The u. K. Is reportedly considering using drones in the gulf region the area has already seen multiple drone attacks in recent weeks so how will these Unmanned Aircraft shape future conflicts and are they legal this is insight. Hello and welcome to the program im fully back to the use of drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles has changed the way militaries around the world conducts the operations the United States and others have said they prefer them to sending in jets or using other weapons now with the crisis in the gulf the u. K. Is reportedly considering using drones in the region they would help with surveillance as british warships escort oil tankers store the strait of hormuz which began after iran sees a british flag tanker last month we have a lot to get into with our guests in just a moment but 1st alex got topless has more on why many. Drones were initially designed for surveillance but within a few years theyve gone from being an experimental Assassination Program to an integrated part of the worlds militaries able to survey wide areas they could be guided by pilot sitting half way around the planet hovering over a potential target and destroying it if needed. Drones have been used in all the recent conflicts and ive seen action in the skies above pakistan somalia yemen and libya once the preserve of the United States they used by countries such as israel russia and china and china now operates a factory in the middle east making cheap hunter killer drones but with the ability to kill without interrogation or trial all Legal Process who can police this form of conflict and how because now there is no trial no interrogation and no extraction of information from a suspect only death people can be killed millions suspicion of being members of organizations designated as the enemy and with advances in Artificial Intelligence and increasing autonomy in future drones will human Decision Making one day be a thing of the past. Lets now introduce our panel joining us in amsterdam away as when a member of a humanitarian disarmament projects leader at a dutch think tank packs in nottingham in the u. K. We have. A socio professor at the center of a conflict security and terrorism at Nottingham University and in boston glenn col former Deputy NationalIntelligence Officer for transnational threats at the cia welcome to inside story gentlemen very good to have you with us women in amsterdam if i can start with you how concerned are you about the proliferation of drones as a weapon to counter threats from enemies good afternoon fully and thanks for having me on your show i think all your shows addressing a really urgent problem weve seen now that military drones in all shapes and sizes are becoming more readily available and we see states like china israel and the u. S. Stepping up their game to export drones and weve seen other states. Really looking forward to use them on the battlefield so for example libya weve seen turkish drone is being used by the government of National Court to strike at the armed militias from the Libyan National army under under the command of general store who inist of his position is also using chinese drone which are flown by the United Arab Emirates to strike various targets and only early august weve seen an over large amount of civilian casualties from drone strikes inside of libya so indeed this is a big issue and. We also see when whats the risk groups picking up the base there as well in your view what risk do they pause because theres a notion that drone save more lives and they kill and that they lower the threshold of conflict what do risks you see them posing. So of course military wants to avoid risk for their own personnel on the battlefield which is understandable but because drones can fly around over a certain area for a long period with missiles and bombs they can actually leave but they could also be using covert operations so the risk is that indeed you see in cross Border Operations with all manner of craft which wouldnt have been used with manned or crude crude aircraft like jet fighters so its more easy for states to resort to the use of lethal force and weve got more remote violence which goes so you did lead to escalation of force in in areas like weve seen for example with the drone incident in iran but also recently in the border with israel and in the syria and indeed between israel and hezbollah. In nottingham the u. K. Has weve seen increased its defense contracts in the gulf region in recent years and now theyre considering using drones to help us or oil tankers in the straits homo solving the recent tensions with iran do you think sending these drones to this region will be perceived as less of an escalation than Old Fashioned hardware are they less threatening these drones an Old Fashioned way. Well i dont think we can measure a threat because they are a military capability and what they do put a provider is a capability that is cheaper and more persistent and in most cases far more accurate than other capabilities in the region so if these drones werent available then a larger number of manned aircraft would have to be deployed to provide the intelligence reconnaissance and response capability that these drones can provide in terms of threats as i said its difficult but. A drone that is posing a threat to one side can be shot down without that much of a retaliatory response than if an armed aircraft was a manned aircraft was there a manned aircraft with a of this lean mean a threat to life and nations would feel that they need to respond to that so i would argue that you can you can make the