6 January 2021
The Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) has been using unarmed reconnaissance drones for decades and has recently called for approval for armed combat drones. However, this request has been blocked by the Center-left Social Democrats (SPD) – part of Germany’s coalition government – in the German Parliament (The Bundestag).
The Bundeswehr was expecting rapid approval from the Bundestag to arm the five Heron TP drones recently acquired from the Israeli manufacturer Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).However, these drones will operate unarmed, as the vote for “armed drones” has been postponed indefinitely. SPD leader Norbert Walter-Borjans has argued that “the line between defending the lives and limbs of our soldiers and killing with a joystick is very thin” and that such a debate should deserve more time and serious discussion. Two questions arise from this situation: firstly, have other states banned armed drones? And secondly, would the decision to arm drones lead to an increase in conflicts or civilian deaths?
Armed drones are not a new technology: Germany is a latecomer when it comes to employing this kind of technology. Other countries such as the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Italy have employed or approved the use of armed drones. Furthermore, during the last decade, there has been a surge in commentary on the use of armed drones from various authors and institutions at a European level and above. For example, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have opted to regulate this technology rather than seek its prohibition. The EU has indicated its legitimate interest in procuring armed drones. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) also addressed the issue in 2015. They concluded that targeted killing by armed drones should be considered to be in accordance with international law, with consideration for international human rights and humanitarian law. Thus, the EU and UN consider the use of armed drones to be legal under international law: this implies that armed drones can differentiate civilians and combatants and launch attacks with little collateral damage. Nonetheless, it is important to mention that UK and US citizens do not seem to show strong support for the use of armed drones – a study from 2020 indicated that around a half of the participants demonstrated a negative attitude towards using these systems.
Notwithstanding the consensus among Germany’s allies regarding the use of armed drones, it is fair to analyse whether the deployment of armed drones has led to an increase in civilian casualties. First, the experience of armed drone operators must be considered, as it is different to that of regular soldiers: drone operators are not exposed to the physical risk of combat, and they experience a rapid transition between worlds of violence and peace. Secondly, information on armed drone strikes is scarce and unreliable. Most of the information comes from US drone attacks in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia, where the lack of registers and resources complicate official investigations. For instance, during the period: May 2010 to July 2011, US officials claimed that US drone strikes caused no civilian deaths in Pakistan. However, local sources reported that forty-five civilians were killed in at least ten out of twenty-five investigated cases during that period. Other sources indicate that approximately ninety per cent of those killed by drone strikes in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia were innocent civilians. Despite the unreliability of the data, there seem to be reasonable doubts regarding the collateral damage caused by these strikes. Nonetheless, Professor Lode Lauwaert has stated that there is no convincing evidence that the use of armed drones will lead to more wars.
Regardless of the EU and UN stance on the use of armed drones, German lawmakers engaged in a heated debate last December on this technology. On the one hand, parties in favour of procuring armed drones – Merkel’s conservative CDU, along with some members of the SPD, the liberal FDP and far-right AfD – stressed the importance of these systems for the protection of German soldiers. SPD’s Hans-Peter Bartels has remarked that armed drones would be used only for defensive purposes: “Nobody in Germany wants to use the American use of armed drones for targeted killings,” Bartels added. On the other hand, members of the SPD and the opposition parties: The Greens and the far-left Die Linke oppose the decision to arm the five Heron TP drones. These parties who oppose the procurement of armed drones have also raised the previously mentioned concerns about using drones for targeted killing. Representatives of Die Linke have argued that, as seen in Afghanistan, drone strikes will cause multiple civilian deaths. Additionally, they argue that the use of armed drones will lower the threshold for the use of violence, as has been seen in Yemen and Somalia.
The problem does not seem to be the legitimacy of the debate, but rather, the timing of it. While other EU member states have developed their armed drone programmes in the last decade, Germany is still arguing about the ethics of arming five drones. Postponing this debate will not solve the problem. Nowadays, neither outcome seems optimistic; if the Bundestag is to ban armed drones, it should have happened before the drones were purchased. If the Bundestag is to approve it, then the German Army has remained unprotected for no apparent reason.
Written by Miquel CARUEZO, Communication and Public Relations Team at Finabel – European Army Interoperability Centre
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