0:04

And the

0:04

promise of drone warfare for states and

0:06

militaries that use them is this notion of

0:09

riskless war, which is to say that we can

0:11

project power without

0:13

projecting vulnerability.

0:16

The other sort of perspective is the status

0:19

or approbation that states

0:21

receive in becoming

0:23

a card-carrying member of

0:25

the armed network

0:26

drone club. Hey,

0:31

welcome back to the Modern War Institute podcast.

0:34

I'm Jon Amble, editorial director at MWI,

0:36

and on this episode, we're going to talk about drones,

0:39

armed, networked, and unmanned platforms

0:42

increasingly being used by military forces

0:44

around the world. If you go looking for

0:46

books about drones, chances are you're going to find

0:48

a lot. But there's a new book coming out

0:50

that looks at a really unique aspect

0:52

of the topic, how these platforms affect

0:55

the global order. In fact, that's the

0:57

name of the book, Drones and Global Order,

0:59

Implications of Remote Warfare for International

1:02

Society. It is an edited volume

1:04

with a fantastic lineup of contributors, and

1:06

I'm really happy to be joined on the podcast today by

1:08

one of the editors, Paul Leschenko. During

1:12

the conversation, he touches on everything from why

1:14

states and non-state actors choose to

1:16

use armed drones as weapons of war, how

1:18

that use impacts their international reputations,

1:21

questions of law and morality, and

1:24

ultimately, the impact of these weapons not just

1:26

on the character of warfare, but on geopolitics,

1:28

balances of power, and more.

1:30

Before we get to the discussion, a couple quick notes.

1:33

First, if you aren't yet following MWI on social

1:35

media, find us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

1:38

It is a great way to stay up to date on all of the new

1:40

articles, podcast episodes, and research we're

1:42

publishing every day.

1:43

And second, as always, what you hear in this episode

1:46

are the views of the participants, and don't represent

1:48

those of West Point, the Army, or any other agency

1:50

of the US government. Alright, here's my conversation

1:52

with Paul Leschenko.

2:05

Paul, thank you so much for joining me for this episode

2:07

of the MWI podcast. Thanks

2:10

for having me. I really appreciate

2:12

it, John. You are an editor, one of three editors on

2:15

what I think is a brand new book out called

2:18

Drones in Global Order, Implications

2:20

of Remote Warfare for International Society.

2:23

There's a lot to unpack just in that title. We're

2:25

going to get after it. The

2:27

book has, I think that this is

2:30

a subject that necessarily lends itself well

2:32

to an edited volume because there are so many different

2:34

facets of the questions

2:36

about drones, legal, ethical,

2:39

operational, what have you. But kind

2:41

of before we begin, can you give listeners a sense

2:43

of your background? You're an army officer,

2:46

but you're at Cornell University now.

2:48

Yeah, that's right. So again,

2:51

really appreciate the opportunity to convey the

2:53

body of my work empirically

2:55

on drone warfare. So

2:57

I'm at Cornell right now pursuing a PhD

3:00

in international relations theory with a focus

3:03

on the shifting character of war. And really

3:05

what that means is the integration

3:08

of remote warfare technology, namely

3:10

drone warfare into contemporary

3:12

conflict between states, but also taking

3:15

consideration non-state actors,

3:17

chief among these being the Islamic state. Been

3:19

here for about a year and

3:21

starting my second year of PhD training

3:24

at this point. And this is under the auspices

3:27

of the army's broader program called

3:29

Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program.

3:31

It's a mouthful ASP3 that

3:34

gives a handful of us each year the opportunity

3:36

to pursue doctoral education anywhere

3:39

that we can gain

3:41

admittance, whether in the United States or

3:44

abroad. Before that, I

3:46

really spent the better part of two

3:49

decades as an intelligence officer, supporting

3:52

special operation forces, namely

3:54

the 75th Ranger Regiment and

3:57

our counter-terrorism operations against

3:59

Al-Qaeda. Islamic State and other violent

4:01

extremist organizations across

4:03

Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

4:06

And then before that, my conditioning was from United

4:08

States Military Academy at West Point in 2005. So

4:11

I find myself some 16 years

4:14

later as a colonel preparing

4:16

to compete for battalion command here

4:19

shortly.

4:20

Great. You mentioned the the

4:22

ASP3 program, and I just

4:24

kind of want to follow up on that because it's a fantastic

4:26

program. We have a number of people in the MWR

4:29

network, MWI network, our

4:31

current director, our former deputy director that have

4:33

been involved with the program have been

4:35

sent to go get a PhD. Can you talk a little

4:37

bit more about, you know, why,

4:39

you know, to the extent that you know, why

4:41

the army created

4:44

this program to select officers

4:46

and send them to graduate school to get a to

4:48

get a doctorate? Yeah, I think it's a

4:50

great question. It's one that the army

4:53

finds itself consistently confronting,

4:55

especially during budgetary cuts, because there

4:58

is some costs associated in terms

5:00

of not just the dollars for top tier universities.

5:03

And our remit is top tier universities.

5:05

That's been the guidance for ASP3

5:07

officers from the Chief of Staff himself is get

5:10

accepted by the best of breed for

5:12

your particular research interests, but also

5:14

the time component it takes

5:17

to achieve a doctoral level of education.

5:19

Typically, a student would spend five to six

5:22

years in a PhD program, whereas

5:24

the army is asking us to do it in three. So

5:26

the broader context of this program is really attempting

5:29

to reconcile those who are thinkers

5:32

within the army, critically on

5:34

matters of importance, such as a

5:36

shifting character of warfare, but also who

5:38

are doers in terms of leading soldiers

5:41

in combat, which is a key core

5:43

competency of any leader in the army.

5:46

And I like to say that both of these go hand in glove,

5:48

but at time, because of the extreme

5:52

requirements and training deployments,

5:55

one gets sacrificed often. And that's, that's

5:58

typically the critical thinking component. may

6:00

be codified within a book length manuscript on

6:03

a certain subject. And so the army around 2010, 2012,

6:07

under General Odierno as the chief of staff of the

6:09

army, recognized the need

6:11

to professionalize the force in terms of

6:13

critical thinking at the time. We

6:16

were contending with a threat

6:18

that we didn't really understand within Iraq and

6:20

Afghanistan, certainly. And the thought

6:22

was let's professionalize the force in terms of higher

6:25

education to contend with these strategic

6:27

issues. Over time, the

6:29

return on investment for the army is

6:31

that an officer from ASP3 would not

6:33

just become another faculty member at

6:35

one of the war colleges or West Point,

6:38

but would continue to serve in critical leadership

6:40

positions at the battalion brigade in above

6:43

levels of war, if you will. And

6:46

then also supplement the critical thinking

6:49

operations of a combatant commander,

6:52

of a ASCC army service

6:54

component commander, of somebody

6:56

on the army or joint staff. And so over

6:59

time, the return on investment is an integration

7:02

of deep analysis towards problems

7:05

that are germane to the army's ability to

7:07

achieve its core mission, which is to fight and

7:09

win the nation's wars.

7:10

That's a great rundown. And actually

7:13

for listeners, you

7:16

wrote an article for us that we published, I believe it was last

7:18

summer. We called it Warfighters and Ivory

7:20

Towers. Does the US Army need

7:22

officers with doctoral degrees? It really

7:25

kind of lays out the case in even more detail

7:27

than you kind of provided right here. So if there are

7:29

any junior field grade officers

7:32

or even company grade officers that are looking ahead

7:34

at their career and interested in this program, I'd definitely

7:37

check out the MWI website, go find

7:39

that article and keep

7:40

an eye on the program because it really is, I think

7:42

the key aspect of it is that it sends

7:44

you to go get a PhD, but then you go back to

7:46

the force and you do some things that where you

7:49

can kind of put that expertise

7:51

that you've gained to use

7:53

in the service of the army. So I think that's fantastic.

7:55

Yeah, John, if I could just real quick too, there's another

7:58

component here, which I think is potentially in some.

