
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle product.
it was hoped that they would be capable Drones were still in their infancy
of attacking the German airships that, stage during the Second World War
technology during the Cold War. They
from 1915, flew regular bombing flights and during the Cold War. In the
over London. Archie Low was also set to Second World War, U.S. military were unreliable, small yet expensive,
and pilots had to be within range of
work assisting with the development of personnel Reginald Denny made the
an explosive bullet, another intended their analogue radio signals, often
having to fly their drones while sat in
a nearby manned aircraft. Moreover,
they were overshadowed by globe
spanning satellite networks and much
advanced, supersonic manned spy
planes, such as the U-2 and SR-71
Blackbird.
Major progress of drones came with
the help of an Israeli aviation genius
who in the 1970s started to develop
aircraft with glider-like properties.
Incredibly long, thin wings that could
hold the plane aloft at altitude for
hours on end, on a more than 24
hours flight.
This endurance is a fundamental
reason why today’s armed drones,
such as the General Atomics Reaper
drone, are so in vogue. The key is
keeping the pilots on the ground: the
drones are lighter than manned
aircraft and they don’t have to land
when they get tired, they just swap
seats with a fresh crew.
Their ability to loiter proved
invaluable in the 1990s, during the
escalating conflict in the former
Yugoslavia. There was a dearth of
good intelligence about Serbian tank
and troop movements. U.S. supersonic
jets were struggling to spot the
Serbian forces in the thick Balkan
forests but the drones could stay on
station for 24 hours at a time, and
kept their unblinking eye on their
targets.
Combining this loitering with the
second crucial advance, the use of
transmitters to send the footage
straight back to battlefield
commanders, is credited with
convincing Nato generals they needed
to start bombing the Serbs again, so
hastening the signing of the Dayton
peace accords.
The U.S. has since taken those Balkan
INTERESTS. systems further. The signal to control
them, and the returning video footage,
are now transmitted through satellite
networks, not radio waves. In 2000
the U.S. took the final leap forward
when the Air Force and CIA became
the first to successfully fit drones with
missiles, as part of a failed CIA
attempt to kill Osama bin Laden.
Drones were still only a niche These satellite controlled hunter-killer
drones allow pilots to control their
aircraft from half a world away and it
allows generals, spies and politicians
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the other side of the world, live on TV
from anywhere in the world.
America’s drones started life as spy
planes and were augmented over the
years to become assassination
weapons. They have been hovering up
information, feeding the military’s
insatiable demand for battlefield
intelligence, and finding and killing
terrorists and insurgents.
THE INDUSTRY
Global spending on unmanned aerial
vehicles is set for a major expansion
in the coming decade as militaries
invest about $98 billion in new
intelligence gathering and strike
capabilities, experts say. The Teal
Group, an aerospace and defense
industry market analysis firm, expects
worldwide research-and-development
and procurement spending on
predator drones to rise from a
projected $11.1 billion in 2020 to
$14.3 billion by 2029 — nearly a 30
percent increase. R&D spending is
forecasted to grow from $3.2 billion in
2020 to $4 billion in 2029. According
to Steve Zaloga, one of the company’s
senior analysts, the U.S. is expected to
lead the race from the front, with R&D
spending increasing from an
estimated $2.2 billion in 2020 to $2.7
billion in 2029, and procurement
ramping up from $2.5 billion in 2020
to about $3.3 billion by the end of the
decade.
Several factors are said to drive the
anticipated rise in global investment
in predator drones. One is that many
armed forces are acquiring unmanned
aerial vehicles for the first time and
pursuing new capabilities, he said.
The other reason is that there is a
growing demand for intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd.,
Leonardo, Northrop Grumman,
assets as nations focus on Textron Systems. and Lockheed
information warfare. Experts have
also speculated that drones are likely Martin are the companies that
to become “loyal wingman”, i.e. they dominate the industry of predator
can accompany manned fighter jets drones. According to market research
into battle or conduct attacks on their firm Govini, General Atomics,
own. Northrop Grumman, Textron and
Despite being a mammoth industry, Boeing account for 66 percent of the
the game is in the hands of a very few, $9 billion U.S. predator drone market.
powerful companies. BAE Systems The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper
Inc., Aerovironment Inc., Boeing, alone accounted for more than a
General Atomic, China Aerospace, quarter of the market.
that owns more than a third of the
Defense market at more than $4
billion," the research states. "Northrop
Grumman is a distant second with
less than half of that capture.
Combined, these top two vendors
account for more than 50 percent of
the UAS market. Textron owns 10
percent of the market, while Boeing
rounds out the top four with seven
percent."
DRONE-BACKED
NATIONS
According to a report from the Center
for the Study of the Drone, predator
drone technology has spread to 95
countries, a massive increase over the
only 60 countries that possessed this
kind of technology roughly a decade
ago. The U.S., Israel, China, Iran and
Russia are the superpowers that are
leading the race in terms of
developing and deploying predator
drones for their national interests.
Drones rapidly proliferated in a second
wave over the past five years, with
Pakistan and Turkey developing their
own programmes. Since 2016, Turkey
has used drones heavily, against the
separatist Kurdish PKK in its own
country, in northern Iraq and more
recently against Kurdish groups in
Syria. China, meanwhile, has begun
supplying a range of countries with its
Wing Loong and CH series drones,
including to the U.A.E – where they
have been used in a string of deadly
strikes in Libya – as well as Egypt,
Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq,
although not every country has been
able to deploy what it has bought.
Predator drones have already changed
warfare, providing a more efficient
alternative to conventional aerial
missions. But experts worry that they
make it easier for countries to embark
on wars and undeclared “shadow
wars”, and put non-combatants at
greater risk. So, while predator drones
are on the rise, we can only hope for
the increase in usage of drones in the
‘better’ aspects of life – delivering
products, business, journalism and
even in humanitarian aid. Only then
shall we be able to do justice to this
invention.