It appears increasingly likely that President Donald Trump will make it easier to export certain types of armed drones to a much larger number of allies and partners—most notably in the Middle East.
To do so, Trump is expected to lower barriers on sales of smaller hunter-killer drones while keeping barriers high with regard to America’s most lethal drones, at least for the foreseeable future.
Trump’s liberalization of armed drone sales is poised to benefit Middle Eastern countries, which found it difficult to acquire such weapons under the Obama administration.
Trump’s expectations regarding armed drone sales will likely not include the sale of unmanned armed drones comparable to America’s most sophisticated drone—General Atomics’ MQ-9 Reaper, arguably the most feared and sophisticated drone in operation today. Rather, the new policy is likely to lower barriers to sales of smaller hunter-killer drones, which carry fewer missiles than the MQ-9 Reaper and achieve shorter ranges as well.
It is not yet clear whether smaller American hunter-killer drones will attract the large numbers of foreign buyers that the Trump administration has in mind for its expanded sales of armed drones. Nevertheless, although hunter-killer drones are clearly less destructive than substantially larger MQ-9 drones, such hunter-killer systems can still destroy military vehicles, protective structures and armed positions at a cost substantially lower than the price of the MQ-9 Reaper (roughly $17 million dollars).
It also appears possible that the Trump administration will seek to weaken the longstanding principle of applying the Missile Technology Control Regime’s “strong presumption of denial,” which automatically denies approval of many drone sales in the absence of compelling security reasons. The current policy prescribes that buyers use the weapons in strict accordance with international law. These most sensible provisions could very well fall prey to the Trump administration’s attempt to liberalize current drone policies.
The danger of liberalizing drone policy rules lies with the difficulty of avoiding innocent civilian lives. A most telling and detailed analysis of this danger was published in the New York Times in November 2017. It found that while the American-led coalition claimed that the ratio of civilian deaths to airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq was one for every 157 strikes, the Times reporters found that the number of civilian deaths was one for every five airstrikes, or more than 31 times the Pentagon’s claim. The Times team noted that civilian casualties were at such a huge distance from official claims that “in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history.”
In another example, the frequency with which innocent civilians are being intentionally or unintentionally targeted in Yemen’s civil war only seems to be expanding. On April 22, 2018, an air-strike by a Saudi-led coalition killed more than 20 people at a wedding party, most of them children. Tit for tat killings are routine in a seemingly never-ending war of attrition between Iran-backed Houthis and Sunni Saudi Arabia. Easier access to armed drones and a weakening of international norms of behavior are likely to increase the number of unintended civilian victims in Yemen and other conflicts. Sadly, more than 10,000 people, including all too many children, have lost their lives in Yemen, while disease runs rampant.
The rapid development of UAV technology comes at no more critical a time than the present. The need for developing international standards dealing with the export of such weapons systems is imperative today. Such norms of behavior will become increasingly critical as drone technology spreads not only to careful parties, but more importantly to countries willing to misuse such unmanned systems. Such norms and standards may well not be full-proof, but they are, in any event, essential.
Photo credit: John Moore/Getty Images