7:59

in some cases more important. And that

8:02

is the opportunity to serve as an ambassador from

8:04

the US Army, the US military, to

8:06

a community of scholars, whether faculty or

8:08

PhD students or undergraduate students,

8:11

they may not be exposed to the military

8:13

in really the essence of what we do for the nation, which

8:15

is not just fighting the nation's war, protect

8:18

our democracy, but as civil military relations.

8:20

And so I find myself often communicating

8:23

the subordination of the military

8:25

to political leaders based upon our oath of

8:27

office to the constitution as it

8:29

were, as opposed to any sort of political

8:32

wins at the time. And that's been certainly a very

8:34

important, the last couple of years that we've

8:36

seen on TV, what's the place of the military

8:39

in our political system is another component

8:41

of this, which I think we can't discount. Yeah,

8:43

the civil military relations sort of aspect of

8:46

it is really important. So

8:48

I'm gonna sort of, as we shift gears into the

8:51

subject of your book and the subject, why

8:53

I asked you to come on the podcast today, drone

8:56

warfare, I'm gonna sort of break the fourth

8:58

wall

8:59

in a sense and give listeners kind of a view

9:02

into what happens before we

9:04

start recording. You and I were emailing back and forth and

9:06

kind of talking about, hey, this is what I'd like to speak

9:08

about. Here's some of the things that I'd like

9:11

you to talk about on the episode. And

9:14

you came back and said, you know what, a really important kind of

9:16

maybe first question is, how do we

9:18

define drone warfare? And I

9:20

find that really interesting because I was thinking about that today. And

9:23

it's one of those things that, we

9:26

know what armed drones are, we know the

9:28

effects that they can have on the battlefield, it's

9:30

almost that sort of, is it important to define

9:32

it? Because I know it when I see it. And the more

9:34

I thought about it, the more I thought, you know, as

9:37

the conversations we have about

9:40

drones, especially armed drones mature

9:42

and we add nuance,

9:45

you know, that's not good enough to be able to know

9:47

it when we see it. We do really sort of need to

9:49

define it. So I am gonna

9:51

kind of ask that kind of

9:53

open, open this conversation by asking that question, how

9:56

should we conceptualize drone warfare?

9:59

Yeah, I think it's...

9:59

actually a pretty important question because someone who

10:02

actually has an expertise applying drones

10:04

tactically and strategically, I'm

10:06

quite disturbed by the assumption within

10:08

the scholarship of what it is and what

10:11

it's not. And so what you often hear within the scholarship

10:13

is that drones, armed drones

10:16

and network drones that are really

10:18

altering irrevocably the character

10:20

of warfare. So how war is

10:22

currently waged, but also at

10:25

the same time, the nature

10:27

of warfare, which people like HR McMaster

10:29

and other established war theorists will tell

10:31

you the underlying social and political dimensions

10:34

of war, the human component especially.

10:36

And I think that this conflation between the character

10:39

and nature of war is due

10:41

largely to the result of the use

10:43

of armed drones, certainly by the United States, but

10:45

also France. It conducted an operation in late August

10:47

now that resulted in the death of

10:50

the Islamic States leader in Africa.

10:52

I think it's because of this notion of

10:54

targeted killing that we often conflate

10:56

the

10:56

character and nature of warfare.

10:59

So having said that, how do scholars most often

11:01

define

11:02

warfare? Well, in my analysis, and this

11:04

is in a chapter that will come

11:07

out here shortly in a book on urban conflict

11:09

in drone warfare, we often find

11:11

a rarefication of drone

11:14

warfare to the platform itself. Drone warfare,

11:17

in essence, is an MQ-9 Reaper

11:19

built by General Atomics that

11:21

flies well above 500 miles per hour. It's

11:24

got an operational reach of 200 miles

11:26

and can deliver a payload of well in

11:28

excess of a ton. And so this is

11:30

the notion that drone warfare

11:33

should be essentialized to the platform itself.

11:36

I think, however, the most insightful analysis

11:39

on what drone warfare comes from scholars

11:43

who recognize kind of one of three different

11:45

questions. And the first is, what

11:47

missions do armed drones actually

11:49

perform? And so there are those that talk

11:51

about armed drones used for killing, watching,

11:54

and aiding. And Sarah Krebs, my supervisor

11:57

at Cornell, will talk about the strategic

12:00

context of conflict, whether it's humanitarian

12:03

intervention, counterterrorism,

12:05

interstate conflict really mediating the

12:07

purpose at play for armed

12:09

drones. So besides targeted killing,

12:12

most states would like to have armed drones, but potentially

12:15

don't have the technological monetary

12:18

wherewithal to integrate them into

12:20

their arsenals. And therefore they've adopted these cheaper,

12:23

non-lethal, less than lethal armed drones.

12:25

They're useful for short duration, intelligence,

12:28

reconnaissance, and surveillance missions

12:30

such as in irredentist disputes

12:33

or disputed territories. So the recent conflict

12:35

in Armenia

12:36

and Azerbaijan is one case

12:38

in point.

12:39

The second sort of approach is to understand

12:42

how armed drones engage

12:45

a particular target. And this is really a special

12:48

matter of inquiry for those who are interested

12:50

in the broader question of the moral permissibility

12:53

of strikes. And so on the one hand, one of my colleagues

12:55

from the University of Queensland,

12:58

Neil Renwick, just came out with an interesting book

13:00

called Radical Asymmetric Violence. And

13:02

he'll talk about the technological advancement

13:04

in war epitomized by drones leading

13:07

to this notion of radically asymmetric violence,

13:09

which is an imbalance of the liability

13:12

to be harmed by combatants as

13:14

opposed to non-combatants.

13:17

And so you're basically in a lopsided

13:19

way consolidating liability

13:21

to be harmed in one side versus the

13:24

other. There

13:26

is another approach here, which is from

13:28

Hugh Gusterson, which will talk about drone

13:30

warfare in terms of mixed and pure

13:32

types. And so the mixed type is

13:34

the use of drones in support of expeditionary

13:37

forces, let's say in Iraq and Afghanistan. And

13:39

the pure type becomes those strikes in Yemen,

13:42

in Pakistan that are separate apparently from

13:45

expeditionary forces. It's a matter

13:47

of UAVs as

13:49

war versus UAVs in

13:52

war. And that nomenclature is for unmanned

13:54

aerial vehicle. And that quote comes from Renwick

13:56

himself. And then finally, you get those

13:59

who talk about where drone warfare takes

14:01

place. And so Gustafson's notion of mixed

14:03

and peer is important because that lends

14:05

a conversation about the so-called hot and cold

14:08

theater of operations. So is it declared,

14:11

is in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan internationally,

14:13

or is it not in the case of Yemen

14:16

and Pakistan? This sort of third

14:18

interrogative question of where also

14:21

points to the legality of strikes, which

14:23

we can talk about later, but broadly speaking,

14:26

the just recourse to war or the

14:28

just use of force in war. But

14:30

in my reading,

14:32

this gives us precious little understanding

14:34

of what actually drone warfare is. Because

14:37

what's often happening is a

14:40

perception discreetly on

14:43

what drones do, how they do it and where.

14:45

And also an assumption of why drones

14:48

or strikes were conducted in the first place

14:50

without integrating them into

14:52

a comprehensive picture of what drone warfare is

14:54

and is not. And the key trade

14:56

off for me in my studies is that we

14:59

haven't been able to provide especially casual

15:01

non-expert observers, Americans,

15:04

French people, and the ability to understand what the

15:06

practice is or practice is not. And therefore

15:09

the sort of democratic accountability within

15:12

a democratic political institution, America's

15:14

democracy for that, is often lacking

15:17

in Sarah Kreps and John Cagg talk

15:19

about this a lot in their book called drone warfare.

15:22

And so because of this, I actually adopt

15:24

a unique definition within the book. And in my

15:26

broader studies, I understand drone

15:29

warfare as the use of armed drones in

15:31

concert with expeditionary

15:33

forces to achieve both military

15:36

and political objectives,

15:38

whether limited or maximal and across

15:40

the continuum of competition and

15:43

in conflict.

