Drones and force projection...

 A three-year-old meme on Facebook shows how force projection has changed in the last few  decades:

 

 

Sucks to be him.

 

But it points out how drones are changing warfare, especially force projection. The United States (and to a lesser degree Great Britain and other allies) have used aircraft carriers to project power far over our shores to secure the sea lanes since the mid-20^th century. This method cost a fortune (the new Ford Class carrier is 13 billion for the ship alone), complicated, requires other ships to form carrier fleets, and is becoming more problematic as other weapons are coming on to challenge these capital vessels. An open discussion these days, is the carrier today at the stage of the battleship a century ago? For my post, another discussion for another day.

 

Now I found this article very interesting, looking at the issue on how drones, and particularly drone sales, are shaping alliances and diplomacy.  

 

The Dawn of Drone Diplomacy

 

Unmanned Vehicles Are Upending the Arms Trade—and the Balance of Power

By Erik Lin-Greenberg December 20, 2022

 

Iranian-built drones now routinely puncture the skies over Kyiv. Elsewhere in Ukraine, Turkish- and American-manufactured drones help Ukrainian forces target Russian troops. These operations demonstrate the growing role of remote-controlled weapons in battle. The conflict also showcases how drone exports have increasingly become an instrument of diplomacy.

 

With drone use on the rise, states have capitalized on drone exports to increase their global clout. To be sure, this is part of an established trend: governments have long leveraged arms exports as a diplomatic tool. Beyond filling state coffers and defraying research and development costs, arms sales help states advance their foreign policy agendas. Selling or donating weapons to like-minded partners can be used to extract concessions, exert influence, counter rivals, and strengthen military ties. A new era of arms trade is emerging, in which new exporters such as Iran and Turkey are displacing traditional weapons suppliers and are using drone exports to extend influence beyond their borders. These exports threaten Washington’s influence and the security of its partners. To keep ahead, U.S. policymakers should help allies build drone programs while developing approaches to counter the threat of rival drones…

 

Drone diplomacy is on the rise because it meets a growing demand. International leaders are increasingly convinced that their defense and foreign policy ambitions hinge on possessing remote-controlled weapons. Drones have changed the character of modern conflict by allowing states to project power while minimizing risk to friendly personnel…

 

Recent combat operations in the Ukraine are the best advertising for this relatively new industry, showing smaller nations how to engage at distance with little cost…

 

While the US initially dominated the market, it became a signer of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR, limiting sales of US drones, even to allies. China and Israel, not signers of the MTCR, quickly filled the void…

 

Drone sales help the supplier’s diplomacy by deepening ties with the client government, by enabling the buyer nation to challenge adversaries for low cost, and allowing seller counties to use drone sales to leverage buyer nations for other items…  

 

…By deepening ties with client states, countering rivals, and extracting quid pro quo concessions, drone diplomacy threatens regional stability and challenges the influence of established arms exporters such as the United States. Indeed, drone suppliers such as Iran routinely arm states such as Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela that were otherwise unable to acquire drones because of sanctions and other political roadblocks. Newly acquired drones allow these states to reignite frozen conflicts, violate human rights, and undercut internationally led conflict-resolution efforts. In recent years, activists and lawmakers criticized Turkey’s sale of TB2 drones to Ethiopia for enabling strikes that reportedly killed dozens of civilians...

 

And the Biden administration wants to loosen sanctions on Iran. Wait, did I say that? Yes, allowing them to continue to expand their sales to disabling regimes all over the world.

 

I won’t go as far as saying the carrier is at the end of its life, but it’s sailing into the sunset. As of right now, we use massive carrier task forces to project power. But a 2^nd rate nation can field a few dozen drones and strike or recon a few dozen miles over the battlefield. When will they be able to develop/buy/deploy a few submarines that can launch single use drones and attack one-hundred miles deep into a country. When will that increase to five-hundred? One-thousand? And for the cost of a ten-thousand-dollar drone, eventually with artificial intelligence, not a 35-million-dollar airplane with a pilot. 

 

Better war through technology. We better be engaged now; our adversaries are already moving to fill the market. And a piece of paper like the Missile Technology Control Regime will be as effective at stopping future war as the 1922 Washington Naval Conference did in stopping World War II. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drones and smuggling into prison. What to do?

From the "I never saw this one coming" file, prisons are having to deal with prisoners getting contraband into the prison. And they are limited to what they can do, which is understandable. Shotguns? Besides the FAA saying we can't shoot at them, I'll bet the guards have their weapons loaded with buckshot, more useful for large slower moving target. If anything, they would need bird shot to get the drones! :) And the FCC will have a hit if they try to interferer with the communication system.

Over the Wire: Prison Guards Handcuffed in Battle With Drones

Like firefighters and those who just want to relax in the privacy of their own backyards, U.S. prisons have a drone problem.

