With the use of armed drones continuing to facilitate actions that challenge international legal frameworks and undermine democratic values, it is crucial to address the controversies surrounding drone use.
This research paper is the result of a project, supported by the Open Society Foundations, focusing on the policy implications of armed drones for the EU and the UK. The paper is informed by discussions that took place at two workshops and a simulation exercise, all of which were held at Chatham House in 2019. (A summary of the simulation exercise is included as an appendix to this paper.) The discussions considered the proliferation of drones across Europe, revisited the controversies posed by armed drones, and explored how European countries might address ongoing concerns on the use of armed drones, particularly with regard to lack of transparency and accountability. The recommendations provided are therefore intended for the EU and the UK, and focus on how, by virtue of a shared political interest in supporting democratic values and the rule of law, they might come together to address some of the long-standing implications of drone use. However, this is not to preclude other countries from taking part in any such endeavour.
Troubling effects
The use of armed drones, particularly to conduct targeted killings outside formal war zones, is a highly contentious issue. In our contemporary context, where conflict has moved beyond the realms of traditional warfare to take place in undefined battle zones, and is predominantly characterized by counterterrorism and counter-insurgency operations, the use of drones has brought to the fore questions around civilian casualties, the rule of law, secrecy and lack of accountability, among others. These questions have in turn given rise to persistent criticisms on drone use.
For example, with counterterrorist and counter-insurgency operations involving irregular combatants (who are not as readily recognizable as soldiers wearing uniforms), it is not always easy to distinguish lawful targets from civilians. When a drone strike is launched, civilians therefore have no one to whom they can directly appeal if they are being targeted by mistake (as would be the case if there were troops on the ground). Although drone technology is frequently credited for allowing greater precision when a specific target is aimed at, it is not often acknowledged that precision itself begins not with the accuracy of the weapon at the point of the strike, but with the ability to identify the target correctly in the first place. For instance, as exemplified by the infamous Uruzgan incident of 2010, civilians can be mistakenly targeted as a result of being incorrectly identified as insurgents, sometimes due to erroneous preconceptions and a failure to understand local and cultural contexts.
Although drone technology is frequently credited for allowing greater precision when a specific target is aimed at, it is not often acknowledged that precision itself begins not with the accuracy of the weapon at the point of the strike, but with the ability to identify the target correctly in the first place.
Moreover, as Agnès Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, noted in her 2020 report on the use of armed drones for targeted killings: ‘even when a drone (eventually) strikes its intended target, accurately and “successfully”, the evidence shows that frequently many more people die, sometimes because of multiple strikes’. Research on drone strikes in Yemen, for instance, shows that for 17 men targeted multiple times, 273 other people were killed; while in Pakistan, missed strikes targeting 24 men killed 874 other people. In addition, analysis of classified data on US drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2010–11 showed that drone strikes were 10 times more likely to cause civilian casualties than conventional air attacks.
With the development of drone technology and the rise of remote warfare, questions have also emerged on how the use of armed drones may contribute to i) changing the character of war – for example by lowering the threshold for the use of force due to reduced financial costs, the absence of physical risks to pilots, and the potential for plausible deniability; as well as to ii) the blurring of legal lines, with counterterrorism operations – in which drones are often used to conduct targeted killings – taking place more and more frequently through military means. The latter, in turn, also leads to concerns that counterterrorism activities can erode the distinction between wartime and peacetime. With these developments, in many instances, countries using armed drones and those enabling such use are carving out a path away from existing parameters of the rule of law.
Legal justifications for drone strikes also remain highly contestable, with continuing disagreements on the legality of the US’s targeted killing programme under international law, including on its permissibility under jus ad bellum, i.e. the laws governing decisions on the use of force, and jus in bello, the framework that governs the conduct of hostilities. As a consequence of the Royal Air Force (RAF) drone strike that in August 2015 killed British nationals Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin in Syria, the UK’s use of drones has also come under scrutiny, particularly as the strike occurred before the government had obtained parliamentary approval for conducting airstrikes as part of the coalition forces fighting Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria. In addition, concerns have arisen as to how governments in both the US and the UK define the concept of imminence, with the latter’s justification for the Khan strike indicating a conceptual shift towards the US’s broader interpretation.
Such criticisms are accompanied by continued calls for increased transparency and accountability as to how drones are used. These are fuelled by concerns around how decisions are made regarding targeted killings, for example with respect to signature or double-tap strikes, as well as around reporting on civilian casualties, numbers of which are frequently higher when counted by civil society organizations than when counted by governments. Although investigations focusing on civilian casualties by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may be fraught with limitations due to restricted access to the affected area(s) and reliance on news reports, this only reinforces the need for serious efforts by governments to investigate and report on the numbers of civilian deaths resulting from drone strikes. However, transparency and accountability on drone use suffered a significant setback with the March 2019 decision by the Trump administration to revoke a requirement for the US to report on civilian casualties resulting from strikes against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities. In the case of the UK, on the other hand, the Ministry of Defence’s reporting that just one civilian was killed in a series of RAF airstrikes that, between 2014 and 2019, killed or injured 4,315 ISIS fighters, has challenged credulity and was seen at the very least as a shocking revelation of limited or inadequate investigations.