15:44

And I think that there's an important contribution

15:46

in and of itself for a couple of reasons. One

15:49

is that the definition is broad enough to account

15:51

for the lethal non-lethal aspects

15:54

of drone warfare. The second thing is

15:56

it allows us to appreciate the diverse missions

15:58

that armed drones can conduct.

15:59

And then finally, what type of conflict?

16:03

And this is important, we start to think about where

16:05

drone warfare literature has become stale

16:08

in terms of urban conflict and where

16:10

this definition helps to advance this conversation.

16:13

You know, you mentioned the literature

16:16

and, you know, armed drones

16:18

specifically, you know, have been around for a quarter

16:20

of a century, at least in the US arsenal. We've had reapers and

16:23

predators since, you know, the mid nineties and

16:25

early 2000s, respectively,

16:27

I believe. You've

16:29

got, there is, you know, there's no shortage of books

16:31

on them. You've got, you

16:33

know, Peter Singer's Wired for War,

16:36

which talked a lot about kind of the robotics revolution

16:38

in warfare and was kind of a broad

16:40

based survey of

16:43

various aspects of it. You've

16:45

got most recently, I believe

16:48

it was Wayne Phelps that wrote On Killing Remotely

16:50

came out this past summer,

16:52

that's on sort of the psychological

16:56

impact on drone operators and,

16:59

you know, Paul Shirey's Army of None. There

17:01

are books about drone warfare.

17:04

I guess, you know, what seems to set yours apart

17:06

is that you very deliberately framed it as a question

17:08

on how they impact the

17:11

global order. What made you decide

17:13

to use that as the sort of framing mechanism?

17:16

Yeah, it's a great question. And frankly, it's a question

17:19

that Sarah Kreps, again, my supervisor here at Cornell,

17:21

a recognized international expert on

17:24

drone warfare, asked me as I started this project,

17:26

because there are so many works and the

17:28

scholarship appears to be saturated, what

17:31

makes this contribution meaningful?

17:33

And additionally, I just talked to Hugh Gustafson, who I mentioned

17:36

earlier, and he talked about Americans,

17:39

especially lacking interest in

17:41

drone warfare as it were going

17:43

forward. So I had to contend with

17:45

that. What I may do in answering this question is two things.

17:48

One is I want to explain the genesis of

17:50

the book. Yeah, please do. And then two is

17:52

kind of the niche contribution for a global

17:54

order, which will allow me to explain the sort

17:56

of ways of drone

17:58

warfare scholarships. So on the

18:01

former, where did this book derive from? So

18:03

as I mentioned, for really the better part of

18:05

two decades, applying

18:07

drone warfare, managing the intelligence,

18:10

rather, that would allow a commander to make a decision

18:12

one way or another, I almost viewed as a moral

18:14

obligation to share expertise and experiences

18:17

to professionalize the force. And this is in the

18:19

acknowledgment of the book. And

18:21

not only for the military, which is very,

18:24

very important, of course, given my professional

18:26

obligations, but also for the broader scholarship

18:29

and defense intellectuals to understand

18:31

the implications at a broader

18:33

global level, that heretofore hadn't

18:35

really been contended well enough within the literature.

18:38

And indeed, people like myself,

18:40

my peers, and others were called

18:43

upon to deploy for two decades in Afghanistan

18:45

and Iraq to protect and preserve

18:48

the so-called liberal international order. And so

18:50

during the initial outbreak of the pandemic, I found

18:52

myself mowing the lawn, literally, in

18:55

northern Virginia, Alexandria, at the

18:57

time worked as an exo-executive officer

19:00

to Lieutenant General Scott Barrier, the

19:03

senior intelligence officer of the Army. And

19:05

I asked myself, how can I meaningfully

19:08

contribute to the literature on drone warfare? And

19:10

this is something that came to me as

19:13

I was literally mowing the

19:15

lawn. So that's lawn. That's the broader genesis.

19:18

But how does this book contribute where others

19:20

potentially haven't, or at least not to the degree

19:22

that we do on global order? And so I think

19:24

that you have to understand the ways of drone

19:27

warfare literature. And so

19:29

in 2002, President George

19:32

W. Bush used a drone

19:34

for the first time to kill an Al-Qaeda official

19:37

that was involved with the bombing of the USS

19:39

Cole several years earlier. And since

19:42

then, there's been kind of this deleterious

19:44

trend within global security, where we now have 20

19:46

to 35 or so, depending

19:49

on the report, states that

19:51

actually have these armed and network drones. And so

19:53

scholars have contended with the emergence

19:56

of drone warfare as I just defined it in

19:58

one of three ways. The first- wave

20:00

of scholarship was really content on understanding

20:03

the drivers of drone proliferation,

20:05

which is to say that the diffusion of the technology

20:08

across member states of international society

20:11

and indeed non-state actors

20:13

like trans-regional terrorists that have given rise

20:15

to what one UN official calls

20:17

the second drone age.

20:20

Most scholars within this wave, as we

20:22

talk about in the book and in other writings that I've

20:24

published, really focus on

20:26

the demand side of drone

20:29

warfare, which is to say an appetite

20:31

from especially US allies and partners

20:33

for the capability. Much less

20:35

attention was and has been focused

20:38

on the supply side, which is lobbying

20:40

frankly from the two largest manufacturers

20:43

of US armed drones that would be

20:45

Northrop Grumman and General Tomics of

20:48

congressional officials to support the sale

20:50

of drones abroad and indeed

20:52

towards the tail end of the Trump administration,

20:55

you saw some fights within Congress. Really, Congress

20:57

was exercising its oversight on the

20:59

foreign military

20:59

sales of drones to key regional

21:02

allies to include Saudi Arabia. So that was

21:04

the first wave.

21:06

The second wave dealt

21:09

with the effectiveness, the punitive

21:11

effectiveness of drone strikes in

21:13

combat. And this was bifurcated really

21:15

between those who thought it was effective

21:18

and think it's effective and those who don't. And

21:20

so on the one hand, you have people like

21:22

Brian Price, no stranger to West Point,

21:25

the director of the Counterterrorism Study Center

21:27

that talked about drones being effective

21:29

in limited operations against a particular

21:31

typology of threat, in this case, religiously

21:34

inspired terrorists. And then he has

21:37

those who argue like Jenna Jordan that really

21:40

drones may be tactically effective,

21:42

but they don't really ameliorate

21:44

the social and political grievances

21:47

that actually give rise to political

21:49

conflict in the first place. So an

21:52

insurgency may have multiple

21:54

terrorists picked off by a drone strike, but

21:56

on the other hand, that does nothing to abate

21:59

the broader

21:59

sort of communal movement towards installing

22:03

more legitimate political authority,

22:05

or at least to their mind. And the debate frankly

22:08

is really unsettled at this point.

22:11

And then the third wave dealt

22:13

with the legal, moral, and ethical implications

22:16

of drone warfare, partly because

22:18

it's very challenging with the lack of data

22:21

and transparency for some of these strikes to

22:23

actually draw a causal effect for

22:25

an argument. And so philosophers,

22:27

psychologists, anthropologists, legal

22:30

scholars were more comfortable talking about

22:33

philosophically what would make a

22:35

strike moral and ethical and what would not.

22:37

And so as I was mowing the lawn in Virginia,

22:40

reflecting on this, it really struck

22:42

me that the literature is saturated,

22:45

but it's saturated within one of these

22:47

three waves. And mostly the third

22:49

wave, Renek's book's a good example of that. Some of

22:51

Sarah's work is a good example of that. And

22:54

so how do we push the debate forward about

22:56

the place of drone warfare in international society?

22:59

We need to make global order the locus

23:01

of our analysis and understand the trade-offs

23:04

of drones on the social concept.

23:07

Some of them actually frankly are helpful, whereas

23:09

some are not. And we can talk about those going forward.