argument both ways and i dont think its a its i think its a futile argument to discuss whether drones in themselves increase or decrease the threat they just one more capability in the mix in terms of force and i glenn kahl in boston based on your experience what is your viewpoint on the use of drones in war theyve been use for a long time now but more increasingly in recent years how have they changed the way war is conducted and are they International Laws that regulate the way drones are used in war. Well thank you for having me like any technology. In particular a revolutionary want rather than incremental one that it changes the equation on the use of force and then raises a lot of legal and policy issues and the focus really has been in the United States and i think everywhere in the International Community on the Legal Framework that is imperfect or behind the technological evolution if there is a technology that is potential or coming into use it will be deployed and the the. That and that is how do you incorporate this in the framework that regulates the use of force and the enforcement of laws and thats been where the United States and all other nations have struggled so far now the professor in birmingham pointed out and both both of our callers that that the use of drones dramatically really lowers. Unwanted error casualties so it but that incident and yes in instances creates involving the United States for instance where drones have killed innocent civilians in places like afghanistan for instance what is the biggest risk the biggest vulnerability if you will when it comes to using these drones in war. Well its true that the innocents continue to die which is a terrible thing its terrible that anyone has to collar someone charges that someone has. But when you look at the number of. Intended casualties burst right. Or in a conflict the trend line actually is is a positive one meaning that there are fewer and fewer innocents who are killed there still are but when we compare even with the 1st gulf war which is now 30 years ago the number of. Errant bombs dropped to compare with the accuracy of a drone its its orders of magnitude more more accurate so the issue then becomes theres a persistent threats because you can have a drone flying for days at a time you can deploy drones regressively the u. S. Military underwater that just sit there waiting to pop up when wanted so thats a useful technology but it does raise the issues of how do you regulate the use of force in ways that never been to counter encountered before thats really the challenge right way women as that then says the Legal Framework is indeed imperfect and you know that the questions about that legal and ethical ramifications of using drones in war how do you see the legislation evolving especially when the technology is developing rapidly has the legislation for the use of drones evolved in line with the development of the technology. But i think you you address a very valid point there because as my colleague in us. Outlined is indeed the legal issues thats now currently being that need to be debated so for example the u. S. Have not clearly outlined the legal position on the use of force and they argued that for example the use of drones in Counterterrorism Operations can be equal to the use or should be of the laws of Armed Conflict should be applied to that were in cases like yemen and pakistan and somalia this is not the case and it should be interpreted as the use of International Human rights law which has far more restrictions on the use of lethal force well a program where there is well is that the use of drones and current terrorism operations also deals with lack of transparency over whos been targeted and why and for example it is mentioned there are many civilian goes hes over hundreds if not thousands in pakistan yemen and somalia. Who have not been they dont know where they have been targeted and the question is that operation of order if those operations were effective and we already disagree and on that and so far the problem now is that there has been hardly any pushback against us practice for other states feel they have more space to engage and use drones in counter there are terrorism operations as well because yeah the states refrain to push back against us practice in an. Absolute ashraf weve talked about the states right now what about the nonstate actors weve seen in yemen for instance in the war in yemen the who fees increasingly use drones to target saudi arabia to go deep into saudi territory suggesting that they have quite Sophisticated Technology where do the nonstate actors get the one who provides them and how risky how dangerous is it that these drones are in the hands of nonstate actors like the healthy. Theres a good question but before i answer it let me just to the points that clan and women made the point is that drones currently are 90 something 98 percent 99 percent accurate in terms of the target they intend to hit what we are getting is some data is indicating up to 30 percent of Collateral Damage and that is occurring because of what i describe as of the technology the Hardware Technology outpacing the our the precision of our intelligence so the reason we get a lot of casualties is because of poor targeting or mistakes being made in targeting in intelligence rather than human error call systems and we must remember. Cities it is essentially human error so i think its worth looking at this problem in a slightly more focused way the other point of course about laws is that i dont think legislation has evolved as much as interpretation of legislation has