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ABSTRACT
Drones are considered poor coercion tools: They cannot operate in contested airspace and they offer low-cost fights instead of more credible, costly signals. However, this article finds that technological advances will soon enable drones to function in hostile environments. Moreover, drones offer three unique coercion advantages that theorists did not foresee: sustainability in long duration conflicts, certainty of precision punishment which can change the psychology of adversaries, and changes in the relative costs of war. A unique survey of 259 foreign military officers finds that costly signals are less credible than assumed and that drones demonstrate resolve in new ways.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Kenneth Anderson, Tai Ming Cheung, Tom Christensen, Jim Fearon, Matt Fuhrmann, Erik Gartzke, Andrea Gilli, Jack Goldsmith, Adm. Cecil Haney, Sean Kanuck, Sarah Kreps, Herb Lin, Joseph Nye, Bill Perry, Jason Reinhardt, Scott Sagan, Ken Schultz, Mike Tomz, Jacob Shapiro, David Victor, Barbara Walter, and Keren Yahri-Milo for comments on earlier drafts; the National Defense University and Naval War College for invaluable assistance in conducting survey research; and Benjamin Buch, Taylor McLamb, and Eric Min for their research assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The United States Air Force defines unmanned aerial systems as ‘A powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or non-lethal payload’. Office of the Secretary of Defense, Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap 2005–2030 (Washington, DC, 2005), https://fas.org/irp/program/collect/uav_roadmap2005.pdf. Drones range from large high-altitude surveillance platforms such as the RQ-4A Global Hawk, which can survey 85,000 km of ground in 1 day and stay airborne for more than 34 h to the Switchblade, a small kamikaze drone that can fit into a backpack, surveil a nearby battlefield target, and destroy it by crashing into it. This essay’s scope is limited to medium altitude, long endurance armed drones (such as the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper), and next-generation combat drones that can surveil a target for extended periods of time and deliver lethal payloads remotely.
2 ‘Flight of the Drones’, The Economist, 8 Oct. 2011, http://www.econoist.com/node/21531433.
3 Meghann Myers, ‘SecNav: F-35C should be the Navy’s last manned strike jet’, NavyTimes, 16 Apr. 2015, https://www.navytimes.com/story/military/2015/04/16/navy-secretary-ray-mabus-joint-strike-fighter-f-35-unmanned/25832745/ [accessed 17 July 2017].
4 US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, ‘The Unmanned Wingman: High-Speed Drones to Support Fighter Aircraft,’ 16 Feb. 2017, http://www.scientificadvisoryboard.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1086552/the-unmanned-wingman-high-speed-drones-to-support-fighter-aircraft/ [accessed 19 July 2017]; ‘Kratos to Showcase XQ-222 Valkyrie, UTAP-22 Mako at 2017 Paris Airshow’, DefenseWorld.net, 14 Jun. 2017, http://www.defenseworld.net/news/19572/Kratos_To_Showcase_XQ_222_Valkyrie__UTAP_22_Mako_At_2017_Paris_Airshow#.WXIf1RPyvUJ [accessed 20 July 2017]; Carl Prine, ‘Most Lethal Drones Ever Designed will be Touted at Paris Air Show’, San Diego Union Tribune, 18 Jun. 2017, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/military/sd-me-kratos-drone-20170618-story.html [accessed 20 July 2017]. For Air Force program announcement, see ‘Low Cost Attritable Strike UAS Demonstration’, Broad Agency Announcement NR: BAA-AFRL-RQKP-2015-0004, Air Force Research Laboratory, 3 Jun. 2015, https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c3bd78a275b46fa7e7df6853836448ff&tab=core&_cview=1.
5 These are The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Iran, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. New America Foundation, World of Drones, https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/world-of-drones/1-introduction-how-we-became-world-drones/ [accessed 19 July 2017].
6 Elisa Catalano Ewers, Lauren Fish, Michael C. Horowitz, Alexandra Sander, and Paul Scharre, Drones: Policy Choices for the Trump Administration, Center for a New American Security, Jun. 2017, http://drones.cnas.org/reports/drone-proliferation/ [accessed 17 July 2017]; Damien Sharkov, ‘Russian Military: Modern Combat Drones Needed to ‘Master the Skies’, Newsweek, 19 Jul. 2017.