23:12

But broadly speaking, that's where this

23:14

book attempts to take the conversation in

23:16

an entirely new direction that most scholars

23:19

haven't given real attention to.

23:21

So you are an army officer. We've

23:24

talked about your military background.

23:26

Listeners will hear

23:29

you and hear you talking about this

23:32

very much from a sort of scholarly

23:35

perspective. You've given

23:37

a fantastic literature review.

23:40

I wanna ask though, we talk a lot

23:42

about the need to bridge the gap between scholarship

23:45

and practice. In

23:48

that sense, I think it's important that

23:50

the army sent you to do a PhD

23:53

as a practitioner. And you're looking at these things

23:55

from a scholarly perspective. When it comes to drones

23:57

and drone warfare, how big is that gap?

24:00

And is it, you know, how does it compare to say some

24:02

of the other issues that, you know, we

24:04

might focus on issues of importance to,

24:07

to, to modern war?

24:09

John, that's a great question. What

24:11

is the return on the investment for the army who, you know,

24:14

people with the army will listen to this and say, okay,

24:16

you know, you publish a book, but what does it

24:18

mean in real terms, I think is a phenomenal

24:21

question. It's actually a question that was

24:23

posed to me last week is I

24:25

presented a paper to a panel here

24:28

at Cornell, which will be published and part of my dissertation

24:31

on the public's perception of morally legitimate

24:34

drone warfare, which I'd like to talk about

24:36

later as well. And

24:38

so the place of this

24:39

book in army professional education

24:41

is this. We often talk

24:43

about these higher order implications,

24:46

legitimacy,

24:48

order, when we're determining the

24:50

merits or not of conducting

24:53

a strike in combat. I can't

24:55

tell you how many times, the times

24:57

myself as the intelligence officer for the Joint

24:59

Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan

25:01

or Iraq would sit there and talk to the

25:03

J3, the operations officer and the

25:05

commander. He had his nucleus of support

25:08

surrounding him. What does this strike

25:10

mean for legitimacy

25:12

of America's intervention in Afghanistan in

25:14

this case? What does it mean for

25:17

the status or approbation that

25:20

the United States receives from regional

25:22

allies and partners certainly set against the metastasizing

25:25

of the Islamic State in the Khorasan province? So

25:28

these questions that we talk about

25:30

in the book are highly germane

25:32

to what the army does, whether or not we want

25:34

to recognize it. And it really becomes

25:37

a very germane conversation

25:39

at the battalion brigade and higher

25:41

levels of command, whether a theater, strategic

25:44

theater, operational, as we attempt to

25:46

adjudicate measures of performance

25:48

and effectiveness of these strikes. So this

25:51

is necessarily just a fanciful conversation to

25:53

check the mark for a dissertation

25:55

or whatever. These are substantive

25:57

conversations that we have to contend with.

26:00

to be equipped with the tools and the frameworks

26:02

to do so. And I think that is the contribution

26:05

for the Army going forward. And one final point

26:08

is, one of the reviewers on the book is

26:10

Barry McCaffrey, four-star general retired.

26:13

And he'll talk about this book being very important

26:15

for the war colleges to expose

26:18

our senior leaders to these different

26:20

intellectual traditions on how to understand

26:22

the concept of legitimacy that they

26:24

often question themselves, but they may

26:26

not have the tool set conceptually because, well,

26:29

we've been in the fight for two decades.

26:31

And that's what we do.

26:33

So I want to shift gears and ask you kind of maybe a series

26:35

of fairly specific questions. And

26:37

the first one is, you know,

26:40

the answer may seem

26:42

intuitive, but I'm not sure that it is or that it

26:44

should be anyway. I'm

26:46

curious what factors seem

26:48

to influence states who

26:50

decide to make drones

26:53

a key feature of really

26:55

of their way of war. You know, there's

26:57

you look at it and there are tactical advantages

27:00

that, you know, they can remain on station longer

27:02

than most manned aircraft. There's

27:04

a, you know, certainly a force protection element to

27:07

it. You don't have to put a pilot up potentially

27:09

in harm's way. But what

27:11

are the factors that, you know, the U.S. is probably

27:13

the easiest example, but as we have more

27:15

and more states, you know, equipping

27:18

unmanned aircraft with

27:21

weaponry and, you know, advanced

27:23

sensors and using them as part of their war fighting,

27:25

you know, what goes

27:27

into that decision?

27:29

Yeah. And so another

27:31

great question that's often assumed within the literature,

27:34

but it's simply not clear in the

27:36

book. One of the justifications for publication

27:38

is the logics, as we put it, that would

27:40

motivate a state or

27:43

non-state actor to use drone

27:45

warfare. And so probably the easiest way

27:48

to contend with this question is two sort

27:50

of broad perspectives. The one

27:52

is most popular, and that's sort of the material dividends

27:55

that a state in this case would receive

27:57

in using drone warfare.

27:59

The promise of drone warfare for states and

28:02

militaries that use them is this notion of

28:04

riskless war, which is to say

28:06

that we can project power

28:09

without projecting vulnerability, which

28:11

in fact is a quote from US Air

28:13

Force General Deptula in

28:16

about 2000, I want to say four,

28:18

so when he was talking about the emergence

28:20

of drone warfare. So the notion that you can actually

28:23

use drones while obtaining

28:26

a certain degree of force protection that we haven't hereto

28:29

for is very appealing for

28:31

not only military officials, but also for

28:34

political officials because with civilian with

28:36

casualties, excuse me, on behalf

28:38

of a force comes reputational cost

28:41

that can be meted out during during an election.

28:43

And in terms of the democratic accountability

28:45

at stake here, I would point you to Sarah Krebs

28:48

and John Cagg's work on

28:50

this front. The other sort of perspective

28:53

is the status or approbation

28:56

that states receive in becoming

28:58

a card carrying member of the armed

29:01

and network drone club. So there's a chapter

29:03

within the book written by a US Air

29:05

Force Lieutenant Colonel, also a PhD

29:08

through their PhD producing program from

29:11

Stanford that talks about this notion

29:13

of conspicuous consumption. And

29:15

so states may not actually have the

29:17

ability to integrate drones into

29:20

their military arsenals but may

29:22

want them to demonstrate that they ought to have

29:24

a seat at the table, whatever that table

29:26

means for regional security or

29:28

global security. And you see this argument

29:31

made quite often in terms of an aircraft

29:33

carrier or the joint strike fighter

29:35

or the F-22 Raptor. Are

29:37

these things going to become efficacious

29:40

for a military that doesn't have a budget, doesn't

29:42

have the training, doesn't

29:43

have the maintenance or sustainment tail,

29:46

but yet would want to pursue these

29:48

to become a member of the club in

29:51

any case. Another good sort of work here

29:53

is by Michael Horowitz from University of Pennsylvania

29:55

that actually takes a look at

29:58

the Olympic medals that a country... receives

30:00

attempts to understand whether

30:03

or not they have a status sort of interest

30:05

in having these drones. And so in broad terms,

30:08

it comes down to having guns and butters to

30:10

achieve this sort of notion of riskless war,

30:13

but also on the other hand, certainly for smaller states

30:15

to be able to demonstrate a capability that

30:17

would let them make a meaningful contribution

30:20

with other states that are conducting interventions, especially

30:23

regionally.

30:24

Okay, so I have a follow up question,

30:27

then if those are some of the factors that states

30:30

consider when making this decision

30:33

to use armed

30:35

and networked drones, as you said, what factors

30:37

do you think they should be considering that maybe they're not?

30:40

Yeah, I think this is the more important question

30:43

as well, and actually leads into some of

30:45

my ongoing research and original survey experiments

30:48

in America and France, in

30:51

terms of what states should think about. And so I'm

30:53

going to give you two answers here, there's probably more,

30:56

but these are the ones that I consider before this

30:58

interview. So the first one is, what

31:01

do you want the drone to be used

31:03

for?

31:03

So we've talked about the use

31:06

of armed drones for targeted killing. We've

31:08

talked about the use of armed

31:10

drones for intelligence surveillance and

31:13

reconnaissance missions that are short order, short

31:15

duration. These are often non armed,

31:19

non lethal, non networked drones.

