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Loitering Munitions Preview The Autonomous Future of Warfare - Brookings
Loitering Munitions Preview The Autonomous Future of Warfare - Brookings
COMMENTARY
Loitering munitions preview the autonomous future
of warfare
Kelsey Atherton
August 4, 2021
Loitering missiles operate from a simple premise: What if a missile could become more
accurate by slowing down?
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Awkward cousins to armed drones and cruise missiles, loitering munitions were first
developed as a specialized weapon to target anti-aircraft systems in the 1980s and
now exist as an alternative to everything from airstrikes to mortar rounds or grenade
tosses. Loitering munitions can be as small as a model airplane or longer than a
surfboard. Typically fixed-wing and powered by pusher propellers, they can resemble
everything from matchsticks with wings to Klingon Birds of Prey. Categorically,
loitering munitions are autonomous missiles that can stay airborne for some time,
identify a target, and then attack. A munition’s loiter—or the amount of time between
launch and detonation—is a function of the missile’s sensors and the kinds of targets
these weapons are wielded against.
For decades, loitering missiles have been on the forefront of autonomous lethality.
Historically, loitering munitions were used to target things like radars but are
increasingly being used to attack humans. And as they make this transition in targeting
capability, loitering munitions represent a bridge between today’s precision-guided
weapons that rely on greater levels of human control and our future of autonomous
weapons with increasingly little human intervention.
The loitering munition was inspired in part by “Wild Weasel” flights, in which a lead
aircraft would flash its radar to the SAM battery, letting its compatriots know how to
target it, and then maneuver in a way that was hard for the missiles to hit. Loitering
munitions take a similar approach, performing both the search and the destroy roles of
a squadron of aircraft flying a Wild Weasel mission. By removing the pilot from the
anti-missile aircraft, the designers of loitering munitions reduced the risk of bodily
harm in seeking out these weapons. By expanding the flight time, the loitering
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munition could look for both known and unknown missile installations. On their own,
loitering munitions would clear an area of anti-air threats. Combined with following
aircraft, the loitering munition allowed jet fighters to retain their utility, without needing
to be stealth from launch.
year over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, loitering munitions were used by
both sides, with Azerbaijan enjoying special success against Armenia’s older model
anti-air defenses. Loitering munitions were integrated into the greater strategy of the
war, their success against anti-air defenses making all other aircraft more effective in
combat. For countries that cannot afford stealth aircraft, the ability to take out anti-air
missile batteries with expendable radar-seeking drones is powerful and likely more
affordable. By using loitering munitions to first remove anti-air defenses, Azerbaijan
was able to then attack other heavy equipment, like tanks, with relative impunity,
showcasing how a modest technological advantage can turn into a major strategic
benefit.
What makes loitering munitions most useful is the ability to find targets without
needing direct human supervision. When those targets are weapons platforms,
maintained but not directly crewed by people, a drone turning into a missile and
crashing into a target becomes a story of military hardware destroying military
hardware. When a flying robot instead uses these tools to hunt people, it becomes a
profound question of responsibility and the laws of war.
In March of last year, a drone—or what may have been a loitering munition—was used
in this way against a human target for what might have been the first time. That
month, a convoy of the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar was attacked by drones
that may have included a Kargu-2 autonomous quadcopter and/or loitering munitions,
causing significant casualties. Whether or not a robot made the call to actually kill
people is hard to definitively say, but the report confirmed the worst fears of human-
rights campaigners. “The technology that enables weapons systems to operate
without meaningful human control and to target people is here now and is being used
without regulation,” the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots observed.
Regardless of whether the attack in Libya was in fact the first instance of a drone
autonomously engaging and killing a human being, the technical development and
proliferation of loitering munitions makes questions about when humans are in the loop
regarding targeting decisions far more immediate. Loitering munitions, together with
armed and autonomous drones, pose this question in a more direct way than any
weapon outside of land- or naval-mines. Land mines that trigger when they detect a
person nearby, are banned by the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention , in part
because they cannot distinguish between civilians and legal military combatants, and
in part because they can persist for decades after use. While loitering munitions can
persist in the sky only as long as their limited flight time, the matter of target
discrimination is crucial, especially as these machines are designed for targets other
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The certainty of error in computer systems has been the subject of extensive work in
the arms control community. One recent report from the United Nations Institute for
Disarmament Research found that in addition to error from data or coding, spoofing
or other adversarial measures could misdirect an autonomous system. By feeding
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Among the solutions put forth in the report are two worth highlighting. The first is “full
or partial moratoriums or limits on use”—essentially a ban on the technology. Given
the existing and growing availability of loitering munitions in existing arsenals of
multiple nations, it is likely a steep task, though there may be a path in constraining
loitering munitions to their earlier, anti-anti-air work. The second proposal is for direct
human control, placing autonomous weapons under human supervision that allows a
supervising soldier to affirmatively approve a target or deny it in action. This is as
much a technical as a tactical hurdle, and it undermines the military utility of these
weapons flying through GPS- or communication-denied environments, the exact type
of battlefield where such a weapon would be most useful.
More than any other weapon, with the possible exception of swarming drones,
autonomy is vital to how loitering munitions work. Any international or regulatory
regime that governs autonomy will profoundly change what types of loitering weapons
can be designed in the future.
Self-guided missiles expand the initial promise of loitering munitions and make air-
delivered precision explosions more accessible to a range of military formations. Some
loitering munitions, like the modern Harop, can fly for up to six hours, while others, like
the Switchblade used by U.S. soldiers and Marines, can fly for about 15 minutes.
Mortars, the previous gold standard for hurling an explosive further than a grenade,
can be complemented by Switchblades, allowing video guidance on the attack before
detonation. Grenades can be slung beneath quadcopters with cameras, turning
difficult throws into easy flights that can attack forces behind cover. Whereas guided
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missiles were once the domain of fighter pilots or ship-borne weaponry, advances in
loitering munitions mean trusting that kind of power to lower ranking officers and units,
and dispersing the ability to hurl self-guided explosions across future battlefields.
Loitering munitions are a way for advanced militaries to maintain an edge against
modern anti-air defenses and to win fights against otherwise entrenched forces.
Because autonomous target selection is crucial to how some loitering munitions work,
the weapons are susceptible to error in ways distinct from human-operated weapons,
which should be planned for in the future. Because a wide range of nations use and
export loitering munitions, preparing for wars with them on both sides is an
increasingly common part of future war planning.
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