7 Marie Aronsson, ‘Remote Law Making? American Drone Strikes and the Development of Jus Ad Bellum’, Journal of the Use of Force and International Law 1/2 (2014) 273–98; Rosa Brooks, ‘Drones and the International Rule of Law’, Ethics & International Affairs 28/1 (March 2014) 83–103; Rosa Brooks, ‘Cross-Border Targeted Killings “Lawful but Awful”?’ Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 38 (2014) 233–50; Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, ‘Toward a Drone Accountability Regime’, Ethics & International Affairs 29/1 (March 2015) 15–37; Janina Dill, ‘The Informal Regulation of Drones and the Formal Legal Regulation of War’, Ethics & International Affairs 29/1 (March 2015) 51–8; Kevin Jon Heller, ‘One Hell of a Killing Machine: Signature Strikes and International Law’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 11/1 (2013) 89–119.
8 Jenna Jordan, ‘Attacking the Leader, Missing the Mark: Why Terrorist Groups Survive Decapitation Strikes’, International Security 38/4 (Spring 2014) 7–38; Bryan C. Price, ‘Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes to Counterterrorism’, International Security 36/4 (Spring 2012) 9–46; Patrick B. Johnston, ‘Does Decapitation Work? Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Targeting in Counterinsurgency Campaigns’, International Security 36/4 (Spring 2012) 47–79; Michael J. Boyle, ‘The Costs and Consequences of Drone Warfare’, International Security 89/1 (Jan. 2013) 1–29.
9 Micah Zenko, ‘Transferring CIA Drone Strikes to the Pentagon’, Council on Foreign Relations Policy Innovation Memorandum 31 (2013) 1–4; Gordon Lubold and Shane Harris, ‘Exclusive: The CIA, Not the Pentagon, Will Keep Running Obama’s Drone War’, Foreign Policy, 5 Nov. 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/11/05/exclusive-the-cia-not-the-pentagon-will-keep-running-obamas-drone-war; Eric Schmitt, ‘Congress Restricts Drones Program Shift’, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/us/politics/congress-restricts-drones-program-shift.html.
10 Michael C. Horowitz, Sarah E. Kreps, and Matthew Furhmann, ‘Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation’, International Security, 41/2 (Fall 2016) 7–42.
11 Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli, ‘The Diffusion of Drone Warfare? Industrial, Organizational and Infrastructural Constraints: Military Innovations and the Ecosystem Challenge’, Security Studies 26/1 (Winter 2016) 50–84; Micah Zenko and Sarah Kreps, Limiting Armed Drone Proliferation, Council on Foreign Relations Special Report No. 69 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, June 2014); Michael C. Horowitz and Matthew Fuhrmann, ‘Droning On: Explaining the Proliferation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’, SSRN Working Paper 19 (2016), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2514339.
12 Schelling defined coercion broadly as the ‘diplomacy of violence’. He usefully distinguished between two types of coercion: deterrence and compellence. Deterrence involves using threats to maintain the status quo, preventing the adversary from taking an unwanted action in the first place. Compellence involves using threats to persuade an adversary to stop or reverse an action that has already been taken. My broad definition includes both. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960); Thomas C. Schelling, Arms of Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).
13 Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; Schelling, Arms of Influence.
14 Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 80–81.
15 James D. Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes’, American Political Science Review 88/3 (1994) 577–92; James D. Fearon, ‘Rationalist Explanations for War’, International Organization 49/3 (1995) 379–414; James D. Morrow, ‘Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining’, American Journal of Political Science 33/4 (1989) 941–72.
16 As Renshon notes, many have acknowledged weaknesses in surveys that treat university students or mass publics as proxies for elites, and few have managed to study real elites. Jonathan Renshon, ‘Losing Face and Sinking Costs: Experimental Evidence on the Judgement of Political and Military Leaders’, International Organization 69/3 (2015) 659–95.
17 A major limitation of existing research is its inattention to current drone research, development, testing, and deployment. Horowitz et al., for example, offer a pessimistic assessment about the future of drone coercion based entirely on the operational capabilities of existing Predators and Reapers – despite news reports revealing that DARPA and the Air Force Research Lab both have fast-track drone development programs underway and several Pentagon offices, including the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), are working on rapid development of advanced drones for a variety of purposes. Horowitz, Kreps, and Fuhrmann, ‘Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation’, 7–42. For DARPA, see Kelsey D. Atherton, ‘DARPA wants Friendly Gremlin Drones’, Popular Science, 28 Aug. 2015, http://www.popsci.com/darpa-wants-friendly-gremlin-drones; For AFRL, Tyler Rogoway, ‘Air Force to Test Target Drone Turned Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle’, The Drive, 13 Jul. 2016, http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4399/air-force-to-test-target-drone-turned-low-cost-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle?iid=sr-link1. For DIUx, see Aaron Gregg, ‘The Pentagon is Building Robotic Wingmen to Fly Alongside Fighter Planes’, The Washington Post, 14 Jun. 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/06/14/the-pentagon-is-building-robotic-wingmen-to-fly-alongside-fighter-planes/?utm_term=.8bd5adc964f9.