31:22

But as you take a look at the typology

31:24

of purposes of drones in

31:26

conflict, what I've settled on is really

31:29

three main purposes for drone

31:31

warfare. The first is

31:33

the use of drones to pressure

31:35

or disrupt an organization. And

31:38

this is the doctrinal term disruption. The

31:40

other is the use of drones to

31:44

kill key facilitators,

31:46

recruiters, propagandists, people

31:49

who facilitate lethal aid. And

31:52

this would be called the sort of leverage component of

31:54

targeting. And some even equate

31:56

leverage to a center of gravity, which

31:59

is the hub of power. for a

32:01

clandestine network like a terrorist organization, an

32:03

insurgency or indeed, narco,

32:07

narcotics organizations as well. And finally,

32:09

is this notion of desynchronization,

32:11

which some people relate often to decapitation,

32:14

but it's much broader because it's also designed

32:17

to disrupt and to momentarily

32:20

destroy capability. But in some cases

32:22

can potentially defeat an

32:25

organization's capability in

32:27

terms of let's say, external operations. So a

32:29

great case in point on sort of desynchronization

32:32

would be our use of drone strikes against

32:34

the Islamic State in the Khorasan province,

32:36

which is the regional affiliate in Afghanistan,

32:39

Pakistan and Central and South Asia

32:42

that resulted not simply in disruption

32:44

of the organization from the East to West of Afghanistan,

32:47

but also momentarily redress

32:49

its ability to plan and prepare and

32:52

execute operations towards our

32:54

European allies in America.

32:56

And so we momentarily destroyed the capability which

32:58

we've seen has been, we

33:00

organized and consolidated in Afghanistan

33:04

as of late. And so what do you want drones

33:06

to do for you is the first sort of questions

33:08

that militaries and leaders should confront.

33:10

Pressure leverage desynchronization is one framework

33:13

that I've adopted and written about to understand

33:16

this. The other sort of consideration which

33:19

we should spend some time on is

33:21

the public's perception of

33:23

what I call morally legitimate

33:26

drone warfare. And so in the annals

33:28

of legitimacy studies, you often understand

33:30

legitimacy in one of two ways. One is it's

33:33

a legalistic concept. It's a compliance poll

33:36

of states to align behavior

33:38

against let's say international humanitarian law, which

33:40

are the laws of armed conflict or

33:43

other sort of protocols that states have agreed on. And

33:45

so this is the compliance tradition of legitimacy

33:48

studies. And the other way to understand it

33:50

is almost a sociological or subjective

33:53

perception, which is empirical at the same time,

33:56

which is people stated beliefs about

33:59

the.

33:59

rightful conduct, in this case

34:02

of wartime behavior. And

34:04

so when I talk about the public's perception

34:06

of morally legitimate

34:07

drone warfare, really what I'm talking

34:10

about are the underlying norms

34:12

and rules that condition people's

34:14

immediate intuitions for how they

34:16

understand legitimate strikes or

34:19

not. And I'm going to leave it there because you

34:21

probably have a lot of questions about what that means, but I can unpack

34:23

it further. So I think that this is the second sort

34:26

of consideration is the notion of legitimate

34:28

drone warfare. Yeah, and which

34:30

has so many layers to it too, right?

34:33

There is a codified legal construct, the

34:36

law of armed conflict,

34:37

where we talk about proportionality and discrimination

34:40

and the principles of

34:43

the law of armed conflict. There's also the

34:46

ethical consideration,

34:49

which overlays on top of but is distinct

34:51

from the sort of public sentiment one.

34:54

Does the American public

34:56

want

34:57

wars fought in their name to be fought

35:00

remotely with these sorts of platforms?

35:02

And those all feed into that question

35:04

of legitimacy. I'd love to hear you talk a little

35:06

bit more about that. Yeah, this

35:09

is really what fires me up when I start

35:11

thinking about drone warfare studies in the

35:13

next wave, because what it allows us to

35:15

do is to adopt at least in

35:17

a social scientist sense, what

35:20

we call these econometric methods. So empirical,

35:23

statistical methods in treat legitimacy

35:26

is actually a dependent variable, which

35:29

can shift based upon different conditions.

35:31

And so what do I mean about moral

35:33

legitimacy? And so when you take a look at

35:35

the drone warfare literature, what

35:37

you often find are scholars,

35:40

again, mostly philosophers, psychologists,

35:43

cognitive scientists, talking about

35:45

legitimacy in terms of one

35:47

or three moral norms. A

35:49

moral norm is something that is thought

35:51

to regulate and constitute

35:53

behavior. It's usually thought of as universal in

35:56

scope. It's not linked to one

35:58

or another political authority. it's

36:00

consistently held by people across

36:03

cultures, and it typically relates

36:05

to suffering. And of course, suffering

36:08

is involved in conflict, whether or not it's the direct

36:10

form or the indirect form that we're talking about today.

36:13

And so the first sort of moral norm that people

36:15

talk about in terms of legitimacy is this notion

36:17

of courage, that we would

36:19

want our soldiers to actually demonstrate

36:22

physical courage on the battlefield, be

36:24

liable to be harmed as

36:27

a measure of legitimacy. And

36:29

this relates

36:29

to Gusterson's notion of mixed

36:32

drone warfare, the use of strikes in support

36:34

of expeditionary deployed

36:37

forces in ground combat. The

36:39

second sort of moral norm pivots on

36:41

the outcomes at play. So

36:44

minimizing the risk to soldiers,

36:47

in other words, force protection, is

36:49

the most important outcome for

36:51

militaries, at least in Western democracies.

36:54

Now, there are other outcomes that we can point

36:56

to, let's say the broader protection of society,

37:00

the lack of a terrorist conducting a strike, but in conflict,

37:03

the force protection measure becomes really important,

37:06

and this links to the empirical implication

37:08

of pure drone warfare, the use of drones

37:11

as an end state in themselves

37:13

and not a broader sort of ground operation.

37:16

And then finally, you have this notion of duties

37:18

of cares to others or the notion

37:21

of non-combatant immunity. Do

37:23

not kill civilians intentionally.

37:26

And this is justified or codified within

37:28

Housen-Bello, which is this just

37:30

recourse to war, the distinction

37:33

and proportionality components especially. And

37:35

as you take a look at the literature,

37:37

you often see duties of

37:39

care to civilians couched in terms of

37:42

constraints that prescribe

37:44

behavior. And so these

37:46

constraints look like a reputational cost

37:49

that a country would incur for a civilian casualty,

37:51

which potentially happened in Afghanistan

37:54

recently with the strike that killed a

37:56

purported ISIS-K facilitator,

37:59

that we should demonstrate. militaries

38:01

that is should demonstrate

38:04

the use of a strike towards a military objective

38:06

only, because when we start talking about politics,

38:09

legitimacy becomes very tenuous. And

38:11

then finally is this notion of

38:14

constraints that go above and beyond

38:16

what even a layperson would understand as

38:19

feasible or warranted in Whoson-Bello

38:22

considerations. And so we call these in

38:24

the literature superrogatory constraints. And

38:27

as you take a look at the literature, it's either courage,

38:29

outcomes, and duties that scholars

38:31

often talk about. But having watched

38:34

and conducted drone warfare for two

38:36

decades, I think we've missed the boat

38:38

on understanding that it's not one or the other, but

38:41

that these norms work in concert

38:43

with each other

38:44

and are teased out in certain ways based

38:46

upon how strikes are used and how strikes

38:49

are constrained.

38:50

And so it's not one or the other, but a constellation

38:52

of these norms that we have to understand through

38:55

this notion of use and constraint, which

38:57

is my original contribution to the literature.

39:00

Has the sort

39:02

of emergence of drones and the proliferation of

39:04

drones over the past, say, two decades

39:07

plus, has it

39:09

been destabilizing? Well,

39:13

I think this probably links back to

39:15

the conversation about global order and

39:17

the trade-offs in global order.

