When most people think of international summits they think of leaders droning on. Friday’s meeting between Cameron and Sarkozy has taken the practice rather more literally. In using this summit to announce British and French collaboration in building state-of-the-art unmanned fighter drones, we have seen the increasingly prominent role this unfamiliar technology will play in our country’s defence in the future.
The US Air Force now conducts more flight hours with drones than manned strike aircraft. They operate through flight crews on the ground (often thousands of miles away) using sensors and cameras to control the craft.
Like regular manned aircraft, drones come in many shapes and sizes. The Global Hawk has a wingspan of 116ft and a range of 8,255 miles, while others are much smaller. The technology is developing so quickly that in the future drones the size of insects will be developed.
Drones have a number of advantages over conventional strike capabilities. They can operate in dangerous territories, such as chemical attack zones or over hostile territory, without endangering the flight crews’ lives. Without the need for a crew on board they can be smaller, fly for longer, and potentially adopt radar avoiding stealth shapes. We are currently using drones in Afghanistan to carry out surveillance while keeping our armed forces personnel out of harm’s way.
As well as the obvious military uses, they can be used for a variety of equally complex civilian tasks. Delivering humanitarian aid to conflict zones, monitoring and spraying crops and taking geological surveys, can all be made easier because of their ability to fly unmanned for long periods. This is an important technology that I hope will have a major role in military and civilian life in the future.
However, now that drones have become the subject of international discussions, we should act quickly to ensure that their use is controlled through international agreements. The popularity of drones is spreading, and soon they will be a common sight among every major economy’s equipment programme. Crucially, discussions should centre around greater transparency about their use to ensure it complies with existing laws on armed combat.
European cooperation on defence of the sort seen between Britain and France on the drones project is vital for future defence policy – we need to achieve our ambitions in new ways through new partnerships of this sort so we should continue to press the government to form similar relationships and agreements with other countries, where appropriate and possible.
Drones are changing the face of the modern battlefield. They are proving an effective way to project force in a dangerous world, while keeping our brave servicemen and women safe. Like all new military technologies we need to get to grips with the challenges drones bring, and have the right safeguards in place for their use, as it is now clear that they are no longer a flight of fancy.
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Nick Smith is MP for Blaenau Gwent
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