Seven-11/Nine-Eleven
The September 11th attacks on the United States changed the scope and scale of war forever. After centuries of set-piece warfare with armies massed along imaginary battle lines and supported with massive rear-guard supply chains, we entered into the era of the Convenience Store War.
The 9-11 attackers were few but they were able to establish a command and control system from internet cafes and public libraries on both coasts of the US; picked up wire transferred funds at the neighborhood grocery store; bought throwaway cell phones for field communications; bivouacked in weekly rental apartment houses; chowed down on nachos and beer from the corner convenience store then, lastly, rented four weapons of mass destruction from the airlines. The age of the convenience store battle had arrived.
Mastedon vs Mice
Like a scene from The Borrowers, the 9-11 attackers collected small items for their task with little or no notice. Individually, nothing stood out about these purchases, but in total, they added up to destruction on a massive scale.
Our response to this threat was simplistic: large scale conventional warfare and drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to deliver conventional weapons to conventional targets. So far, the success of our remote war campaign is not clear but this approach will not work in the future.
What will be next? Think small; think mobile and add drones, quadrotors and small UAV's to your list of weaponry. And, if you believe that these small UAV's are incapable of carrying effective weaponry, you may need to re-think your position on that.
Black Carded
That $300 drone on the internet may only have a fifteen minute battery life at its maximum all up weight, but a quick calculation of its operating range at its nominal flight speed can be a chilling thought.
Now, imagine the simultaneous launch of a hundred of drones each with a portion of the total payload. Scrambling jets or launching missiles to counter this threat will not be effective. Add open source availability of gps waypoints for complete autonomous mission operations to the mix and the safety of elected officials
Drone and UAV control technology is open source and globally available to anyone with a credit card or online bank account. After consideration of capabilities against market availability, we can expect governments around the world to call for an across the board ban on UAV's, and this will be futile and counterproductive.
The marketing convenience and near-anonymity of the internet opens the door for another episode of The Borrowers with a bad end. Let's hope we are ready this time.
The Borrowers: ©1953, Mary Norton
Image: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, ©1997 New Line Cinema.
#drones #uav #worldtradecenter #smartbombs
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