39:20

One thing I may want to do right now to kind of tie

39:23

up the previous question is just to

39:25

really focus on the use

39:27

and constraint of drone warfare. And then

39:29

I'll flip back into your question because

39:31

this is very important to understand, right?

39:34

So the use of drone warfare can be

39:36

a tactic, much like

39:38

a patrol or clearance operation in conflict,

39:40

but it also can be used as a strategy,

39:43

which the scholarship and practitioners

39:45

pay less attention to. And

39:47

it's really underwritten by a theory of

39:49

victory that we could use drone warfare

39:52

to decapitate an organization,

39:55

where, on the other hand, there's different types of constraints

39:57

to include, you know, lateral constraints.

40:00

So President Obama's presidential guidance

40:02

that was integrated, I think, in 2013 is

40:05

a form of unilateral constraint, but there's also multilateral

40:08

constraints as well, such as the

40:10

United Nations Security Council resolution that

40:13

governs French drone strikes within

40:15

Africa. And so different combinations

40:17

of the use and constraint rule will

40:19

really conditions people's perceptions of

40:22

legitimate drone strikes in one

40:24

way or another. In my key

40:26

findings, at least so far, suggest

40:29

that the

40:29

tactical use of drone warfare

40:32

with multilateral constraints is

40:34

viewed by the public, at least Americans, is

40:37

highly morally legitimate. And

40:39

this is like the French model of drone strikes

40:41

in Mali. They use it as a patrol or

40:43

as a clearance operation, but they also

40:45

have brought oversight from different

40:49

external bodies to include, especially the

40:51

Shahal Five, which are countries in Western Africa,

40:53

but also the United Nations. The destabilizing

40:56

aspect of drone warfare

40:59

can, in fact, be linked to this

41:02

concept of use and constraint that I'm building

41:04

right now. It's really fascinating

41:06

to me as you take a look at the data that

41:09

most Americans, at least, and it's an outstanding

41:11

question of whether or not others in the world believe

41:13

this, but most Americans actually

41:16

think that the tactical use of a drone strike

41:19

without external control or

41:21

unilaterally is somewhat legitimate.

41:23

And this is pretty troubling for me, because

41:26

what it suggests is that states like Turkey

41:29

and other regional actors

41:31

can adopt the use of armed

41:34

and networked drones and not

41:36

be held liable in terms of legitimacy

41:39

for a civilian casually. Indeed, their

41:42

operations typically fly completely underneath

41:45

the radar. Most Americans don't understand how to

41:47

contend with it. And so as you take a look at

41:49

the global governance of drone warfare,

41:52

what we often think and settle on is, well, if

41:54

the United States is strike against

41:56

Soleimani, it was strategic in nature

41:58

with

41:59

unilateral constrain.

41:59

this is what's unraveling

42:03

the key sort of procedural norms, sovereignty,

42:05

that undergirds global

42:07

order. Whereas my contention is we

42:09

ought to take a look at the proliferation of drones

42:12

to regional and smaller states because

42:14

they're using them and will continue to use

42:16

them prolifically, but yet not be held

42:18

account. And so the global sort of governance

42:21

gap is very clear in this

42:23

sense, which is why we confront it within the book. I

42:25

mean, we have an entire chapter or two on

42:27

how you actually contend with drone warfare,

42:29

because

42:29

I think it is destabilizing to a degree.

42:33

Yeah, I told

42:35

you that I wanted to ask you this question that I find really interesting.

42:39

Should we think of drones as something

42:42

like small arms? Everybody has

42:45

them or could get them fairly easily if

42:47

we project out into the future or something like

42:50

advanced high technology

42:53

weapons platforms, or even something like nuclear weapons,

42:55

where the club is limited and clearly

42:57

defined. And others may want them, but they

42:59

won't necessarily always get them. Or

43:02

are we heading to a future

43:03

where every party to a conflict

43:06

is going to have unmanned

43:09

drones in the air doing either

43:11

armed attack or reconnaissance?

43:15

Sadly, I think that the dystopian sort

43:17

of scenario that Gus Rimson talks about in

43:19

his book could be a reality

43:22

in terms of the diffusion of proliferation of

43:24

capabilities to actors, whether

43:27

they're non-state or state, that the United States at least, in

43:29

terms of our national security interests, would

43:31

not want to have. A great case and

43:33

point of this is an article that was sent

43:35

to me by one of my colleagues in Australia, just

43:38

in fact today, that dealt with

43:40

the emergence of, get this, an emergence

43:43

of a drone capability within

43:45

the Taliban that was used

43:47

to counter the counterattack,

43:50

as it were, from the resistance within

43:52

Afghanistan recently.

43:55

I haven't independently verified that

43:57

this unit actually existed, but this had been a very interesting process.

44:00

The paper goes into great detail about

44:02

the emergence of the specialized organization that

44:04

used a mortar outfitted on

44:06

a commercial drone that was bought from China

44:09

to kill somebody part of the resistance,

44:11

an Uzbek as it were, up towards the

44:13

border with Tajikistan. This

44:15

is not unlike what we've seen for the Islamic

44:18

State's use of drone warfare against US

44:20

and coalition forces in Iraq and

44:22

Syria. Indeed, General McKenzie,

44:24

CENTCOM, Central Command Commander, will tell

44:26

you that drones against US forces

44:28

is the number one strategic risk

44:29

that US and coalition forces

44:32

confront at this point. So yes, I think we're going

44:35

to a scenario where we're

44:37

going to see the proliferation of drones broadly

44:39

and have to come up with countermeasures

44:42

to contend with it. And this is why you even

44:44

have some experts like Martin

44:46

Cook, a leading sort of ethicist

44:48

and philosopher of war at the Naval War College

44:51

and also at the US Air

44:53

Force Academy. People argue that

44:56

notwithstanding the sort of moral concerns I've

44:58

talked about, that we ought to

45:00

as a nation harness the capability

45:02

to prevent other states from

45:04

setting a precedent, a norm

45:07

for their use. And so this is sort of the external

45:10

component of the ethical argument

45:12

about why we would want to adopt drone warfare

45:15

even given some of the moral and legal

45:17

concerns we talked about. But there's also

45:19

kind of an internal component to this as well.

45:22

And I often have been asked the question whether it's undergraduates

45:25

here at Cornell or others in

45:28

my presentations and writings, you know,

45:30

is the United States going towards a fully

45:32

autonomous weapon, which

45:35

is to say one that can identify a target

45:37

on its own based upon pre-scripted

45:40

criteria, can conduct an operation

45:43

on

45:43

its own and

45:46

also can survive on its own over time?

45:48

My answer, much to people's

45:50

surprise, is no.

45:52

I actually think that the United States, I know the United

45:54

States at this point, is not moving towards a direction

45:56

of fully autonomous weapon system because we only always

45:59

want to have sort of a person within

46:01

the loop that can do this sort

46:03

of moral struggle that's required

46:06

based upon broader considerations of commanders

46:08

priority intelligence requirements, the legitimacy

46:11

or status at stake. And so I

46:13

think there's an external and an internal component even

46:15

considering the diffusion

46:17

of drone warfare in terms of the management that

46:20

we have to contend with. And indeed, as we

46:22

take a look at the book, what we find is that

46:25

the most serious contention

46:27

for anti-drone advocates is

46:30

not necessarily drone warfare as it is right now,

46:32

but sort of fully autonomous weapon

46:34

system. And so the next wave of drone warfare literature

46:37

has got to contend with the broader

46:39

operational reach, the heightened lethality

46:41

and the full autonomy at stake and recalibrate

46:44

the conversation back towards doctrine. I

46:47

can't see a future, you know, in my lifetime

46:49

in the service, at least, where we would want to fully outsource

46:52

the sort of moral calculation for a strike that

46:54

some of these anti-drone experts will

46:56

tell you that they fear the most. You

47:00

know, the next question that I want to ask you is really

47:02

one

47:04

about how we frame and conceptualize

47:06

discussions about drones as

47:08

they continue to evolve. You

47:10

know, the US military

47:13

DOD has five groups.

