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How Effective are Drone Strikes Compared to Traditional Warfare

  • Writer: Joe Carrick-Lawson
    Joe Carrick-Lawson
  • May 9, 2022
  • 7 min read

Reaper Drone Firing Missile (Cole and Wright, 2010)


Drone warfare is increasingly being used by military forces to eliminate suspected targets, including those in countries without a declared statement of war. The ethical and political debates surrounding the use of drone strikes are undoubtedly morally ambiguous. However, war is ongoing, widespread and a necessity in today’s world. In this case, the argument does not stand with whether drone warfare is ethical, as no war is every truly justifiable. Instead, this report will focus on whether drone warfare is an effective method to ending conflicts quicker, cheaper, and with the least physical and psychological damage compared to alternative methods such as crewed airstrikes, Special Forces or allowing traditional warfare to proceed. 



Collateral Damage


One of the most obvious advantages of drone warfare is that the combatants piloting the drone are not in danger, due to being in a control room thousands of miles away. Although, as soldiers are not acting in a kill-or-be-killed scenario, lots of scrutiny is placed on the collateral damage caused. Between 2001 and 2020, a maximum of 2,057 civilians were killed by US drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen (Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 2020). Comparing this to the estimated 14,671 targets killed from the same strikes, 14% of all confirmed kills were civilian casualties. Despite this sounding high without context, an estimated 62% of the confirmed kills in the Israeli-Palestinian War were civilians, caused by military forces on both sides (ICT Middle Eastern Conflicts Statistics Project, 2005). Similar statistics are also seen in the 1982 Lebanon War at 85% (Hartley et Al.: 91), World War II at 67%, and World War I at 40% (Neiberg, 2002: 68-70). 

 

Several reasons can explain this disparity. When wars occur, populated areas become battle grounds for invading forces and terrorist groups. Despite drones also often targeting populated areas, the targets being eliminated are usually authorized due to the individual’s threat. Therefore, eliminating them can avoid erupting tensions becoming a full-scale war or terrorist attack. A secondary reason is the psychological differences for combatants. In dangerous situations, soldiers are more likely to activate a fight-or-flight response, and thus are more likely to shoot on sight, including civilians. Drone pilots, not having this life-or-death scenario, can remain more focused and have longer to decide with officials whether the strike proceeds. A final key reason a to why the statistics differ is the difficulty in obtaining precise data on civilian casualties during traditional warfare. As an example, in the Vietnam war, the Vietnamese government estimates 1.1 million civilians killed (Shenon, 1995: 12), whereas other estimates are nearer to 627,000 (Bellamy, 2017: 33-34). This is due to various governments disagreeing with figures, especially around the US’s use of Agent Orange (History, 2019). Drone strikes, on the other hand, offer high levels of surveillance and require all bodies to be identified, allowing for more accurate data. 

 

This need for surveillance is most apparent in the 2019 Baghuz Strike incident, in which US drone pilots, while hunting for military targets in Syria near an Islamic State Camp, saw around 80 women and children near a riverbank and identified them as civilians. This was suddenly interrupted by a US F-15E attack jet which dropped a bomb on the group, before circling back to drop a second on the survivors. US Central Command stated after the incident that 16 were fighters, 4 were civilians and the other 60 were unclear. However, this possible 500% civilian death rate was labelled justifiable (Phillips and Schmitt, 2021).



Financial Cost


Drones are not cheap to buy. An average weaponized drone costs around £12 million (Sabbagh, 2019), which is a heavy investment especially when purchased in mass, such as Germany’s recent acquisition of 140 Heron TP drones for £1.7 billion (The Economic Times, 2022). This doesn’t include the average £28,874 annual salary for drone pilots (Indeed, 2022) - of which you need two per drone - and further salaries for the 200 other people required to operate the drone (Kreps and Lushenko, 2021). Fuel costs per hour average at £5,000 (Cole, 2018). Adding those to the maintenance cost, the overall per hour cost of a standard Tornado Drone is £35,000 (ibid.).

 

Although, at least in terms of military spending, this doesn’t differ too much from crewed aircraft. F-16 Fighter Jets cost around £14 million (Aero Corner), with a pilot’s salary starting at £30,000 (RAF Recruitment). Again, two are needed per aircraft. Although, there is a lower total per hour cost including fuel and maintenance at approximately £18,000 (Roblin, 2021). Therefore, averaging out the two forms of aircraft strikes, there isn’t much separating these forms on financial efficiency.

 

However, time efficiency is also a key factor in financial cost, as faster missions summate to less price paid, both in money and hours of those working. Drones are notably slower than their crewed aircraft counterparts. Whereas the cruising speed of an F-16 Fighter Jet is 577mph (Museum of Aviation Foundation, 2022), a Reaper drone is only 194mph (Sat News, 2008), which is 3 times slower. This means drones take longer to deploy and makes them far easier to shoot down with anti-air defense systems (Horowitz, Kreps, and Fuhrmann, 2016: 17)). Current statistics can’t accurately show whether this is the case, as drones are used less frequently in wars than crewed aircraft, thus more crewed aircraft are lost than drones. Although, it is expected that drones are less efficient in this case.



Psychological Effects


Piloting a drone has been often connected with video games; a “PlayStation mentality to killing” stated Phillip Aston, the UN’s Special Reporter on Extrajudicial Executions (Fowler, 2020). This is due to the detached nature of pilots, as they are watching a screen with a controller thousands of miles into safety from the killer drone they are using. Some argue this makes them feel less responsible, and so do not understand the severity or fell responsibility for the killings taking place. However, due to the high amount of surveillance, drone pilots feel more responsible than crewed aircraft pilots. As a former F-16 pilot turned drone pilot stated: “[regarding being an F-16 pilot] I could drop my payload and leave, and now as a drone pilot, even though I don’t have the physical risk […] I am in this claustrophobic space for up to 16 hours a day […] and I have to not only target but I then have to stay and identify bodies and hover over the destruction and really own what I did” (Reason TV, 2015). As well as this, the surveillance aspect means pilots will watch the precursor events, which can vary from seeing mass graves, witnessing executions, and one in five saw incidents of rape (McCammon, 2017). This can have serious traumatic effects on pilots, with around 5% of them suffering from PTSD (Wallace and Costello, 2017). Although, despite not being immune to traumatic events, this is still significantly lower than veterans in other military sectors over the past 20 years. Between 11% and 20% of US soldiers in Operation Enduring Freedom from 2001 to 2014 suffer from PTSD (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs). 

 

However, the biggest psychological issues are due to the counter productivity of drone strikes, rather than it’s affect on pilots. The strategic killing of terrorist members in neutral countries infuriates local populations, due to the seeming unprovoked control of military superpowers, and the loss of family and friends in collateral damage. These killings lead to a strengthening of terrorist allegiance. The CIA states strikes “may increase support for the insurgents, particularly if these strikes enhance insurgent leaders' lore, if non-combatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are targeted, or if the government is already seen as overly repressive or violent" (Doring, 2014). Furthermore, the effect of killing is short term at best due to the “high overall ability to replace lost leaders” (ibid.). This can have an adverse effect on the political situation the strikes aim to resolve.


 

Conclusion


Despite the significant downsides in collateral damage, slow cruising speed and counter-productive nature, drone strikes are still partially more effective, or at least equivalent, to alternative methods of target elimination. Therefore, their use in assassinating key individuals in neutral countries, or dropping payloads on areas in countries in a theatre of war, will most likely persist and be developed in future warfare.

 






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