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INTRO SECTION

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REUTERS

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In Ukraine, the misery of a major conflict has returned to Europe.

Russia’s invasion of its neighbour has killed tens of thousands of people - and shocked the world.

Families and civilians have been caught up in the bloodshed.

With its trenches, tanks, and artillery it's the kind of fighting Europe thought it had left behind in the 20th Century.

Al Jazeera

PTC:

But this war has also been a battleground for some very modern technology. It's the world's first full-scale DRONE war."

Al Jazeera

This film is about how drones are changing the way we fight today.

But it's also about tomorrow - and the coming age of AI, autonomous weapons and the complicated ethical questions we may all have to face.

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10:03:49

HISTORY LESSON

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Reuters

UPSOT: “For the first time, the US army tested a new radio target plane fitted with remote controls…”

Whether you call them UAVs, RPVs, or drones - they're older than you think.

Ulrike Franke: "I have this great quote, published in the New York Times in 1946, that says, drones are not new. And this is from 1946.”

Al Jazeera

Aston:

Dr Ulrike Franke, European Council on Foreign Relations

Ulrike Franke is a senior policy fellow at the European Council of Relations - and an expert on how technologies affect warfare.

Ulrike Franke: “But I usually say that kind of modern drones, that the things we're looking at at the moment really came about at the turn of the millennium, which basically has to do with the fact that this is the moment where a lot of technologies developed.”

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2nd and 3rd shot Pond 5

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It was the era of America's so-called 'War on Terror'.

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Pond5 - paid for

From the safety of US airbases, operators piloted armed Predators and Reapers over Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

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APTN

This wasn't just death from above. This was death from the other side of the world.

The remote, technological might of the most powerful military on the planet versus fighters in dusty cars and dusty towns

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REUTERS

Date Aston: November, 2013

Aston: Mohammad Al-Qawli

Brother killed in Drone strike in Yemen

- and the civilians caught in the wrong places at the wrong times.

SOUNDBITE: "Now, we see the drones as horror and murder tools. Every time we hear them buzzing, the children run for shelter, fearing an air strike."

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But two recent wars show how drones can be used by more evenly matched enemies.

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Reuters

In September 2020, Azerbaijani troops and tanks

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APTN -

On screen credit: Azerbaijan Defence Ministry

poured across the line of contact into Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh.

A frozen conflict reignited.

Al Jazeera

Aston: Frank Ledwidge Former Military

Intelligence Officer

Frank Ledwidge: "During Nagorno Karabakh, particularly the Azeris, leveraged Turkish, and their own technology, to give the Armenians, let's put it this way, a very hard time."

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APTN

Azerbaijan used drones bought from Turkey and Israel to destroy seemingly defenceless Armenian troops and armour on the ground. And then broadcast the videos to the world.

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First shot Reuters

Interview: Al jazeera

Ulrike Franke: What drones basically give you is a camera team that follow your every move. If you do a drone operation, you always film everything you do, take pictures and all of this. And of course this material can then be used for information warfare, for propaganda purposes.

Al Jazeera

Frank Ledwidge: "But I wouldn't want to overplay the role of drones in that war. It's very difficult to overplay, however, the role of drones in Ukraine."

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UKRAINE SECTION: USES

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YouTube: Tactical Group ADAM

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Frank Ledwidge:"Ukraine has shown us where drone warfare is going"

In such high attrition combat, commercial quadcopters are cheap and plentiful enough to be an almost disposable frontline tool.

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Ukrainian armed forces via Reddit

The Ukrainians are using these and more advanced drones for tasks lethal, and otherwise.

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Twitter: Ukrainian military

The drone filming this is guiding a surrendering Russian to waiting Ukrainian troops.

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Here a drone is retrieving a Russian military radio. Now Ukrainians can eavesdrop on their enemy’s plans.

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Twitter: Ukrainian military

This is two drones actually fighting each other - machine against machine in a battle for the skies.

