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Then there’s Switchblade.
An Army truck convoy tears down a lone desert road, with dramatic, action-movie music blaring in the background. A sniper’s bullet rings out, and one of the trucks skids to a stop amid a cloud of smoke. Soldiers scatter onto the ground to retaliate but are forced to take cover under heavy automatic weapons fire from a turbaned enemy, hiding behind a far-off ridge. There’s only one thing to do. “Launch the bird! Launch the bird!” one soldier yells.
The music swells. Another soldier takes a tube from his backpack and leans it on two retractable legs. A small, thin UAV pops out, sprouts tandem wings, and soars into the air. The soldier monitors the video feed on a hand-held control unit, until his comrades yell, “We can’t hold them. Do it!” He locks Switchblade onto the target, and it rockets into the enemy’s position with an explosion. “Got him!” the soldiers cheer.
That’s the plot of a Switchblade demonstration video produced by AeroVironment for a recent UAV conference in Las Vegas, and it’s as specific as the company will get in describing how the new kamikaze drone works. AeroVironment initiated the project five years ago and in September announced it had received a $4.9 million contract from the Army to start making operational systems for deployment. In the press release, AeroVironment emphasized that the explosive payload is delivered “with precision while minimizing collateral damage” and that soldiers will have the “ability to call off a strike even after the air vehicle is armed.”
The decision to produce Switchblade did not come without self-examination. At the beginning of the program, Conver organized all-hands meetings to discuss the project. Employees were supportive. One executive stood up and recalled how such a weapon might have saved him from severe injuries sustained in battle during his service in Vietnam.
Not all of AeroVironment’s rivals are enthusiastic about arming portable UAVs. Waterloo (Ont.)-based Aeryon Labs makes the Scout, a small, unmanned surveillance helicopter. It recently sold units to the Libyan rebels that overthrew the regime of Muammar Qaddafi. Dave Kroetsch, the company’s founder, says Aeryon has backed away from packing any kind of munitions on its aircraft. “We just think it’s a slippery slope,” he says. “We know there will come a day when someone will strap a grenade to the bottom of it, but we’ll just leave that to them. We want to keep our hands clean.”
Ronald Arkin, a professor and director of the mobile robot lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says the real challenge will be building safeguards into the new weaponized UAVs, to make sure their use complies with the rules of war. When Predator operators make a decision from hundreds or thousands of miles away on whether to fire on a particular target, they consult with a military attorney. Even so, it’s an open question whether drone strikes in countries such as Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. is not engaged in armed conflict, conform to international law. Unless Army lawyers get deployed into battles along with the new systems—an unlikely prospect—weaponized small UAVs will pose an even greater challenge to laws that govern the use of force.
The issue is just one aspect of a larger debate over the future of robots in war. Most drones today have autonomous capabilities and can operate without the input of their human minders. Should they be able to independently deploy force, and take the lives of enemy combatants? How will U.S. forces defend themselves when adversaries deploy their own agile Switchblade-style robots, which can evade traditional air defenses? What happens when the robots attack each other?
Toward the end of his life, Paul MacCready spoke of the perils that humanity poses to the planet, and how humans have grown in “population, technology, and intelligence to a position of terrible power.” And yet, according to Conver, MacCready knew about the Switchblade program in its early stages and was in favor of it.
Tyler MacCready, too, says he’s pleased with the transformations at the company his father founded. “We are saving lives,” he says. “That’s a pretty amazing thing, and way beyond what we used to do. We certainly didn’t save the world with the pterodactyl.”
Stone is a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek.