evolved and i think its a very good point to make that this is an area that should be debated and laws should be constructed to control this area but who are of the i mean obviously that is not a white all ization sorry to interrupt you who could well im talking about a number of the United States china who could be responsible for coming up with such a law. Or to be honest to our i think most states as they have done in all aspects of war will border the laws or interpret laws to meet the strategic requirements but the the Legal Systems are national so you need state i think the debate needs to take place and in International Fora such as the uns the interNational Court of justice and so on all these bodies should go ahead and stipulate and work up laws which will eventually high. I hope influence National Strategies let me just give you an example of how these laws are being interpreted in british under british law we can only kill somebody if they present an immediate threat and when joe hardy john the british terrorist was killed in in the middle east it was interpreted by the Prime Minister as an imminent opportunity to deal with what i think he interpreted as a persistent threat so what we are seeing is the evolution or an interpretation of existing laws coming back to your original question about who which they get them from the these drones particular smaller ones that are many terrorist organizations and certain to organizations are can be bought commercially theyre available for Recreational Purposes but also some of them are available for civilian survey and other. Roles which can be bought at a few 1000. 00 tens of thousands of dollars and not much more and i think its very important to to be very careful not to interpret the the the actions of the yemeni rebels. As being in possession of Sophisticated Technology what they did demonstrate and what all they have been able. To target deep inside saudi arabia so wouldnt you say that theyre using Sophisticated Technology. Well its everything is relative its a fist to cater. For of. Rivals and insurgents groups historically but it isnt sophisticated in terms of what is available to states what we are seeing is an asymmetry an asymmetric operation and what this was a minor operation in terms of military capability destroyed nothing of any value what it has done is to have you and i and others debate it right and so this is a lot of what happens in modern warfare is about public statements about grabbing headlines and thats where i suppose they have demonstrated sophisticated thinking as opposed to using Sophisticated Technology let me let me ask glenn what he thinks about that then after says what the the who these have been doing as far as targeting saudi arabia with these drones is about grabbing headlines what are your thoughts on that to do does the fact that police jones this type of technology is able to get into the hands of nonstate actors like the whole thiis or other socalled terrorist organizations how big of a threat is that well terrorism. A large part of a terrorist subject even for most terrorists who are not particularly coherent but are just idealistic usually young men. Seeking to strike a blow someplace is to. Obtain. Media attention and to change the perceptions. Of the broader or even or a targeted public so so thats central what the Technology Used is is secondary it can be an airplane or can be a drone it can be a machine gun the point is to shape in a certain way the. Perceptions of the United States or Great Britain or whoever the target audience is and id like to make 2 points on our discussion that i think are important. The United States for more than 20 years now and the us unfortunately the whole world has struggled with how does one approach as a good argument a terrorist organization or individual rights in the us because there is elaborately rigorously defined regulations laws treaties procedures to regulate a warfare among states there isnt really for what are called. Nonstate actors and terrorists there is criminal law and Law Enforcement procedures that are very elaborate both in nation states and internationally but the terrorist in the United States you shall between these occasions that frankly was a huge error. The but is the United States trying to have it all be some arguing that we can treat them not according to the laws of war and not according to the obligations of our legal system for a criminal activity which raises in this instance some of the issues on the use of drones in individuals its a huge dilemma the answer is that you treat them either as criminals terrorists or if they represent or acting on behalf of a state as state actors and then frankly the world has developed a pretty coherent series of mutually accepted procedures and regulations for the use of force and Law Enforcement can many just a 2nd issue for you to drop i just want to ask you about the fact that in the past the americans have been very lucky tend to transfer you know such aircraft because if you is that it might fall out of government control or you could be used against israel but it seems that things a somewhat changing under the administration is that correct well i dont recall ever having had a positive thing to say about the Trump Administration but in this instance it may not be that that we can finger them specifically. I recently u. S. Policy has always been to transfer whatever technology seems relevant at the moment to our research. And we wish to aid or against which we wish to work something thats a particular qualitative evolution there i mean theres a lot of confusion in contradictio