18 John Reed, ‘Predator Drones “Useless” in Most Wars, Top Air Force General Says’, Foreign Policy, 19 Sept. 2013, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/19/predator-drones-useless-in-most-wars-top-air-force-general-says/ [accessed 19 July 2017]. Reapers fly a maximum of 445 km per hour, are hard to maneuver, and are easily detected on radar. Predators are slower and even more vulnerable to low-level enemy air defenses. See John Keller, ‘Air Force Order Another 36 MQ-9 Reaper UAV Attack Drones from General Atomics’, Military and Aerospace, 19 May 2017, http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2017/05/36-new-mq-9-reaper-uav-attack-drones-ordered.html [accessed 19 July 2017].; ‘MQ-9 Reaper’, U.S. Air Force, Sept. 2015, http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/FactSheets/Display/tabid/224/Article/104470/mq-9-reaper.aspx.
19 Horowitz, Kreps, and Fuhrmann, ‘Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation’.
20 Office of the Chief Scientist, United States Air Force, ‘Autonomous Horizons’, Volume I: Human-Autonomy Teaming, AF/ST TR 15-01, Jun. 2015, http://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/SECAF/AutonomousHorizons.pdf?timestamp=1435068339702 [accessed 20 July 2020 2017]; United States Air Force, ‘America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future’, Jul. 2014, http://airman.dodlive.mil/files/2014/07/AF_30_Year_Strategy_2.pdf, 19; Rogoway, ‘Air Force to Test Target Drone Turned Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle’.
21 Mark Prigg, ‘Now THAT’s a remote controlled plane’, Daily Mail, 24 Mar. 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3010007/Now-S-remote-controlled-plane-Boeing-shows-pilotless-F-16-fighter-jet-set-used-flying-target-war-games.html; David Axe, ‘U.S. Air Force Sends Robotic F-16s into Mock Combat’, National Interest, 16 May 2017, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/us-air-force-sends-robotic-f-16s-mock-combat-20684 [accessed 20 July 2017].
22 ‘Bargain Hunt: Air Force’s Move to Embrace Low-Cost UCAVs’, Jane’s, http://www.janes.com/images/assets/318/71318/Bargain_hunt_Air_forces_move_to_embrace_low-cost_UCAVs.pdf [accessed 19 July 2017], 5–6. See also U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, ‘The Unmanned Wingman’; James Drew, ‘Kratos Breaking into the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle Market’, Flight Global, 5 May 2016, https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/kratos-breaking-into-the-unmanned-combat-air-vehicle-424991/ [accessed 19 July 2017]; ‘DIUx Team Convenes at Hap Arnold Center’, MyBaseGuide, 10 Apr. 2017, http://www.mybaseguide.com/News/196-32991/los_angeles_afb_diux_team_convenes_at_hap_arnold_center [accessed 20 July 2017]. ‘Kratos’ Third UTAP-22 Flight Exceeds Objectives, Successfully Performing All Primary and Alternate Test Points’, Nasdaq GlobalNewswire, 21 Dec. 2015, https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/12/21/797235/0/en/Kratos-Third-UTAP-22-Flight-Exceeds-Objectives-Successfully-Performing-All-Primary-and-Alternate-Test-Points.html [accessed 19 July 2017].
23 ‘Low Cost Attritable Strike UAS Demonstration’, Broad Agency Announcement NR: BAA-AFRL-RQKP-2015–0004, Air Force Research Laboratory, 3 Jun. 2015, https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=c3bd78a275b46fa7e7df6853836448ff&tab=core&_cview=1; Tyler Rogoway, ‘USAF Research Lab Has Released This Image of Its Low-Cost Stealthy Drone’, The Drive, 19 May 2017, http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/10475/usaf-research-lab-has-released-this-image-of-its-low-cost-stealthy-drone [accessed 19 July 2017]; Bryan Ripple, 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs, ‘AFRL Showcases Game-Changing Technologies at DOD Lab Day’, 19 May 2017, http://www.wpafb.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1190148/afrl-showcases-game-changing-technologies-at-dod-lab-day/ [accessed 20 July 2017].