47:16

Group one are the smallest drones, I think

47:18

less than 20 pounds. They don't fly very high. You

47:21

know, military listeners will be most

47:23

familiar with the Raven probably, but

47:25

they also include that quadcopters, which is presumably

47:27

the Chinese commercial drone that the Taliban

47:30

reportedly used, according to that article that you

47:32

mentioned. We've seen examples

47:34

of ISIS in Iraq and

47:36

Syria modifying quadcopters

47:39

to be able to drop munitions. And

47:42

then the highest group, group five,

47:44

these are the Reaper, I think, which is the largest

47:47

one of the largest ones in the US arsenal

47:49

anyway, you know, that fly at 20,000

47:51

feet and higher and they're massive. It's

47:54

hard, you know, when we talk about

47:57

weaponry, we talk, you know, you can call a

47:59

rifle a gun and you.

47:59

can call a 155 millimeter

48:02

artillery piece a gun, and people do. But

48:04

they're very different things. And so we've developed

48:06

specialized lexicons to be able to talk about them

48:08

because you don't use them for the same things. They

48:10

don't bring the same capabilities to the fight. Is the

48:12

fact that we call all of these drones, does

48:15

it hold us back from being able to have maybe

48:17

a more nuanced discussion?

48:19

Another great question. It

48:22

absolutely does. And so

48:24

the locus of analysis within the book are

48:26

armed and networked drones. And one

48:29

point that one sort

48:32

of international regime

48:35

in literature I would point your listeners to is

48:37

that on the missile technology control

48:39

regime. So the missile technology control regime

48:42

was built in the 1980s to contend

48:45

with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, really

48:47

to bring states together in a cooperative

48:50

way to counter the proliferation

48:52

of not just technologies, but the end item. It

48:54

has since been retrofitted to account

48:57

for drones, which some conceive as simply

48:59

a missile. And so these are

49:01

missiles at the category one level defined

49:04

by the regime that do fly

49:07

almost 500 miles per hour, reach beyond 200

49:10

miles, and can deliver a very large

49:12

payload. And I think this is the most important

49:15

aspect of drone warfare, certainly

49:17

in a state on state conflict, which we actually haven't

49:19

tested, nor would we want to, about

49:21

the survivability and efficacy of these

49:23

platforms, which I think is a little bit dubious

49:25

based upon the electronic warfare

49:28

capabilities that our adversaries can

49:30

bring to bear. But nevertheless,

49:32

when I talk about drones, I talk about this

49:36

certain category, because these

49:38

are the ones that are outfitted with artificial intelligence

49:41

that are undergirded by this global intelligence

49:43

collection and analysis architecture that

49:46

allow commanders, as I said earlier, to

49:48

shorten the sensor to shooter

49:51

timeline based upon any number

49:53

of decision

49:54

criteria. But we also

49:56

have to understand that drones,

49:59

whether in the small. form or the large form

50:02

go more beyond just the platform. And so it

50:04

takes something like 200 different

50:07

maintainers, operators, crew members,

50:09

so on and so forth, to operate

50:12

an armed and networked drones. It'll

50:14

probably take less to operate a Shadow

50:17

or Raven, of course. And these drone

50:19

operators and maintainers and intelligence

50:21

analysts are displaced across the world.

50:23

And some of them are actually deployed in

50:26

harm's way. And so I think we have to be very

50:28

clear about what we're talking about in terms of the

50:30

implications of drones on, let's say, global

50:33

order. Now, that's not to say that these

50:35

unarmed, non-lethal, smaller drones aren't

50:38

important, as we've seen with the Taliban and the Islamic

50:40

State. In fact, Keith Carter,

50:42

who's a Lieutenant Colonel at West Point wrote

50:44

a chapter for me

50:46

on drone warfare proliferation to

50:48

include among non-state actors. And

50:51

his findings are that drones

50:53

are coming to a theater of war near

50:56

you more often than not because

50:58

of the analytical choices that scholars have made

51:01

not to confront the proliferation among

51:03

non-state actors and come up with meaningful

51:05

ways to counter that. And so

51:07

as you talk about what does this mean for governance,

51:10

I really think what we need is a regime

51:12

that goes beyond the MCTR, the

51:14

missile MTCR, the Missile Technology

51:16

Control Regime, or

51:18

others that are retrofitted, that are post

51:20

hoc. We need something that counts for

51:23

the technologies that go into these

51:25

drones. The dual use technologies

51:28

at that. And that needs to be, I think,

51:30

how we counter a proliferation

51:33

of these smaller drones to non-state

51:36

actors such as insurgents and terrorists going

51:38

forward. Because what we have right now is frankly

51:41

a broken hobbled system.

51:44

The Army is

51:46

almost becoming kind of trite to

51:48

say this, but it is true. And

51:52

the Joint Force as a whole is in a period of transition

51:55

after 20 years of war in Iraq

51:58

and most recently in Afghanistan.

52:01

from the sort of counter terrorism, counterinsurgency

52:03

toward readiness for large

52:06

scale combat operations and making

52:09

contributions to the sense of great power competition

52:11

that we say has re-emerged

52:13

ever since that, well, we've said that

52:15

has re-emerged ever since that was sort of codified in

52:17

the national security strategy in 2017.

52:21

Drones have been, I think

52:23

the public discourse certainly is very much about

52:26

drone usage in that CT and COIN

52:28

context because they have been used

52:30

to prosecute targets, high value targets

52:33

in a CT environment. They have been used

52:35

for close air support for ground forces in

52:37

a counterinsurgency environment as

52:40

we transition to a different

52:42

strategic environment planning for potentially

52:45

very different adversaries, different missions,

52:48

a different way of operating is the

52:50

way that we in the military at least are

52:53

thinking about the use of drones adapting.

52:55

Are we thinking sufficiently about what role they're going

52:57

to play in say a major ground war?

53:02

Yeah, I am, I'm not sure. From

53:05

my perch up here, it

53:08

would appear not, but I don't want to discount

53:10

the great work that's taken place in

53:14

the tunnels of the Pentagon where it just came from,

53:16

at Tradoc and

53:18

elsewhere. I'd assume that this is taking

53:20

place. Let me give you a couple of things to

53:22

consider real quick. I think it's dubious

53:25

to think that the United States

53:27

could use drone warfare to the

53:29

degree and in the way that we've used

53:32

it against terrorists when we start talking

53:34

about a peer, near peer conflict

53:37

against any number of strategic

53:39

competitors. In fact, I think the most

53:42

studious sort of strategic thinkers

53:44

at the general officer level will tell you that they

53:46

think it's dubious as well for the countermeasures

53:48

at place in terms of electronic warfare, but

53:50

also the survivability just

53:53

in terms of AAA or air defense artillery

53:56

or different sort of air defense system. We have

53:58

had air superior. superiority

54:01

for the last two decades of conflict

54:03

and we likely will not have air

54:06

superiority in a conflict with Russia, China,

54:08

or Iran based upon their integrated air defense

54:10

systems. And so I think that's the first point to notice

54:12

that we have to rethink using

54:15

this in a pure conflict unlike

54:17

what we've done before against terrorists. And so having

54:20

said that

54:21

potentially drones become useful in any

54:23

number of cases for near-peer competitors. One is

54:25

I think protection of forces behind

54:28

the flop or the so-called forward line

54:30

of troops. And so protecting

54:32

our

54:33

flanks in an expeditionary setting

54:35

whether in the Indo-Asian Pacific or the

54:37

Middle East I think will be a critical role for

54:40

drones to include on the network drones in

54:42

terms of persistent stare, the intelligence,

54:45

surveillance, and reconnaissance, but also the capability

54:47

to rapidly strike somebody that's penetrated

54:51

across our defensive belts,

54:53

if you will. So I think that that's one use of

54:56

drones within a peer conflict. The

54:58

other sort of use is this sort of notion

55:00

of mixed drone warfare that you

55:03

can use drones to augment

55:06

both helicopter as well as

55:09

manned platform capability in

55:11

terms of close air attack and

55:13

close air support. And so we have

55:16

to think more in terms of the J.C.