Al Jazeera

Ulrike Franke: “In Ukraine, they really are coming up with with novel ways of how to how to use drones, using them to attack ships.”

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Ukrainian Naval forces

The October strike on Russia’s Black Sea fleet using specially designed military sea drones is perhaps the most audacious use of drones in the war so far.

Al Jazeera

Ulrike Franke: But the really revolutionary thing about drones, I would argue, is the surveillance and reconnaissance they provide, because all of a sudden, you get really cheaply, really easily 24/7 surveillance in the sky, and at quite low hierarchical levels in an armed force.”

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Reuters

On screen credit: State Border Guard Service of Ukraine

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This has transformed the use of artillery.

Live drone pictures show gun crews where to fire. And misses can be corrected so the next strike hits.

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RUSSIAN RESPONSE - SHAHEED

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Reuters

Certainly Ukraine’s drone use has been the more innovative.

But Russia is waging drone warfare too. And for many of the same tasks: surveillance, artillery correction, and attack.

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Stills via AFP via Getty

August 2022 - a new menace appears in Ukraine’s skies.

These distinctive exploding drones are much cheaper than missiles - and waves of them can overwhelm a

city’s air defences.

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Reuters

On screen credit: State Emergency Service of Ukraine

Desperate police try to shoot them down as they come in.

Russia launches them - but actually they’re the Iranian Shahed 136, and its smaller version the 131.

Al Jazeera

PTC: We’ve been taken through some pretty tight security to get here. This is a building run by Ukraine’s military intelligence. They want to show us these. The Iranian drones that have been hitting Ukraine’s cities.

Al Jazeera

I’m getting rare access to recovered examples. Ukraine’s military intelligence has been studying them carefully.

Al Jazeera

RORY “So these are the Shaheds right?

SOLDIER “This is the 136 - this is the 131”

“Yes this drone hits us the most, and does the most damage to us. Russia uses this more because the warhead is 50kg.”

Al Jazeera

And it’s what’s inside these drones that’s particularly surprising. The guts are almost entirely commercial electronics from around the world.

Al Jazeera

SOLDIER: This is the CRP antenna, made in Canada by a company called Talisman.

RORY: This is Canadian? Yes.

RORY: And that’s interesting because despite being under sanctions, Iran is still able to get hold of components like this.

Al Jazeera

According to the intelligence officer the only Iranian thing they discovered inside was the engine.

Al Jazeera

RORY: what have you found from these drones that will help you combat future attacks?

SOLDIER: In these drones we found a lot of parts from abroad, and all these parts we provided to our partners abroad to make it impossible for them to supply these

parts to Iran. Also we found the ‘controlled radiation pattern antenna” and found out on which frequencies it works and we can interfere with it.

Al Jazeera

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Indeed, whether by jamming or shooting them down Ukraine’s success rate against the Shaheds is now 90, sometimes 100 percent. In short, they’ve adapted.

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WB GROUP

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APTN

For the firms leading this 21st century arms race, there is no better laboratory for their technology than war.

These Ukrainian troops are using FlyEye - made by the Polish defence firm WB Group.

It’s largely automated, and can fly for 6 hours - watching everything going on below.

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Ukraine Main Directorate of Military Intelligence

The company also makes Warmate - a swarmable, loitering munition believed to have been used in this attack on a Russian base.

Al Jazeera

Neither platform is new. But in WB Group’s Warsaw showroom its executives tell me what they’re learning from the war next door is vital.

Al Jazeera

ASTON:

David Bielecki, Flytronic

WB Group

David: We get the feedback every day from Ukrainians. And we are updating using this feedback. We update the system day by day. So every week the system is better.”

Al Jazeera

This symbiotic information loop is now accelerating the development of drones.

Al Jazeera

Aston: Remigiusz Wilk Director of Communications, WB Group

Remi: “We just in our own eyes, see the revolution, see the when the drones are the best soldier’s helper are the best friend of the soldiers. And it already happens.

Rory: “Right now?”