Guards at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, S.C., recently found 17 illegal cellphones in one inmate’s cell — all of them (according to a report in the New York Times) smuggled in using drones.

In Mansfield, Ohio, a drone delivery of tobacco and drugs caused a near riot in a prison yard as inmates fought over the payload. In Cumberland, Md., officers had better luck, arresting two men in a car outside the Maryland state prison there. In the car were tobacco, pornography, and drugs — and a drone.

Similar reports have come in from Oklahoma and Georgia, as well as places outside the U.S., including Canada and Russia.

Breaking into jail

The point is that these unmanned aircraft systems are clearly capable of delivering contraband over prison walls. Furthermore, it’s hard to spot them, much less find out who is controlling them.

Worse, when it comes to policing the problem at federal prisons, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BoP) is severely handcuffed. Despite having tons of shotgun-armed guards at its prisons, the bureau can’t simply shoot down any drone that happens to appear near a prison; the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t allow it.

Guards can’t blast drones with radio waves to interfere with the control signals from their operators either: Intentional interference of that sort is illegal, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

All of which is why the BoP has issued an RFI (request for information) looking for a solution.

The RFI — a preliminary step before the agency actually hires someone to implement a solution — is soliciting ideas that will help the BoP detect and neutralize drones trying either to conduct surveillance of prisons and the areas around them or to deliver contraband (such as weapons, drugs, or pornography).

(While the BoP has jurisdiction over federal prisons only, the solutions it finds should also be available eventually to state and local facilities.)

Unfortunately for the BoP, other federal government agencies aren’t being particularly helpful. The FAA would not discuss the issue, except to say that if anyone were to drop something into a prison, that person would be guilty of violating the law. The Department of Justice would not discuss the issue of drones on the record, except to say that Yahoo Tech should contact the FAA. The FCC did not respond to requests for comments.
Complicating matters, the BoP’s RFI seems to be attracting little interest. So far, only one question has been posted regarding the issue, and that was to find out whether the BoP will fund research. (It won’t.)

Detection and registration

Still, the agency does have some options. The law does not prohibit the deployment of sensors at prisons to alert guards that a drone is approaching. Nor does it prohibit sensors that would detect a drone launch at its source. This could allow law enforcement to get to the site of the drone launch and arrest those involved.

And, it should be stated, sending a drone into a prison does violate a long list of federal laws and, if it’s a state prison, state laws as well...

Good read all in all. I spent a year as a jail supervisor and we never had this issue to deal with because we did not have an outside area for the inmates. The only times they saw outside was when they entered and left the facility. Not much of an issue for the county prison but defiantly can be something for Texas Department of Corrections. Then again they can ask the locals for a little help, "Hey, you keep what you kill, no limit, we'll lose you in the pursuit..." :<)

Drones and other issues....

I've posted on drone use before, how they are becoming the small police department's helicopter unit or even how one got shot at by hunters in South Carolina, but I gotta say I didn't see this one coming.

Rise of the drones has police and regulators scrambling to catch up

Wardens at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopsville, South Carolina, were taken aback a few weeks ago when they conducted a routine sweep of the prison grounds. They discovered quantities of marijuana, cigarettes and cellphones scattered among the bushes in the no man’s land that surrounds the maximum-security institution.

The guards were even more astonished to find in the middle of the stash of contraband a small, lightweight object, with propellers attached. Closer inspection revealed the item to be an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), better known as a drone, whose operators had evidently made an audacious attempt to breach the prison walls that had come unstuck when it crash-landed.

Another day, another drone controversy. The failed smuggling attempt in Bishopsville, disclosed this week, is just one among an ever-intensifying rash of stories relating to the remote-controlled devices as they make their onward march into American civilian life...

...DJI Phantoms of the sort flown over the George Washington bridge sell on Amazon for under $500, and if you add to it a high-definition video camera it still comes in at just $1,300.

“Interest is exploding because you can put eight hundred dollars on a credit card and walk out of the store with a DJI Phantom, charge a battery and fly. The good news is that more and more people are getting involved. The bad news is that they include some who misuse the equipment or just don’t know any better,” said Steve Cohen, a drone enthusiast who organises the New York city drone user group.

A powerful driver of the new fad for flying drones is the high-definition video camera that can be attached to the UAVs. Many of the new enthusiasts pouring into the hobby are not coming for the thrills and challenges of aviation, but for the photography. The technology has opened up new vistas, such as the dramatic footage captured on 4 July by drones flying through Independence Day firework displays...

I remember an article last year on the how the National Park Service was moving to ban drone use over their sites as this was causing a possible hazard. Hate to say it guys but technology will not be stopped. If you can't stop drones in a confined secure area like a prison, what makes you think you stop it in the over 1900 square miles of Grand Canyon National Park.