The Eyes in The Skies: The History of Drones and Their Importance in the Future of Technology
Drone — Noun
An unmanned aircraft or ship guided by remote control or on-board computers.
Technological advancements are what sets humanity apart from other mammals. The ability for humans to solve problems with tools and machines allows us to specialize in roles other than basic survival ones. This leads to the development of better tools and machines, which allow even more people to specialize. When unhindered by the threat of starvation and war, these people can do incredible things. Though the field of Unmanned Aerial Flight is a relatively new area of study, it has already had a huge effect on the world. From drone strikes to surveillance, the military usage of this technology has been widely reported and just as widely criticized. Just because this technology is capable of committing horrible atrocities, its use for domestic and research uses should not be mitigated as some lawmakers propose. The more we understand about this new technology, the less susceptible we will become to attacks by it on our own soil and the more uses we can find for it. As history has shown, the mitigation of a technology rarely helps a country grow in the long run.
Radio-Controlled (RC) vehicles have been around since the late 1800’s in some form or another. In the beginning, they were used almost exclusively by the military. Being able to remotely control an airplane, boat, or even tank from a safe distance away had the potential to save lives while allowing more bold maneuvers to be taken (Turi, 4). The only issue with this was that these early vehicles were limited to Line of Sight (LoS) piloting. This didn’t matter as much for tanks or boats, which could operate close to their pilot, but severely limited the usefulness of planes, which needed to operate much farther away. This all changed quite recently with the advent of video flying, or First-Person-Video (FPV), and satellite-based communication (Turi, 2). There are literally hundreds of Air Force pilots that commute to from their home every morning and fly their vehicle from the United states. These innovations allow the operators to sit thousands of miles away from their craft and control it through a video feed. The tactical implications of this discovery were incredible. You could now fly a craft, too small to be detected by radar, directly into enemy territory and snap pictures of their base. This was fine. Most people didn’t have moral objections to spying on our enemy, but when somebody at Lockheed Martin figured, “Hey, what if slap a couple of hellfire missiles on this bad boy?” That was precisely when “Drone” became the buzzword we know it to be today.
Military drone strikes are highly publicized, and rightly so. They allow for a previously unprecedented tactical advantage in exchange for a massive privacy invasion for the country being attacked, and well as the loss of civilian life as a result of some strikes. Though these reasons are all valid, the human cost of these operations, if conventional tactics like bombings or artillery strikes were used, would be substantially higher (Saletan, 3). In a story covering President Obama’s recent address to the nation regarding the accidental death of two hostages due to a drone strike, the author makes a powerful claim. “The outrage is understandable. But these two deaths, tragic as they are, don’t change the fundamental truth: For civilians, drones are the safest form of war in modern history.” The statistics back up his claim (Searle, Fielding-Smith, 3). Even using the highest civilian casualty ratio of 15%, conventional warfare techniques like bombing, artillery shelling, and ground operations are roughly 2 to 3 times as dangerous for civilians, with a civilian casualty rate of about 30 to 40 percent (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 3). This cold math does not absolve drones of any wrongdoing. In this day and age, we should be much closer to 0% solutions, but when national security is at risk, we should launch drones before we launch cruise missiles.
The word “Drone” almost always has negative connotations associated with it, but that does not mean they all have laser-guided, puppy-seeking missiles mounted on them. Domestic drone use is a relatively new thing. RC enthusiasts have been around for a long time, but the development of FPV has lead to an explosion of new users, private and commercial alike. For example, one of the major uses industry has had for drones thus far is to check power lines and wind turbines for damage (Brownlee, 1). They allow the observer to be safely on the ground, which reduces accidents while also saving thousands of dollars in helicopter and crane upkeep costs. Farmers use them to monitor their crops without driving their tractors out, saving fuel and increasing productivity in our economy (Storm the Castle, 4). Another great use is their ability to be learning experiences. Building a drone from scratch is no easy feat, and young people who can work hard and complete one will emerge smarter and more experienced from the build. I know this because I am currently building one with a classmate. I have learned more about 3D printing and mechanical loading than I knew before and have begun designing and manufacturing printed circuit boards for the project. These are experiences that, even as a member of my school’s robotics team, I wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere else. The skills I have learned will help me be a more productive member of the workforce and help society advance.
Lastly, UAVs are being used by fire and police departments to gain situational awareness in large fires or to help locate people during search and rescue operations. Dubai’s fire department has been studying the use of quad-copters in fire-rescue scenarios for locating people in danger. There have already been reports of lives saved by UAVs, so to ignore the usefulness of this technology would be a disservice to humanity.
In conclusion, the use of drones purely for military use can lead to avoidable tragedies which kill an unacceptable number of civilians every year, but the alternatives are far worse in terms of human loss. They are on the cutting edge of science and technology and allow for a previously unprecedented level of freedom and agility to complete tasks. From delivering your packages to monitoring your house while you’re on vacation, drones seem to be an inevitable part of our future. If the nation decides to halt development of this enabling technology, we will fall behind countries that allow unfettered research in this subject. In our fast-paced, interconnected world, sometimes it helps to have eyes in the skies.
Works Cited
Brownlee, Noah. “A Birds Eye View.” Medium. N.p., 05 Dec. 2015. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. <https://medium.com/@noahbrownlee1998/a-birds-eye-view-cc08254d1df2#.r95p5mlxf>.
“Covert US Strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia — Our Methodology — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. N.p., 10 Aug. 2011. Web. 11 Jan. 2016. <https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/08/10/pakistan-drone-strikes-the-methodology2/>.
Saletan, William. “Civilian Deaths Would Be Much Higher Without Drones.” Slate.com. Slate, 24 Apr. 2014. Web. 18 Dec. 2015. <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/04/u_s_drone_strikes_civilian_casualties_would_be_much_higher_without_them.html>.
Serle, Jack, and Abigail Fielding-SSmith. “US Drone War: 2014 in Numbers — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. N.p., 07 Jan. 2015. Web. 15 Jan. 2016. <https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/01/07/us-drone-war-2014-in-numbers/>.
“Timeline of Radio Control.” A Timeline of Radio Control. Storm the Castle, n.d. Web. 5 Jan. 2016. <http://www.stormthecastle.com/model-airplanes/timeline-of-radio-control.htm>.
Turi, Jon. “First-person View Drone Racing Is Taking off.” Wired UK. Wired, 19 Jan. 2014. Web. 20 Dec. 2015. <http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2015/12/play/drone-racing-sport-first-person-view>.
Turi, Jon. “Tesla’s Toy Boat: A Drone before Its Time.” Engadget. Engadget, 19 Jan. 14. Web. 10 Jan. 2016. <http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/19/nikola-teslas-remote-control-boat/>.