24 Rogoway, ‘USAF Research Lab Has Released This Image of Its Low-Cost Stealthy Drone’.
25 Israel is the world’s largest supplier of armed drones and China is moving into the export market. George Arnett, ‘The Numbers Behind the Worldwide Trade in Drones’, The Guardian, 16 Mar. 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/mar/16/numbers-behind-worldwide-trade-in-drones-uk-israel [accessed 24 July 2017]; Jeremy Page and Paul Sonne, ‘Unable to Buy U.S. Military Drones, Allies Place Order with China’, The Wall Street Journal, 17 Jul. 2017.
26 ISIS, Hezbollah, and Hamas have already used low-end drones for surveillance purposes and in some cases as weapons. Joby Warrick, ‘Use of Weaponized Drones by ISIS Spurs Terrorism Fears’, The Washington Post, 21 Feb. 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/use-of-weaponized-drones-by-isis-spurs-terrorism-fears/2017/02/21/9d83d51e-f382-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html?utm_term=.54c2b33dd67e [accessed 19 July 2017]; Dan Gettinger and Arthur Holland Michel, ‘A Brief History of Hamas and Hezbollah’s Drones’, Center for the Study of Drones, Bard College, 14 Jul. 2014, http://dronecenter.bard.edu/hezbollah-hamas-drones/ [accessed 19 July 2017].
27 Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). As Stein writes, ‘behavior rarely speaks for itself but is felt and understood in multiple ways by others’. Janice Gross Stein, ‘Threat Perception in International Relations’, in Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack S. Levy, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 364–94.
28 There is reason to believe that coercive situations between drone-armed states and drone-less states will be likely in both the near and long term. Although the speed and scope of diffusion of armed drone technology are hotly debated, most agree that armed drone technology is spreading but is unlikely to be ubiquitous. In my survey of 259 senior foreign military officers, 80% believed that 50 states or fewer would have armed drone technology within the next decade. Gilli and Gilli, ‘The Diffusion of Drone Warfare?’ and Horowitz and Fuhrmann, ‘Droning On: Explaining the Proliferation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’.
29 Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; Schelling, Arms and Influence. Schelling first distinguished between two types of coercion: deterrence and compellence. Deterrence involves using threats to maintain the status quo, preventing the adversary from taking an unwanted action in the first place. Compellence involves using threats to persuade an opponent to stop or reverse an action that has already been taken. I use a broad definition of coercion that includes both deterrence and compellence.
30 Scholars refer to coercion variously as compellence, deterrence, coercive diplomacy, military coercion, coercive military strategy, strategic coercion, and a number of other terms. Schelling’s Arms and Influence, uses ‘coercion’ and ‘compellence’; Alexander George, David Hall, and William Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy: Laos, Cuba, Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971), uses the term ‘coercive diplomacy’; Pape, Bombing to Win, uses ‘military coercion’; Stephen Cimbala, Coercive Military Strategy (College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1998) uses ‘coercive military strategy’; Lawrence Freedman, ed., Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), uses ‘strategic coercion’; and Daniel L. Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), uses ‘coercion’. However, most scholars agree that coercion generally involves threats or limited displays of force to change an adversary’s behavior.
31 Alexander L. George, ‘Coercive Diplomacy: Definition and Characteristics’, in Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), 11. Conceptual divides in the literature complicate the role of force: Some argue that coercion only succeeds if no force is used, while others view measured and controlled force as a means to ‘signal’ to the target the threat of further punishment unless it complies, making the distinction between coercion and force ambiguous. See Schelling, Arms of Influence; Karl Mueller, ‘Denial, Punishment, and the Future of Air Power’, Security Studies 7/3 (1998) 182–228.
32 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 3.
33 Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; Schelling, Arms and Influence.
34 Andrew Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars’, World Politics 27/2 (1975) 175–200; Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force Without War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1978); Alexander George and William E. Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994); Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, eds, The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003); Barry M. Blechman and Tamara Cofman Wittes, ‘Defining Moment: The Threat and Use of Force in American Foreign Policy’, Political Science Quarterly 114/1 (1999) 1–30; Pape, Bombing to Win,; Paul Huth and Bruce Russett, ‘What Makes Deterrence Work: Cases from 1900 to 1980’, World Politics 36/4 (1984) 496–526.
