Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare

by William M. Arkin

  26. “The 422 TS is 89% confident that the true CEP based on the F-16 employment is nine meters (+/- 20%). Twenty-nine live drops, 90% of which were between 20,000 and 25,000 feet MSL, confirmed this. This CEP is based on a 7.2meter TLE. JDAM’s accuracy rivals that of the GBU-10/12.” See USAF Weapons School, Nellis AFB, NV; Student Paper: F-16 JDAM Accuracy vs. Terminal Threats for F-16 Class 99 AIF, by Captain Todd A. Murphey, 27 FW, Cannon AFB, New Mexico, 6 June 1999.

  USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide, Air Force Pamphlet 14-210, 1 February 1998, p. 74.

  27. Even in the face of jamming and other countermeasures, 100-foot accuracy would still be produced through the inertial measurement unit in each JDAM.

  “JDAM accuracy is dependent upon the accuracy of target coordinates and the acquisition of GPS satellites. The design tolerances against horizontal targets call for a 13meter CEP for GPS guidance and a 30meter CEP for INS guidance… (T.O. 1-1M-34, 1-72.25). When using INS guidance, INS drift can effect bomb accuracy depending on the length of time-of-fall. The error assumed to achieve the 13meter or 30meter CEP is based on a target location error (TLE) of 7.2meters.

  “If JDAM never acquires GPS, it guides to the target using its INS with degraded accuracy. In these cases, JDAM will still hit at the programmed impact angle and heading. Potential causes for not acquiring GPS can vary from a short time of fall to no acquisition due to GPS jamming. It should be noted that JDAM does not have wings and cannot glide to the target. Instead, it falls similar to a GP bomb where some lift is provided by the strakes and its flight path is adjusted with the tail assembly. Therefore, the more JDAM must maneuver to hit the target, the closer the aircraft must be for the release. USAF employs from 20,000–25,000 feet MSL due to targeting pod limitations and GPS accuracy. However, this is no longer a factor with JDAM. Climbing higher and flying faster, pilots can drop JDAM from much farther away while still maintaining high accuracy”; see USAF Weapons School, Nellis AFB, NV; Student Paper: F-16 JDAM Accuracy vs. Terminal Threats for F-16 Class 99 AIF, by Captain Todd A. Murphey, 27 FW, Cannon AFB, New Mexico, 6 June 1999.

  28. Air Land Sea Application Center, Targeting: The Joint Targeting Process and Procedures for Targeting Time-Critical Targets, FM 90-36, MCRP 3-16.1F, NWP 2-01.11, AFJPAM 10-225, July 1997, p. II-1.

  29. PowerPoint Briefing, B-1B Team, MPE-960221-1480, 22 July 1996.

  30. Lieutenant General Buster C. Glosson, USAF; Impact of Precision Weapons on Air Combat Operations, presentation made at the 1992 Armament Symposium at Eglin AFB, Florida, 23 September 1992.

  31. U.S. Congress, House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Military Procurement, Hearing on the Performance of the B-2 Bomber in Kosovo, 30 June 1999. At the time of the Kosovo war, no fighter was able to drop JDAMs because they had not yet received the proper interface; PowerPoint Briefing, Kosovo Lessons Learned, General John P. Jumper, n.d. (1999).

  32. USAF Weapons School, Nellis AFB, NV; Student Paper: F-16 JDAM Accuracy vs. Terminal Threats for F-16 Class 99 AIF, by Captain Todd A. Murphey, 27 FW, Cannon AFB, New Mexico, 6 June 1999.

  33. USAF Weapons School, Nellis AFB, NV; Student Paper: Future Developments in Conventional Weapons for F-16 Class 95 BIF, by Captain Stephen A. Langford, 522 FS, Cannon AFB, New Mexico, November 1995.

  34. William M. Arkin, Special to Defense Daily, 9 February 2000.

  35. USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide, Air Force Pamphlet 14-210, 1 February 1998, p. 74.

  “JDAM is only as accurate as the target coordinates given to it. Getting coordinates accurate within 7.2 meters during mission planning will require sensitive sources, which in past conflicts have not always been accessible to fighter aircrew due to security issues. Anyone who has ever fought with Intel to get target area imagery knows this is a problem.”