While the discussion around the use of armed drones is not new, not only do these concerns remain unresolved but, with drone warfare continuing to expand and evolve, new layers are being added to the controversies posed by the use of armed drones. Countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq and Turkey now conduct drone strikes against targets within their own borders; and Israel uses drone strikes against targets in the Palestinian territories. And after launching drone strikes on the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq in August 2020, killing two Iraqi officers, Turkey became the latest country to be accused of violating another state’s sovereignty by means of armed drones. On the other hand, the Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region in 2020 was also heavily dominated by the use of drones, pointing to what the future of combat might become in a war between states.
Moreover, in January 2020 the US conducted a drone strike against Major-General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds special forces, in Iraq, where the US is not in a recognized armed conflict. Although the US had previously taken the unusual step of designating the IRGC – part of a nation’s military – as a foreign terrorist organization, the assassination of Soleimani reinforced the notion that targeted killings via drone strikes have now become normalized for the US to such an extent that it has openly targeted another country’s military official, on foreign soil and without the third-party state’s consent. With more and more countries acquiring armed drones, as highlighted by Agnès Callamard, this could prove to be a dangerous and regrettable precedent:
As the deployment of armed drones thus continues to facilitate actions that challenge international legal frameworks and undermine democratic values such as transparency, accountability and parliamentary oversight, it remains crucial to address the controversies resulting from the ways drones are being used, particularly as the use of drones continues to expand and to evolve in new ways. With an interest in supporting a rules-based international order and defending democratic values, by taking a strong stance on issues related to the acquisition, deployment and use of armed drones, European countries could play an important role in shaping the norms on how they are used in future.
It remains crucial to address the controversies resulting from the ways drones are being used, particularly as the use of drones continues to expand and to evolve in new ways.
This paper examines the proliferation of military drones in Europe and the challenges this development poses, as well as the opportunities that arise for revisiting and recommitting to fundamental democratic norms and values such as transparency and accountability and the rule of law. Informed by the simulation exercise hosted by Chatham House in November 2019, the paper also highlights some of the issues and complexities involved in decision-making around the use of armed drones.
A note on disagreements around drones
All too often, discussions around military drones can be characterized by both confusion and disagreement as to what is (or should be) under consideration: the technology, or the policy and decisions directing how drones are used. While it is important to separate the machine from the policy for the sake of precision – both in language and in argument – the view presented in this paper is that possibilities afforded by technology allow for certain policy choices, and that, conversely, certain policies would be out of reach without the current degree of technical capability. An unbreakable link therefore exists between the drone and the policies that determine how it is used. For example, with real-time video streaming, an endurance of up to 24 hours and a maximum range that could reach several thousand kilometres, armed drones allow military decision-makers to launch airstrikes in remote geographical locations, while the drone crews working on those missions can do so from the relative safety of their home countries. As we consider the use of armed drones in this paper, it is with this connection between policy and technical capability in mind.
In addition, in any discussion there may be those who contest the focus on drones by claiming that some of the purposes for which they are used, and for which they receive much criticism, are not themselves specific to the deployment of drones. For example, targeted killings can also be performed by special operations forces or civilian agencies such as the CIA: hence, it is the activity, and not the drone, that should be centre stage. Although such activities do indeed warrant scrutiny, the fact that targeted killings can be carried out in different ways does not have to diminish efforts aimed at understanding what the particularities of drones might be. In fact, reinforcing the connection between policy and technical capability, there are indications that drones lower the threshold for the use of force, and thus facilitate lethal activities. This is considered to be the case by decision-makers themselves, including within the military.
For example, General Stanley McChrystal, a former commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, stated in 2015 that confidence in the capability of drones could make them more palatable to military decision-makers and lower the threshold for lethal force. The UK Ministry of Defence claimed in the same year that the:
In 2020, reflecting on the US drone programme, former US president Barack Obama stated that ‘the machinery of it started becoming too easy […] and I had to remind everyone involved this isn’t target practice’.
It is also important to note that some opposition to the focus on drones as subject matter is based on the argument that there is nothing unique about drone technology, in that it forms part of a continuum of technological developments in weaponry throughout history that have progressively increased the distance between opposing forces in the battlefield. While this is undoubtedly the case, this paper is underpinned by the view that although history can help explain – and further our understanding of – the current context, it should never serve as justification for present harms, and neither does it have to be accepted as progressive or deterministic. Political relationships are often about changing the course of the present, where aspirations exist for a better future.