Remi: “Right now. Especially in Ukraine, when they use the very cheap drones to to locate some enemies on the battlefield.”

Al Jazeera

But where’s this revolution going?

Al Jazeera

Rory: What do you think the future holds? What will

drones, UAVs be doing in five or 10 years time that they're not doing now?

David: The battlefield is going to become much more automated.

Rory: And artificial intelligence will be an important part of that.

David: Artificial intelligence, machine learning, will take control over UAVs. In the future, it will become automatic, probably in the near future. UAV will fly over target find the target. The site is a target, probably maybe in the future will attack.

Al Jazeera

We’re now entering ethically treacherous territory. Lethal machines potentially making their own decisions about WHETHER to kill.

Remigiusz Wilk is sure that’s step too far.

Al Jazeera

Remi: War is the struggle between humans, not between the machines. We can use the machines as the tools of course, and as some our little helpers, but never ever the machines will make a decision about life and death. Always the human being has to push the button.”

But David isn’t so convinced.

Rory: Do you think machines, do you think AI should be trusted to make those decisions?

David: Today, not. But we will see in the future? I don't know. I think the world goes in this direction.”

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DRONE QUESTIONS SECTION

Al Jazeera

It’s a taste of the moral question being asked right now in those countries leading the drone and artificial intelligence revolutions. And it’s one we’ll come back to. First, though…

Al Jazeera

Rory PTC: It’s easy to get carried away with all this. But drones can’t win wars by themselves. They didn’t, for example, lead to victory for the United States and its allies in Afghanistan. And for all the surveillance, precision and stealth that drones provide, the militaries that use them can still make awful mistakes.”

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As the last Americans pulled out of Kabul, and the Taliban closed in, tragedy piled on top of tragedy.. Three days after a devastating suicide attack at Kabul airport,

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On screen credit:

U.S. Department of Defense

the US military fired missiles from a drone at what it said was an Islamic State fighter with a car full of explosives. But it wasn’t. It was a civilian and his family.

10 people died. 7 of them - children.

Al Jazeera

Aston: Frank Ledwidge, Author: Aerial Warfare, The Battle for the Skies

Frank: If that intelligence system doesn't work properly, as it didn't in that case, and if the kill chain, as it's called, is polluted by poor information, then it doesn't matter what delivery system you have, you're going to get events like that.

Rory: Why is it do you think that all of the technological superiority that the West had in Afghanistan [...] Why did that technological superiority not translate to an ultimate victory?

Frank: Because we had no strategic or political objective that anyone could identify. And we didn't appreciate or realise that our enemies wanted to win this more than we did. And were better equipped to do so in that they knew the ground, they knew the people, and they hated us.

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It’s important to hold on to these points as the artificial intelligence dawn breaks:

More than a battle of technologies, war is a battle of wills. A low-tech force can still defeat a better equipped and resourced enemy, if it wants it more.

And any hi-tech weapon, AI included, is only as safe and precise as the information that feeds it.

This is something campaigners against lethal AI are well aware of.

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SLAUGHTERBOTS AND STOP KILLER ROBOTS

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Slaughterbots Film, from Future of Life Institute

Aston:

UPSOT: “SLAUGHTERBOTS” FILM

“Your kids probably have one of these, right? Not quite.”

This is ‘Slaughterbots’.

Slaughterbots/Fut ure of Life Institute

An arms-control advocacy film made in 2017.

UPSOT: Hell of a pilot? No. That skill is all AI. It’s flying itself. It’s processor can react 100 times faster than a human.

Inside here is 3 grammes of shaped explosive. This is how it works” Bzzzzzzzz BANG!

It imagines a near future reality where, as the slick tech-entrepreneur onstage puts it…

UPSOT: “Let’s watch the weapons make the decisions”

But of course, in this fiction, letting weapons make decisions goes horribly wrong.

Sinister men release assassin drone swarms to kill political opponents and student activists.

It’s a dystopian warning about a possible tomorrow.

Al jazeera

Its imagined future is starting to look disconcertingly similar to the technology available in our real-life present day.

