Uncrewed military systems

Technologies for remotely piloted military vehicles date back as far as World War I. A very early predecessor to today’s remotely piloted aerial vehicles – commonly known as drones – was the British Kettering Bug shown here. It was initially launched without additional guidance, making it somewhat comparable to a cruise missile. Later on, attempts were made to fly the Kettering Bug by radio control, like a drone.

Back then, these systems were way too imprecise and unreliable to be of any use for defeating enemy targets. In fact, the early 20th century drones ended up as targets for shooting practice. It was not until the Vietnam era that drones eventually became valuable aerial reconnaissance and surveillance assets.

In recent decades, uncrewed systems have seen increasing military use. Examples include not only unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), but also unmanned systems on and below the surface of the sea, as well as ground-based robots (UGVs).

The increased availability of uncrewed systems has brought significant changes to warfare, especially when it comes to dirty, dull or dangerous missions. These systems provide increased reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting capabilities, whilst allowing military personnel to stay out of harm’s way. Moreover, unmanned systems can operate in hazardous environments, such as minefields, with the ability to operate around the clock, staying on mission for extended periods and providing real-time data and intelligence.

Two technologies – GPS and satellite communication uplinks – significantly improved UAV capabilities towards the end of the 20th century, making it possible for them to be piloted with precision and from a great distance.

The well-known MQ-1 Predator, for instance, was already used for reconnaissance in the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Technological developments alone were not what gave rise to ‘drone warfare’, however. The political landscape was key. A major driver was 9/11 and the targeting of specific individuals during the so-called ‘war on terror’.¹

It is worth noting that commercial technology fueled this development – and so, today, we see not only military drones but countless civilian drones in all shapes and sizes, too. Russia’s war against Ukraine is characterised by the use of an unprecedented number of remotely piloted vehicles, including both expensive weapons platforms and attritable one-way systems, many of the latter being repurposed commercial off-the-shelf quadcopters

Despite the military advantages remotely piloted systems offer, these systems require near-constant control and communication links. This renders the vehicle susceptible to discovery or electronic warfare countermeasures. Moreover, latency – that is, the time the control signal needs to travel (sometimes to a satellite in space and back) and get processed – becomes an issue. Depending on the distances involved, this latency can amount to seconds. On top of this is the time the human operator needs to process the information, make a decision and send the respective command back to the vehicle. These additional seconds or minutes can mean the difference between hitting a target or not, winning an engagement or losing the asset.

Daisy-chained line-of-sight connections allow for control and communication without necessarily revealing a system’s location, while enabling that system to continue a mission even in operational environments where electronic warfare measures are degrading or disrupting communications. But getting rid of the link entirely would provide even stronger protection against communications disruption or hijacking. This is one of the drivers behind making uncrewed systems ‘autonomous’. The main motive, however, is that removing the uplink and the human from the loop eliminates the invariable delay between the human operator’s command and the system’s response, thus generating a clear tactical advantage over any remotely controlled and thus invariably ‘slower’ adversarial system.