35 James D. Fearon, ‘Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/1 (February 1997) 68–90; Fearon, ‘Rationalist Explanations for War’.
36 Joshua D. Kertzer, Resolve in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
37 Todd Sechser, ‘Goliath’s Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power’, International Organization 64/4 (October 2010) 627–60.
38 Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes’; Kenneth A. Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Alexander B. Downes and Todd Sechser, ‘The Illusion of Democratic Credibility’, International Organization 66/3 (2012) 457–89; Jessica Weeks, ‘Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve’, International Organization 62/1 (2008) 35–64.
39 The one significant exception is research examining how psychological biases can hinder the ability of individual leaders to accurately interpret information and signaling from an adversary. See Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Robert Jervis, ‘Hypotheses on Misperception’, World Politics 20/3 (1968) 454–79; J.G. Stein, ‘Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence: The View from Cairo’, in Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and J.G. Stein, eds., Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) 34–59. More recently, Kertzer, Resolve in International Politics, develops a theory of resolve that incorporates both rationalist and psychological approaches.
40 Pape, Bombing to Win.
41 This is especially true in asymmetric conflicts where one state has the military capabilities to threaten the physical survival of the other, but the reverse is not true. Because the weaker state faces the prospect of total destruction, it inherently has greater resolve. See Patricia L. Sullivan, ‘War Aims and War Outcomes: Why Powerful States Lose Limited Wars’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 51/3 (June 2007) 821–40.
42 Glenn H. Snyder, ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ and ‘Chicken’ Models in International Politics’, International Studies Quarterly 15/1 (Mar. 1971) 66–103; Robert Jervis, ‘Why Nuclear Superiority Doesn’t Matter’, Political Science Quarterly 94/4 (Winter 1979–1980) 617–33.
43 Scholars also lack a consensus definition of resolve. I use Snyder and Jervis’ use of the term ‘resolve’, which generally refers to a determination or motivation to inflict violence on the opponent. See Snyder, ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ and “‘Chicken’ Models in International Politics”; Jervis, ‘Why Nuclear Superiority Doesn’t Matter’.
44 Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes’, 582.
45 Morrow, ‘Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve’; Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations.
46 Fearon, ‘Signaling Foreign Policy Interests’, 69.
47 James D. Morrow, ‘The Strategic Setting of Choices: Signaling Commitment, and Negotiation in International Politics’, in Robert Powell and David A. Lake, eds., Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) 77–114.
48 An important line of research shows how cheap talk can in fact be highly effective. See Anne Sartori, Deterrence by Diplomacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘Tying Hands Behind Closed Doors: The Logic and Practice of Secret Reassurances’, Security Studies 22/3 (2013) 405–35; Kristopher Ramsay, ‘“Cheap Talk” Diplomacy, Voluntary Negotiations, and Variable Bargaining Power’, International Studies Quarterly 55/4 (2011) 1003–023.
49 For the micro foundations of resolve, see Kertzer, Resolve in International Politics.
50 Clark A. Murdock and Jessica M. Yeats, ‘Exploring the Nuclear Posture Implications of Extended Deterrence and Assurance’, Workshop Proceedings and Key Takeaways (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2009), http://csis.org/files/publication/100222_Murdock_NuclearPosture_Print.pdf.
51 Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations, 251.
52 Blechman and Kaplan, Force Without War.
53 Fearon, ‘Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs’.
54 Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 49.
55 Ibid, p. 51.
56 Allen Dafoe, Jonathan Renshon, and Paul Huth, ‘Reputation and Status as Motive for War’, Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014) 371–93.
57 Dan Reiter and Allan C. Stam, Democracies at War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); Mark J.C. Crescenzi, Jacob D. Kathman, and Stephen B. Long, ‘Reputation, History, and War’, Journal of Peace Research 44/6 (2007) 651–67; Todd Sechser, ‘Goliath’s Curse’.
58 Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, ‘Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter In International Politics’, International Organization 69/2 (2015) 473–95.
59 Fearon, ‘Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes;’ Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy. For an empirical critique of audience costs, see Marc Trachtenberg, ‘Audience Costs: An Historical Analysis,’ Security Studies 21/1 (2012), 3–42; Jack Snyder and E.D. Borghard, ‘The Cost of Empty Threats: A Penny, Not a Pound’, American Political Science Review 105/3 (2011) 437–56; Downes and Sechser, ‘The Illusion of Democratic Credibility’.