Rory: Okay, Elizabeth, I'm going to show you this video and I just want you to give me your response, basically”

Elizabeth Minor is an arms-control campaigner for the group Stop Killer Robots. And I’m showing her the promo for a new Israeli military drone.

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Aston: Elbit Systems

Lanius corporate video via YouTube:

https://www.youtu be.com/watch?v= G7yIzY1BxuI

“We are getting hits. Send the Lanius!”

Elbit Systems presents Lanius. Search and attack in one. New innovative autonomous lethal solution [...] The Lanius conducts GPS navigation, flight, scanning, mapping, and enemy detection and lethality in a complex urban environment.”

Lanius and the Slaughterbots are jarringly similar. Lanius isn’t yet making its own decisions to kill - a person is.

But this is a design choice, not a technological inability.

Aston: Elizabeth Minor, Article 36

Elizabeth: This video shows really, I suppose the direction of travel that we're seeing in terms of developments in increasing autonomy in weapons systems.

One major concern that that we have is that with autonomous weapons, that there's an erosion of human control over the use of force, and also, the increasing automation of decisions to kill - to take a human life.

Rory: How do you stop killer robots? What is the process?

Elizabeth: We want to see a treaty negotiated by states at an international level, to prohibit certain autonomous weapon systems. So, those that automatically target people, and also systems that can't be meaningfully controlled.

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TOM SIMPSON SECTION

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Reuters

Japan, 1945. A new and terrible era of destruction.

As world war 2 drew to a close, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The horror was so immense - they’ve never been used in war again.

Nations have pledged together to keep them in check.

It’s a model campaigners want to repeat for autonomous weapons - only this time catching a destructive new technology BEFORE it proliferates.

Al Jazeera

Aston: Tom Simpson, Assistant Professor of Philosphy, Oxford University

Tom Simpson:

Many of the people involved in the nuclear programme, look back on that and thought, rather than opening Pandora's box, we should just, we should just have kept it shut. And the advocates of a ban so called on autonomous weapons, their claim is, and it's a very plausible one, which needs to be taken seriously, we're at the same moment in history with these systems, we need to keep the box closed, you can't put them back in.”

Tom Simpson is an Oxford University philosopher who draws from his background in the British Marines to explore the moral complexities of force.

Tom Simpson:

We have a fear of being predated on. And I think what autonomous weapons raise that I think they raise that

fear in a new way, that we would actually be creating kind of a new species that will predate on humans.”

So he can understand the fear, and he can see the arguments for constraining the technology. But does Tom believe them himself?

Tom Simpson:

So as a philosopher, I don't know how powerful these systems are going to be. They may be underwhelming, they may also be extremely powerful. And if there's a situation where there's an adversary nation, which possesses these systems, and Britain has decided not to do so. I would view that as a dereliction of responsibility, I'd view the government that made that decision as having failed in its duty to protect the British people.”

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JACK SHANAHAN SECTION

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This is the conundrum that faces any government weighing the risks of developing military AI and autonomous weapons.

Few people are more aware of this than Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan. As director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Centre it was Jack’s job to make sure the US military was taking AI seriously. Now retired, he can speak more freely.

Al jazeera

ASTON:

Jack Shanahan, Former Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Centre at the Pentagon

Rory Is there anything about the coming age of AI autonomous weapons that keeps you up at night?”

JACK: The idea of weapons being released off of autonomous systems that do not have a human in the decision making process anywhere.

No commander I have ever known, would be satisfied with an autonomous weapon system that was making life and death decisions without a human involved somewhere.”

What I'm concerned about is does every country do the same thing? If not, then we're in an AI race to the bottom.

Rory There are plenty of people who are scared of this killer robot future and they want to put a brake on the development of AI do you sympathise at all with them?

Jack: I think what we're not going to see immediately is anybody to say we just flat out ban the systems. We don't know enough about them. There's not enough support to be able to ban them. And I think we all are trying to understand what these capabilities will do over the next decade.