55:18

Schleser argument back in the turn of the

55:20

century, the 20th century, that is

55:22

in integrating our capabilities

55:25

for direct action firepower over

55:28

the head, you know, fire power

55:30

as it were, as opposed to something as a standalone

55:32

sort of capability. And then having said that,

55:35

I think you could use drones certainly within

55:37

an operational fire's or shaping

55:39

capacity. We need to learn

55:42

from World War II in the

55:44

use of coastal artillery, bombers

55:47

off of aircraft carriers that

55:49

shaped the battlefield whether in late T Gulf

55:51

or elsewhere, we ought to think

55:53

about adopting drones as a shaping

55:56

fire component to

55:58

penetration

55:59

infiltration.

55:59

within an anti-access

56:03

aerial denial sort of strategy that we see in the

56:05

South China Sea, but also in the Persian Gulf. And

56:07

so protection of supply lines, the

56:09

use in support of expeditionary

56:12

forces and shaping fires,

56:14

I think are things that we ought to be thinking about

56:16

for the use of drone warfare against a near peer competitor.

56:20

I want to kind of zoom out

56:22

a bit and then also circle back to kind

56:25

of the beginning of the conversation when we were talking about

56:27

the, how the

56:30

increased usage of drones

56:32

in the conduct of war overlays

56:35

on the question of the changing character of warfare.

56:40

I'm assuming kind of impossible

56:42

to quantify how

56:45

much

56:46

drone warfare is changing the character

56:48

warfare, but I'm going to ask you anyway to

56:51

give it your best shot.

56:54

What is the impact of

56:56

the increase in

56:58

drone warfare on the changing character of warfare?

57:01

So I think the impact

57:04

on the changing character of warfare

57:06

is important in terms of

57:09

applying asymmetric force against

57:11

an adversary to protect ourselves. What's

57:13

really fascinating about the

57:16

survey response that I received in

57:18

his latest original survey experiment with

57:20

Americans that I conducted in March is that

57:22

most Americans at least actually one

57:24

thing that drone warfare is relatively

57:27

legitimate. And so on the scale of like one to 10, the

57:29

average response was about like a 6.2. Now I

57:31

don't know what that really means, but I know it's above a

57:34

five. And so it's pretty clear that most

57:36

Americans think drone warfare is pretty

57:39

legitimate. And they often don't think about somebody's

57:41

personal risk when they attempt

57:44

to adjudicate the legitimacy of a strike.

57:46

In other words, they don't care whether or not a

57:49

soldier is deployed to conflict in this sort

57:51

of bravery, heroism, you know, martial

57:53

virtue that he or she demonstrates

57:56

as a measure of legitimacy. And so

57:58

I actually think that drone warfare has

58:00

resulted in the ability to apply force

58:03

while protecting ourselves. So again, projecting

58:05

force while not protecting vulnerability,

58:08

which is an important dividend from at least a strategic

58:11

sort of instrumental logic, which is not to

58:13

talk about the morality at stake, but the interest

58:16

at stake. Where I disagree with

58:19

most scholars on the technology of

58:21

warfare is this notion that drone

58:24

warfare has changed the nature

58:26

of warfare, which are the social and political

58:30

sort of pillars of conflict. Martin

58:33

Dempsey, general retired Martin Dempsey, just

58:35

authored a forward to a book from Thornwillow

58:38

Press, which is up at West Point, which I would commend

58:40

to anybody. It's called, I'm looking

58:42

at it right now in my library, Beauty is the Beginning of

58:45

Terror. And I just want to read you one quote

58:48

from this book real quick that I think captures

58:50

exactly what I'm trying to communicate

58:53

in terms of

58:55

the nature of war. And so

58:57

he says on page 17, quote, through

59:00

this project, the cadets grew and

59:02

they're understanding that war is always an intensely

59:05

human endeavor,

59:06

no matter how the trappings of technology

59:08

might seem to put us at some distance

59:11

from the horror, unquote. And

59:13

so I think that that's what we have to really understand is that while

59:16

we may want to achieve a certain degree

59:18

of asymmetry that goes above and beyond

59:20

the machine gun, the artillery piece,

59:22

the helicopter, the jet,

59:25

we're

59:25

never gonna get away from the fact that it's really

59:27

a human endeavor and that these operations,

59:30

let's say the over the horizon strategy

59:32

that we're apparently adopting in Afghanistan are

59:35

actually built upon intelligence that someone has

59:37

to gather, whether it's pocket litter, a

59:39

device, a laptop, and putting these

59:41

things together in order to point us in

59:44

the right direction. And so I think the shifting character

59:46

warfare gives us better protection, but

59:48

on the other hand, I'm not really sure that over

59:51

time, the sort of protection

59:53

is gonna outweigh the risk that we will

59:55

confront in a near peer

59:57

competitor sort of conflict, whether it's in... Asia

1:00:00

or the Middle East.

1:00:03

Well, you mentioned, you know,

1:00:05

early in the conversation that you

1:00:08

talked to Retire General, Barry McCaffrey, and

1:00:10

that he said, you know, he thought his value was

1:00:13

really gonna be when it makes, when the book

1:00:15

makes it into sort of PME

1:00:17

institutions, Army War College and what have you. I

1:00:19

suspect that very shortly

1:00:21

it will be in libraries that, you know, at

1:00:24

sort of all levels of US military education

1:00:26

from West Point and the other service academies,

1:00:29

all the way up to the senior services colleges,

1:00:31

senior service colleges.

1:00:34

I want to, you know, I have to say, I've

1:00:36

got a list of about nine more questions at least.

1:00:39

And every time I ask you one, I've got two more. I

1:00:41

think we are gonna wrap it up there. I'll say, you know,

1:00:43

it is a pleasure to, anytime

1:00:46

I get to talk to somebody who has the time

1:00:49

to really think deeply about

1:00:51

such a complex issue and listeners will

1:00:53

hear it, you know, as they listen to you, that you've

1:00:56

spent a lot of time looking at this from, you

1:00:58

know, the many relevant angles and

1:01:01

perspectives. And if there's

1:01:03

not, you know, I can't think of

1:01:04

a better endorsement for the

1:01:07

ASB-3 program and the fact that the Army, you know,

1:01:09

this is why the Army sends officers

1:01:12

to go get PhDs so that they can improve

1:01:14

our institutional thinking about complex challenges.

1:01:16

So with that, I want to thank

1:01:18

you again, Paul, for making some time

1:01:21

and chatting with me, you know, recommend

1:01:23

the book to any listeners that

1:01:25

are interested in it.

1:01:27

Thanks so much, John. I really appreciate the opportunity

1:01:29

to explain to the Army the return on investment

1:01:32

for the Advanced Strategic Planning Policy

1:01:34

and Program. And I'll just end with this briefly.

1:01:37

Before I left the Pentagon, I met with the lead strategist

1:01:40

of the Army, Major General Gerke, and he said,

1:01:42

hey Paul, you gotta,

1:01:44

you know, take out your identification card every

1:01:46

once in a while at Cornell when you're sitting underneath the

1:01:48

apple tree thinking about these lofty

1:01:51

concepts and remember the

1:01:53

institution you're part of and why we're there. So

1:01:55

this is an opportunity to explain to

1:01:57

leaders that the investment, not just for me, but.

1:01:59

my other peers in the Army and those that

1:02:02

will come after us, it's worthwhile

1:02:04

to equip us with the toolset to

1:02:06

make an impact and conflict going forward to

1:02:08

the betterment of our democracy and global

1:02:11

security. Absolutely. Thanks,

1:02:13

Paul. Thanks.

1:02:24

Hey, thank you so much for listening to the MWI

1:02:27

podcast. One last thing, if you aren't

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yet subscribed to the podcast, you can find it wherever

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1:02:38

again.