  “… To achieve its advertised 13 meter accuracy, JDAM requires 3 dimensional target coordinates in the WGS-84 Datum. These coordinates must have a Target Location Error (TLE) of 7.2 meters or less…. The primary source of coordinates this accurate will be the Defense Mapping Agency’s Database, although other sources, such as reconnaissance aircraft, do exist. These coordinates could be given to aircrew via the Air Tasking Order or through Intel’s mission planning computer system, the Combat Intelligence System (CIS). Aircrew planning with the air force Mission Support System (AFMSS) will expedite getting these coordinates as the CIS can be linked to AFMSS and targets selected from imagery can be converted to accurate coordinates quickly. If the coordinates you receive have no TLE associated with them, weapon accuracy becomes questionable. A good rule of thumb to use for coordinates with no associated TLE is if they have three or more numbers after the decimal point, they have the required TLE for JDAM.” See USAF Weapons School, Nellis AFB, Nevada; Student Paper: Joint Direct Attack Munition and the F-15E, for F-15E Class 96 AIM, by Captain Daniel F. Holmes, 4 FW, Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina, May 1996.

  CHAPTER FOUR Trojan Spirit

  1. The most detailed story of Predator’s origin is contained in Whittle, Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014).

  See also Frank Strickland, “The Early Evolution of the Predator Drone,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Extracts, March 2013); Houston R. Cantwell, Major, USAF, RADM Thomas J. Cassidy’s MQ-1 Predator: The USAF’s First UAV Success Story, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, April 2006; Major Houston R. Cantwell, USAF; Beyond Butterflies: Predator and the Evolution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Air Force Culture; School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 2007, p. 19; Walter J. Boyne, How the Predator Grew Teeth, Air Force Magazine, July 2009 (Vol. 92, No. 7); Richard Whittle, Predator’s Big Safari, Mitchell Papers 7, August 2011.

  As Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Perry championed the establishment of the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO), which was also commanded by Congress to bring some advocacy and organization to a floundering program. “The DARO will be responsible for the development and acquisition of manned and unmanned platforms, their sensors, data links, data relays, and ground stations,” Perry directed in the establishing memo; Deputy Secretary of Defense Memorandum, “Establishment of the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO),” November 6, 1993.

  2. See, e.g., Ashley Collman, “Marilyn the Riveter: New photos show Norma Jean working at a military factory during the height of World War II,” Daily Mail Online (UK), July 27, 2013; www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380152/Marilyn-Monroe-photos-young-Norma-Jean-working-WWII-factory.html (accessed July 27, 2013).

  “First delivered to the US Army Air Corps in November 1939, the Radioplane Model RP-4 was designated as OQ-1. It would be the first of a family of drones for which Radioplane would earn fleeting fame. Until the interest in UAVs later in the twentieth century sparked a resurgence of interest, Radioplane drones were merely a forgotten footnote to World War II”; Bill Yenne, Attack of the Drones: A History of Unmanned Aerial Combat, p. 16.

  3. See, e.g., John Barry and Evan Thomas, Up in the Sky, an Unblinking Eye: The hundreds of drones cruising over Iraq and Afghanistan have changed war forever, Newsweek, June 9, 2008.

  4. Whittle, Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (2014), pp. 85–86; Rand, The Predator ACTD: A Case Study for Transition Planning to the Formal Acquisition Process, 1997, p. 22.

  5. For references to June 1994, see, e.g., Bill Yenne, Attack of the Drones: A History of Unmanned Aerial Combat, p. 60.

  6. Under the code name Red Wagon, the unmanned program began in 1959. In Vietnam, from August 1964 until their last combat flight on 30 April 1975, the air force’s 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing launched 3,435 Ryan reconnaissance drones over North Vietnam and its surrounding areas, at a cost of about 554 UAVs lost to all causes during the war. See RAF, Air Power UAVs: The Wider Context, p. 30.