Rory “Is the US talking to China talking to Russia about this?”

Jack: Yeah. At least on an unofficial level, you call track to dialogues. These are ongoing conversations that we have.

Rory Is the coming age of AI and drones going to make the weapon systems that we've come to take for granted warships, jet planes, tanks, things like that. Is it gonna make those obsolete?”

Jack: There's some people say, we just need to give up on all these legacy systems and jump into this miracle future of AI. It's not going to happen one politically, it will never happen, because you have people lobbying for these systems, but it's also unrealistic to think these capabilities will develop that quickly on the AI side.

Rory: What is the US military using AI for right now?

Jack: Mostly things like image recognition. So object detection, classification, and tracking.

What machines do is get through massive amounts of information almost instantly, and then be able to say to say an analyst, look here.

So it's really - I don't want to say they’re mundane uses of AI. But they're they're definitely not headline grabbing uses of AI yet.

I'll tell you what I never worked on was killer robots. There were no lethal autonomous weapon systems because the technology was still new. And we had so many different ways we could use AI to help improve operations everywhere else in the department, that that was not at the top of our list of things.

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DRONESHIELD

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Droneshield video

Someone will be prioritising killer robots, though.

So the arms race to counter swarms is well underway.

Al Jazeera

The US company Drone Shield hopes its drone guns will add a layer to the defences.

They can force down commercial drones being used to take on civilian or military targets.

Al Jazeera

Aston:

Tom Branstetter DroneShield

Tom: It is essentially a point and shoot device.

Rory: How does this actually take down a drone?

“It interferes with the communication link, the video end as well as the navigation”

“Much like you and I are having a conversation here we can hear each other speak. If someone were to introduce a concert speaker into the equation, we can hear ourselves communicate, this device is acting as a concert speaker to interrupt the communication.”

Aston:

Matt McCrann CEO, Droneshield

The way CEO Matt McGrann tells it, police and militaries are having to play catch-up.

Rory:What are the threats coming down the line that you can see you having to respond to?”

Matt:We're seeing that start now. So more autonomous operations. You everyone talks about drones swarms, doesn't have to be like you see in Hollywood, 50 drones flying across, but 10 could provide a challenge for certain systems today. What's most worrisome is that the technology for a large scale attack exists today. The fact that we haven't seen it yet is fortunate.

Rory: Sounds like you don't think the threat has been taken seriously enough yet.

Matt: Not across, not across all domains.

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END

Al Jazeera

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Ukraine shows us that drones are a versatile and economical weapon in the modern military arsenal. They’re here to stay.

And the armed forces of developed nations will be increasingly reliant on machine learning.

But whether they allow lethal systems to make their own kill decisions will become a dominant issue as AI develops.

Frank: I wouldn't like to be in a battlefield on a battlefield 10 years. Hence, I think it’ll be a very lethal place.”

Ulrike Franke: swarming is one area that I think is

important. The other area that I think is important is miniaturisation, especially when it comes to armed drones.

Tom Simpson: There’s going to be a great many conflicts I expect in the future which have similar characteristics to the Afghan campaign. And in which reliance on technology will not just not help you win, it may actively help you lose those conflicts.

Frank Ledwidge: I can see a future where countries that are more interested in effect than ethics would entirely or could in almost entirely outsource their combat, to ml to machine learning or AI.

Ulrike Franke: I'm less immediately concerned with the Terminator, and more concerned with AI enabled surveillance in countries such as China and elsewhere.

Tom Simpson: I suspect the Battlefield of 30 years time will probably be pretty similar to the battlefield we have today. And the Ukraine crisis exhibits this as well, that it's entirely recognisable, to a World War Two, Colonel, that Colonel would look at Ukraine, and be able to recognise exactly the dilemmas that were being played out.

Al Jazeera

No one has a crystal ball.

Predictions invariably contain guesswork. But two things are certain: humans will always find reasons to fight.

And humans always look for more efficient ways to kill each other.