60 Michael Tomz, ‘Domestic Audience Costs in International Relations: An Experimental Approach’, International Organization 61/4 (2007) 821–40.
61 John E. Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973); Scott Sigmund Gartner and Gary M. Segura, ‘Wars, Casualties and Public Opinion’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 42/3 (1998) 278–300; Scott Sigmund Gartner, ‘The Multiple Effects of Casualties on Public Support for War: An Experimental Approach’, American Political Science Review 102/1 (2008) 95–106; E.V. Larson, Casualties and Consensus: The Historical Role of Casualties in Domestic Support for U.S. Military Operations (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1996); Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars’. Even after accounting for the complex role of political information, several studies have found a strong relationship between mounting American casualties in Iraq and the decline in public support for remaining engaged in the conflict. See Matthew A. Baum and Tim Groeling, ‘Reality Asserts Itself: Public Opinion on Iraq and the Elasticity of Reality’, International Organization 64/3 (2010); Cigdem V. Sirin, ‘Public Support for Military Interventions Across Levels of Political Information and Stages of Information: The CAs of the Iraq War’, Armed Forces & Society 38/2 (2011) 352–72; William A. Boettcher III and Michael D. Cobb, ‘Echoes of Vietnam? Casualty Framing and Public Perceptions of Success and Failure in Iraq’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 50/6 (2006) 831–54.
62 Letter from Robert Oakley to Barry Blechman, 7 Aug. 1997, quoted in Blechman and Wittes, ‘Defining Moment’, 5.
63 Predators and reapers are not designed to fly in contested airspace and are vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles and air-to-air fighter aircraft. They are also visible on radar and lack electronic or physical countermeasures. Next-generation drones, however, such as the United Kingdom’s Taranis, France’s Neuron, and the US Navy’s X-47B, are stealthy, faster, and more maneuverable and are designed to combat more sophisticated air defenses.
64 ‘Get the Data: Drone Wars’, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 12 Jan. 2016, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/drones-graphs. Eliminating direct human costs to drone pilots also lowers indirect human costs of rescuing downed pilots in military operations. During the Vietnam war, for example, one rescue team member was lost for every downed airman saved. See Darrell D. Whitcomb, Combat Search and Rescue in Desert Storm (Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Air University Press, 2006), 265.
65 Gary Roush, ‘Helicopter Losses During the Vietnam War’, Vietnam Helicopter Pilot’s Association, http://www.vhpa.org/heliloss.pdf. Evidence suggests that drone operations in the future will only grow more remote. Advances in aerial refueling, evidenced by the Navy’s successful April 2015 test in which an X-47b drone aircraft refueled in midair without human control, could extend the geographic range of drone operations by lengthening a single operation from hours to days. Longer term, aerial refueling could become autonomous, enabling drones to keep other drones flying.
66 Estimating the precise cost of a major aviation platform is an inexact science due to variation in aircraft designs (the F-35, e.g., actually has three different models, each with substantially different capabilities and costs), Pentagon accounting processes, classification constraints, and opaque indirect costs for items such as research and development of underlying technologies, maintenance costs, airframe longevity, procurement quantities, training needs, and intelligence processing, exploitation, and dissemination.
67 Amy Belasco, Defense Spending and the Budget Control Act Limits, CRS Report No. R44039 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2015) 45.
68 This estimate is conservative. The all-in annual cost of a single deployed service member in Afghanistan ranged from $820,000 in FY 2008 to $3.9 million in FY 2015. Amy Belasco, The Cost of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11, CRS Report No. RL33110 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2014), https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf.
69 Alex Lockie, ‘The F-35’s Reliability Issues Could Push its Total Cost over $1.2 Trillion’, Business Insider, 28 Jun. 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-reliability-affordability-2017-6.
70 The $260 million figure comes from FY 2014, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Comptroller/CFO, Program Acquisition Cost by Weapons System: United States Department of Defense FY 2016 Budget Request, 2015, sections 1.3 and 1.7, http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/documents/defbudget/fy2016/fy2016_Weapons.pdf [accessed 12 January 2016]. The 2017 $100m cost comes from manufacturer Lockheed Martin, ‘Producing, Operating, and Supporting a Fifth Generation Fighter’, https://www.f35.com/about/cost [accessed 20 July 2017].