  In comparison with manned aircraft, during the Vietnam War, unmanned reconnaissance drones produced about a 40 percent missio
n effectiveness rate, meaning that for every 100 targets to be photographed, they would come back with about 40 (after film canisters were successfully recovered and the film was developed). Manned platforms performed at about 70 percent. The cost of mounting an unmanned mission, including operating the launching and recovery aircraft and a higher rate of attrition, was about $40,000 per sortie, compared to about $6,500 for a manned mission. See Major Houston R. Cantwell, USAF; Beyond Butterflies: Predator and the Evolution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Air Force Culture; School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 2007, pp. 11–12.

  7. This included the application of “stealth,” when engineers figured that by putting screen mesh over engine inlets and using special blankets and radar-absorbing paints they could make the drones more difficult for radar to detect. Major Christopher A. Jones, USAF; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS): An Assessment of Historical Operations and Future Possibilities; a Research Paper Presented to the Research Department, Air Command and Staff College, AU/ACSC/0230D/97-03, March 1997, p. 12.

  8. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Richard H. Van Atta, Jack Nunn, Alethia Cook, and Ivars Gutmanis; in IDA, Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs, Volume 2—Detailed Assessments, pp. VI-18 to VI-28; Thomas P. Ehrhard, Air Force UAVs: The Secret History, p. 20; Bill Yenne, Attack of the Drones: A History of Unmanned Aerial Combat, p. 67.

  9. “Flown in 1973, the Developmental Sciences R4 SkyEye was a remarkably advanced UAV for its day. During the 1980s, the army flew them operationally in covert missions in Central America and possibly elsewhere”; Bill Yenne, Attack of the Drones: A History of Unmanned Aerial Combat, pp. 36, 39.

  10. Major Houston R. Cantwell, USAF; Beyond Butterflies: Predator and the Evolution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Air Force Culture; School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 2007, pp. 5, 18.

  11. Thomas P. Ehrhard, Air Force UAVs: The Secret History, pp. 5–6. Ehrhard writes that the US intelligence community was the single greatest contributor to US operational UAV development. From the period 1960 through 2000, roughly forty years, “the intelligence community budget funded more than 40 percent of the total US UAV investment, double that of the next greatest contributor.”

  See also comments by Robert Gates, who as CIA director in 1992 tried to get the air force to participate in development of advanced drones; Duty, p. 128.

  “To say that the Predator program lacked any coherent development plan would be an understatement. From its roots a consistent theme emerges. Predator’s success did not result from any strategic long-term plan, but instead, occurred from cumulative short-term decisions made ‘on the fly.’ Even the air force’s initial interest in Predator came rather abruptly. During the early stages of the ACTD process, the air force demonstrated little interest in participation. This lack of interest left the army largely responsible for operating the Predator during the 1995 Roving Sands exercise and the Nomad Vigil deployment to Europe later in 1995”; Major Houston R. Cantwell, USAF; Beyond Butterflies: Predator and the Evolution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Air Force Culture; School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 2007, p. 21.

  12. Thomas P. Ehrhard, Air Force UAVs: The Secret History, p. 49. Whittle, in Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (2014), p. 71, says that President Clinton himself was frustrated with the quality of the intelligence available.

  In Bosnia specifically, manned reconnaissance was also shown to have significant limitations, “mainly due to bad weather, roughness of the Bosnian terrain, camouflage skill of the Serbs, and limited availability and flexibility.” See Lieutenant Colonel Richard L. Sargent, Chapter 8: Aircraft Used in Deliberate Force, p. 226; in Department of the Air Force, Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning.

  13. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Richard H. Van Atta, Jack Nunn, Alethia Cook, and Ivars Gutmanis; in IDA, Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs, Volume 2—Detailed Assessments, p. VI-24; Major Houston R. Cantwell, USAF; Beyond Butterflies: Predator and the Evolution of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Air Force Culture; School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 2007, p. 17.

  14. “The dronefather; Abe Karem created the robotic plane that transformed the way modern warfare is waged—and continues to pioneer other airborne innovations,” The Economist, December 1, 2012; www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567205-abe-karem-created-robotic-plane-transformed-way-modern-warfare (accessed October 2, 2013).

  15. Frank Strickland, “The Early Evolution of the Predator Drone,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Extracts, March 2013). See also the detailed history in Whittle, Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (2014), pp. 68ff.

