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Published by the Federation of American Scientists Fund No.
48 (August 2002)
Armed, Unmanned, and Dangerous
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently attracted a flurry of attention in Congress and the defense media - both of which are increasingly attuned to potential terrorist threats following September 11. "UAV" refers to any unmanned, non-rocket-propelled aircraft that flies within the atmosphere, that is, anything from a propeller-driven drone to a cruise missile. The major fear of U.S. policymakers is that terrorists or rogue states might use UAVs as a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Iraq, for example, is converting L-29 trainers into WMD-capable UAVs, according to Senate testimony by Vann Van Diepen, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation.
Managing this risk will not be easy. Since February, three meetings of the Senate Government Affairs Committee have stressed that low costs and the wide variety of acquisition paths open to purchasers (most UAV technology has legitimate civilian and commercial applications) make UAVs an attractive weapon for terrorists and hostile states.
One way to deal with the threat is through the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a set of voluntary multilateral export control guidelines designed to prevent the proliferation of missiles that can carry WMD. But the expandable design of most UAVs combined with the commercial availability of much of their technology mean that an MTCR-compliant UAV could easily be upgraded using civilian technologies to make it capable of WMD delivery. What's more, the GAO reported in October 2001(GAO-02-120) that many MTCR items are subject to "unclear jurisdiction" in the U.S. arms export control system, meaning they could easily fall through the system's cracks.
Of course, the MTCR cannot be effective if its participants choose to ignore it. This spring, the Bush administration quietly developed a new UAV export policy that would make it easier to sell UAVs capable of delivering WMD. In accordance with MTCR rules, UAVs that fall under Category I of the MTCR (capable of carrying 500 kilograms at least 300 kilometers) had been subject to an unconditional strong presumption of denial, but under the new policy they will be granted a case-by-case review. Why the President would eschew a growing consensus of alarmed experts is unclear. Could he be responding to pressure from an industry increasingly keen on exporting UAVs for commercial and defense purposes? In any case, it is certain that dealing with the threat of UAV proliferation will require both reform of the MTCR's ability to deal with dual-use technologies like UAVs and a stricter adherence by the U.S. and other members to the spirit as well as the letter of the MTCR. Stingers, Stingers Everywhere
Apparently U.S. officials believe that Islamic militants are capable of achieving what the CIA has failed to do for the past decade: track down Stinger missiles missing since they were distributed to the Afghan Mujahideen and Angolan rebels in the 1980s and bring them back to the United States. One problem - the militants would use them to shoot commercial airliners out of the sky.
In mid-May, U.S. officials issued an intelligence alert to the airlines and law enforcement warning them of the threat posed by Russian made SA-7 surface-to-air missiles and their U.S. equivalents. The warning was circulated after a discarded SA-7 launcher was found outside a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia.
The alert is yet another reminder of how weapons distributed to "friends" today can haunt us for years, if not decades, afterwards. Distributed by Reagan's secret agents with about as much discretion as a drunk host passing out beers at a summer barbeque, the Stingers have since found their way into the arsenals of a truly unsavory lot: the Chechen Rebels, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, the Tamil Tigers (Sri Lanka), and - the kicker - Osama bin Laden, who, according to reports cited in Jane's Intelligence Review, handed out the deadly missiles to his personal bodyguards. Considering that Stingers have a shelf life of up to 22 years, there's no telling whose backyard they might show up in next.