71 Tyler Rogoway, ‘More Details Emerge on Kratos’ Optionally Expendable Air Combat Drones’, The Drive, 7 Feb. 2017, http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7449/more-details-on-kratos-optionally-expendable-air-combat-drones-emerge [accessed 20 July 2017]; Jane’s, ‘Bargain Hunt: Air Force’s Move to Embrace Low-Cost UCAVs’, http://www.janes.com/images/assets/318/71318/Bargain_hunt_Air_forces_move_to_embrace_low-cost_UCAVs.pdf [accessed 19 July 2017], 5–6. See also U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, ‘The Unmanned Wingman’.
72 Office of the Chief Scientist, United States Air Force, ‘Autonomous Horizons’, AF/ST TR 15-10, Jun. 2015, http://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/SECAF/AutonomousHorizons.pdf?timestamp=1435068339702 [accessed 20 July 2017].
73 For an extensive comparison of civilian death estimates, see Avery Plaw, ‘Counting the Dead: The Proportionality of Predation in Pakistan’, in Bradley Jay Strawser and Jeff McMahan, eds., Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) 126–53. The highest casualty estimates claim that US drones have killed nearly 4000 people, including civilians, in counterterrorism operations since they were first armed with Hellfire missiles in 2001. ‘Get the Data: Drone Wars’. The highest estimates from independent studies, including UMass DRONE, the Long War Journal, The New America Foundation, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, note that up to 23.9% of deaths by drones are civilians. This compares to estimates that up to 67% of those killed in the 1986 US bombing of Libya were thought to be civilians, as were 64% of those killed in the US invasion of Panama. Kenneth M. Pollack, Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948–1991 (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2002); Larry Rother, ‘Panama and U.S. Strive to Settle on Death Toll’, The New York Times, 1 Apr. 1990, A1.
74 Economist/YouGov Poll, Conducted Apr. 23–26, 2015, http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/mqa46gd89y/tabs_OPI_drones_20150427.pdf. For a complete list of polls, see Appendix A.
75 Niklas Schornig and Alexander C. Lembcke, ‘The Vision of War without Casualties: On the Use of Casualty Aversion in Armament Advertisements’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 50/2 (April 2006) 204–27.
76 John E. Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011); Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, The Arc of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
77 The duration of civil wars has increased as well. See James D. Fearon, ‘Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/3 (2004) 275–301; Paul Collier, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003), 4.
78 John E. Mueller, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011); Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, The Arc of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
79 Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, The Arc of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 7.
80 The duration of civil wars has also increased. See James D. Fearon, ‘Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 41/3 (2004) 275–301; Paul Collier, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003), 4.
81 D. Scott Bennett and Allan C. Stam III, ‘The Duration of Interstate Wars’, American Political Science Review 90/2 (June 1996) 239–57.
82 Paul Collier, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003) 4.
83 Virginia Page Fortna, ‘Where Have All the Victories Gone? Peacekeeping and War Outcomes’, paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Toronto, Ontario, 6 Sept. 2009.
84 Dianne R. Pfundstein, ‘Credibility is Not Enough: The United States and the Compellent Threats’, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2011.
85 Bruce M. Russett, Controlling the Sword (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); D. Scott Bennett and Allan C. Stam III, ‘The Duration of Interstate Wars, 1816–1985’, American Political Science Review 90/2 (1996) 239–57; Benny Geys, ‘Wars, Presidents, and Popularity: The Political Cost(s) of War Re-Examined’, Public Opinion Quarterly 74/2 (2010) 357–74.
86 Some claim that drones are not fundamentally different than long-range artillery or ‘smart’ weapons like cruise missiles that can strike over long distances with remote human control. Yet even the most advanced Tomahawk cruise missiles cannot loiter over a target longer than a few hours. They cannot withhold fire once launched, as drones can. And they carry payloads typically five to ten times deadlier than a Hellfire missile fired from today’s lower tech drones. United States Navy Fact File, 10 Apr. 2017, http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2200&tid=1300&ct=2 [accessed 28 July 2017]; ‘BGM-109 Tomahawk’, Federation of American Scientists, 22 Oct. 2016, https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/bgm-109.htm [accessed 28 July 2028 2017].
87 Between states, temporal dominance creates a more porous and uncertain border between conflict and peace. Within states, temporal dominance compresses and accelerates dramatically the process of military mobilization, enabling a state to move from a standing start to victory. With armed drones in the air or at the ready, adversaries are never sure when hostilities might begin or end. And for the drone-armed state, moving from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1 and back again could occur fast and seamlessly.
