Weapons of Precise Destruction
How snipers
in the sky might help revive the practice of assassination.
by Richard A.
Muller
Technology for
Presidents
May 10, 2002
Saddam Hussein
has not been seen publicly for the past year. He did not attend his recent 65th
birthday celebration, despite the fact that young girls were dressed as suicide
bombers -- a sight that he must have hated to miss. But he has good reason to fear
the outdoors. A Predator may be lurking there, patiently waiting for its
intended prey -- him.
The Predator,
with a capital P, is a new weapon in the United States arsenal, although it is
based on nearly a century of development. It is revolutionary, not because it
is new, but because of a combination of technologies that has suddenly
transformed a supplementary system, previously used for target practice and
spying, into what may be the U.S. weapon of choice for the 21st century. In
fact, such "weapons of precise destruction," as I call them, could
fundamentally change the nature of war -- along with many of our assumptions about
homeland security.
Unmanned air
vehicles (UAVs), also called drones, have a long history. During World War I,
the celebrated inventor Charles F. Kettering developed an unmanned biplane that
flew at 88 kilometers per hour for 64 kilometers. He called it an "aerial
torpedo." After a prescribed time, the wings fell off, and 80 kilograms of
high explosives crashed to the ground. It was the predecessor of the German V-1
buzz bomb used in World War II and of today's cruise missile.
UAVs are more
highly developed than most people realize. As far back as November 1969, the
U.S. launched a supersonic "Tagboard" drone to spy on the Chinese Lop
Nor nuclear test site. Its credentials are impressive even by today's
standards: it flew above 24,000 meters at faster than Mach 3.3. But it didn't
return safely; it probably crashed. Drones used to be unreliable. Hence their
limited use.
UAVs have made
steady progress ever since. In the last week of the Gulf War, five Iraqi
soldiers waved white flags at a U.S. Pioneer UAV. Some called this the first
time in history that someone tried to surrender to a robot. But, strictly
speaking, the Pioneer was not a robot. It had a pilot, even though he was
several hundred miles away -- and on the ground.
The salient
event occurred over Afghanistan early this year. A Predator UAV, remotely
operated by the CIA, carried technology that is virtually a table of contents
of the high-tech world. It imaged with both side-scanning radar and cameras. In
the infrared it could see human thermal emission even in total darkness. Snow
on the ground didn't hurt; it only made warm people stand out better. The
Predator communicated with its pilot by broadcasting over a wide range of
frequencies simultaneously.
This method,
called spread spectrum, is impossible to read and almost impossible to detect
unless you know the encryption key that determines the spreading pattern. A
satellite was used as a relay, so the Predator could fly low and use high
frequencies (and high bandwidth) to send back real-time video--critical for the
remote pilot. The Predator always knew where it was, by passive analysis of
signals from GPS satellites. If it ever lost communications, tiny onboard
computers would guide the vehicle back home to a fully automatic landing. The
Predator was small and quiet. It flew at 135 kilometers per hour for a range of
640 kilometers, with a ceiling of 7,600 meters and a loiter time of up to 40
hours, and it carried two Hellfire-C missiles under its wings.
On February 8,
it was following something very interesting. Several sport utility vehicles,
not the sort of auto that even well-to-do Afghans could afford, were driving in
the remote Zawar Khili region, near caves where Osama bin Laden was suspected
to be hiding. The convoy stopped, and (according to news accounts) three men
dressed in robes got out of the most heavily guarded vehicle. One was
considerably taller than the others. Osama bin Laden? They stopped (to relieve
themselves, presumably). The Predator pilot maneuvered to within eight
kilometers, aimed a guide laser, and fired along its beam a missile powerful
enough to blow up a tank.
The missile
obliterated the men and the tree under which they stood. Bad weather hampered a
U.S. effort to get to the site and collect DNA samples, and the eventual
results, if any, have not been disclosed. But anticipation was high. Had Osama
bin Laden been destroyed?
Probably not.
I think it unlikely that the tall person was bin Laden -- but only because I
believe that he was already dead, prior to February 8. The most compelling
evidence was the absence of new video tapes. With al Qaeda in disarray and many
of bin Laden's men in custody, those still at large must be in desperate need
of instructions and encouragement from their charismatic leader. Yet he has not
resurfaced -- perhaps because he was killed in the Tora Bora bombings, or perhaps
because, as is suspected, he was suffering from kidney disease and the attacks
damaged his dialysis equipment. Al Qaeda did recently did release a new tape,
but bin Laden was silent, and the footage was probably old. It emphasized other
leaders -- just as you would expect, if a replacement were necessary.
So who were
the three who died? Maybe it was his associate Ayman al-Zawahri, who is also
tall. Maybe, as some local villagers claimed, it was just local farmers who
were gathering scrap metal from the recent battle. But the Predator has made a
good impression on General Tommy Franks, commander of the military operations
in Afghanistan, who called it "my No. 1 sensor for tracking down al
Qaeda." U.S. production will triple this year, adding 25 new Predators to
the arsenal of 75. Predators are already being sold to our allies. Use of the
Predator (and other UAVs) has just begun.
Saddam is smart
enough to be impressed too. Can he be sure that a Predator, perhaps with added
stealth, isn't already flying over Baghdad? Already the U.S. public is
forgetting bin Laden; already Saddam is returning to his position in U.S.
government rhetoric as the personification of evil. Saddam would like us to
believe that if he is killed, someone just as bad will replace him. But he must
be worried.
The Bush
administration is publicly advocating a change in government in Iraq. But how
do we force that, short of war? We attempted to kill bin Laden, Mullah Omar and
Muammar Khadafi. The U.S. may have played a role in the assassination of the
drug lord Pablo Escobar. I sense that there is movement toward making
assassination of "evil" leaders into an acceptable part of U.S.
foreign policy. That prospect is horrifying. Yet -- if the alternative is war?
If the U.S.
does turn to the Predator and other weapons of precise destruction as the
perfect assassination machines -- perhaps using them to force changes in Iraq -- then
we had better be prepared to defend ourselves against the same kind of attack.
Advances in technology may one day bring Predator-like weapons into the
arsenals of rogue nations and terrorists, endangering in yet a new way our
vulnerable homeland. Are we, to paraphrase Macbeth, teaching bloody
instructions, which, being taught, will return to plague the inventor?