  16. Richard M. Clark, Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles: Airpower by the People, for the People, but Not with the People; A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, for Completion of Graduation Requirements, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 1999, p. 53.

  17. Richard M. Clark, Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicles: Airpower by the People, for the People, but Not with the People; A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, for Completion of Graduation Requirements, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June 1999, p. 53; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Richard H. Van Atta, Jack Nunn, Alethia Cook, and Ivars Gutmanis; in IDA, Transformation and Transition: DARPA’s Role in Fostering an Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs, Volume 2—Detailed Assessments, p. VI-23.

  18. Congressional Research Service (Richard A. Best), “Intelligence Technology in the Post-Cold War Era: The Role of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs),” July 26, 1993, p. 10.

  19. Peter W. Merlin, Ikhana: Unmanned Aircraft System Western States Fire Missions, NASA History Office, 2009, p. 1; John David Blom, Unmanned Aerial Systems: A Historical Perspective, Occasional Paper 37, Combat Studies Institute Press, September 2010, p. 94.

  Prior to Deliberate Force, the Gnat had seen service during Deny Flight operations, unlike Predator. During Deliberate Force, the Gnat launched and recovered from Dezney, Turkey, and inside Croatia. In all, the Gnat-750 attempted twelve launches and flew seven successful flights. During Deliberate Force, Lofty View and Condor aircraft based at Dezney, Turkey, flew nine sorties, logging more than fifty-two hours of recce and surveillance time; Lieutenant Colonel Richard L. Sargent, Chapter 8: Aircraft Used in Deliberate Force, p. 227; in Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning.

  One source says that Gnats followed UN convoys and took pictures of artillery and surface-to-air missile sites. See John David Blom, Unmanned Aerial Systems: A Historical Perspective, Occasional Paper 37, Combat Studies Institute Press, September 2010, pp. 93–94.

  20. Rand, The Predator ACTD: A Case Study for Transition Planning to the Formal Acquisition Process, 1997, p. 20.

  21. With a wingspan of 48.7 feet and a weight of approximately 2,250 pounds, the Predator A had an operational altitude of 7,000 to 22,000 feet, a loitering airspeed of 85 knots cruising and 120 knots maximum, and endurance of 16 to 22 hours (out to 500 nautical miles. It can carry approximately 450 pounds internally and 200 pounds externally).

  See Frank Strickland, “The Early Evolution of the Predator Drone,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Extracts, March 2013). Predator can carry a larger payload than the Gnat-750’s (450 pounds versus 140 pounds) and is a heavier vehicle (1,873 pounds versus 1,140 pounds); see Rand, The Predator ACTD: A Case Study for Transition Planning to the Formal Acquisition Process, 1997, p. 9.

  22. Matt J. Martin with Charles W. Sasser, Predator: The Remote-Control Air War over Iraq and Afghanistan: A Pilot’s Story (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2010), p. 20.

  23. As Whittle, in Predator
: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution (2014), p. 95, points out, though: “The first dish installed was merely a placeholder, a UHF (ultra-high-frequency) antenna with too little bandwidth to handle the amount of data required both to control the aircraft and stream video.”

  See also Glenn Goodman, Evolving the Predator; Interview: Thomas J. Cassidy Jr, President and CEO General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance Journal, July 2004, p. 26.

  24. Rand, The Predator ACTD: A Case Study for Transition Planning to the Formal Acquisition Process, 1997, pp. 21–22.

  25. In August 1995, engineers retrofitted the initial three Predators with Ku-band capability (which they did not initially have). “After the retrofitting, the UAV could provide real-time motion video to ground sources”; Rand, The Predator ACTD: A Case Study for Transition Planning to the Formal Acquisition Process, 1997, p. 25; see also Thomas P. Ehrhard, Air Force UAVs: The Secret History, p. 49.

  26. CBO, Options for Enhancing DOD’s UAV Programs, September 1998, p. 13; Linda Shiner, “Predator: First Watch: Lesson learned: never send a man to do a machine’s job,” Air & Space magazine (Smithsonian), May 2001.