88 Pape, Bombing to Win, 80–81.
89 ‘Drone Wars Pakistan: Analysis’, New America Foundation, 2016, http://securitydata.newamerica.net/drones/pakistan-analysis.html.
90 Gertler, U.S. Unmanned Aerial Systems, 33–35.
91 This is not to suggest that targeted strikes are easy to implement. The US, for example, has not yet succeeded at killing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Yet killing a target is not the only benefit to be derived. Drone threats and operations also alter the adversary’s behavior, requiring substantially greater operational security for leaders to evade death – time, effort, and resources that could otherwise be spent organizing and fighting.
92 Gary S. Becker, ‘Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach’, Journal of Political Economy 76/2 (1968) 169–217; Raymond Paternoster, ‘How Much Do We Really Know about Criminal Deterrence’, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 100/3 (2010) 765–824.
93 Coercion theory in international relations has paid little attention to criminology research, even though criminologists are fundamentally concerned with deterring unwanted behavior.
94 Ceastre Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, trans. Henry Palucci (New York: Macmillan, 1963) 58.
95 James Q. Wilson and Barbara Boland, ‘The Effect of the Police on Crime’, Law & Society Review 12/3 (1978) 367–90.
96 Paternoster, ‘How Much Do We Really Know about Criminal Deterrence’, 815; Daniel S. Nagin, ‘Criminal Deterrence Research at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century’, in Michael Tontry, ed., Crime & Justice: A Review of Research 23 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998) 1–42.
97 Studies have found, for example, that installing red light cameras at intersections (even with lower fines) reduced red light violations significantly more than beefing up police patrols and increasing fines. See David Smith, John McFadden, and Karl Passetti, ‘Automated Enforcement of Red Light Running Technology and Programs: A Review’, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1734 (2000) 29–37; Richard A. Retting, Allan F. Williams, Charles M. Farmer, and Amy F. Feldman, ‘Evaluation of Red Light Camera Enforcement in Oxnard, California’, Accident Analysis & Prevention 31/3 (1999) 169–74; Richard A. Retting, Susan A. Ferguson, and Charles M. Farmer, ‘Reducing Red Light Running Through Longer Yellow Signal Timing and Red Light Camera Enforcement: Results of a Field Investigation’, Accident Analysis & Prevention 40/1 (2009) 327–33.
98 In practice, nations have rarely targeted each other’s leaders for assassination even when doing so was feasible. In part, this may stem from normative restraint. In times of conflict, however, such restraint, if it exists, appears to be diminished. During World War II, the US deliberately targeted and killed Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto by shooting down his airplane. And even after Executive Order 12333 banned assassinations of foreign leaders in 1981, the US attempted to kill Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1986 and Osama bin Laden in 1998.
99 Today’s drones already have the ability to hover over a target for up to 14 h fully armed without being refueled and combine real-time imagery with real-time strike capabilities.
100 The coercer still prefers coercion to fighting. The costs of war with drones are low but they are still not zero.
101 A survey cannot replicate the high stakes conditions of conflict, but elite opinion about elite decision making has greater external validity than surveys of the general public or experiments with undergraduates. Renshon, ‘Losing Face and Sinking Costs’, 667–70; Alex Mintz, Steven B. Redd, and Arnold Vedlitz, ‘Can We Generalize from Student Experiments to the Real World in Political Science, Military Affairs, and International Relations?’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 50/5 (2006) 757–76.
102 The actual survey uses 1 (most important) to 7 (least important), but this scale is flipped here for more natural interpretability.
103 Lucia De Stefano, Lynette de Silva, Paris Edwards, and Aaron T. Wolf, ‘Updating the International Water Events Database’, United Nations World Water Development Report, No 3 (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2009), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001818/181890E.pdf.
104 Kerzer, Resolve in International Politics.
105 Gerald J. De Groot, The Bomb: A Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); John H. Morrow Jr., The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to 1921 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993); Leon Bennett, Gaming for the Red Baron (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2006).
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Amy Zegart
Amy Zegart is a codirector and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute. She is also the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Her research interests include technology and international security, intelligence, and grand strategy. She has written several books, including Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11, which won the National Academy of Public Administration’s Brownlow Book Award, and Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC, which won the American Political Science Association’s Leonard D. White Award. She currently serves on the board of directors of Kratos Defense & Security Solutions.