An Observation on Unmanned Systems and Escalation Management

One of the issues I looked at in my Naval War College Review article on maritime deception and concealment concerned an opponent’s use of unmanned scout vehicles to search for and target a defender’s platforms during a crisis. Any scout that is able to locate and then support classification of one of the defender’s individual units such as a warship (or perhaps one of the defender’s larger formations such as a naval battleforce) can hypothetically provide the opponent’s long-range strike systems with targeting-quality track data. Depending on the circumstances and the opponent’s political objectives, this targeting data might create further incentives on the margins for the opponent to execute a first strike/salvo attack.

Unmanned scouts are ideal for performing the prewar ‘tattletale’ role that until now could only be accomplished by manned platforms. These vehicles might allow the opponent to persistently cover a wider area or track a particular contact longer than might be possible if only manned scouts were used. They would obviously also avoid exposing manned scouts to interception by the defender. 

It is highly likely that U.S. rules of engagement during a crisis would preclude destroying an opponent’s manned scout in the absence of high confidence indications and warning that the opponent intended an imminent attack. U.S. use of non-kinetic means to ‘neutralize’ a manned scout would likely be limited as well. It is far less clear, though, that neutralizing or destroying an unmanned scout would carry similar escalation risks or otherwise set unacceptable escalatory precedents. Consider how Russia shot down several Georgian unmanned aerial scouts prior to the 2008 war, or how Iran shot at (and possibly also commandeered) U.S. unmanned aerial scouts over the past few years. Crisis circumstances matter, but it is worth noting that none of these cases resulted in anything more than diplomatic protests by the victims. These cases actually establish a decent international precedent regarding the legitimate bounds of a country’s response to the loss of its unmanned scouts. Granted, neither Russia nor Iran nor any other potential U.S. adversary would necessarily react along the lines of how Georgia or the U.S. did. Nevertheless, far less stigma (and international scorn) attaches to killing robots than manned platforms.  

Therefore, as I noted in my article:

A defender might declare exclusion areas during a crisis within which any detected unmanned system would be neutralized; enforcement of these areas might well not precipitate drastic escalation by the other side...A potential adversary could overcome this threat by placing unmanned systems under close manned escort, but that would undercut the rationale for using unmanned, vice manned, reconnaissance systems to increase search volume and on-station time per sortie. Also, it is not clear how a potential adversary could respond without disproportionate escalation if a defender neutralized the unmanned system by close-in jamming or other nonkinetic means. The point is worth study through war gaming. (Pg. 99, 115)

Depending upon how an unmanned scout was neutralized, the opponent might not even know within an actionable period of time whether an onboard malfunction or ‘external causes’ resulted in the loss of communications with the vehicle. This could support a U.S. ability to assert plausible deniability if need be. There would be a risk, however, that the opponent might conclude U.S. forces were operating in or near the area the scout was passing through when communications with it were lost. This might entice the opponent to focus its surveillance and reconnaissance resources on that area. All the same, if the U.S. had in fact declared a sufficiently broad exclusion area for the opponent’s unmanned vehicles, an overall U.S. deception and concealment plan might allow for disruption or even destruction of the opponent’s unmanned scouts near a specific location to create an impression that ‘something of value’ was nearby even when the actual U.S. or allied units being concealed were somewhere else entirely. Of course, nothing would prevent the opponent from pursuing similar ends via similar tactics.

I would submit that if war gaming and historical case study analysis find that the crisis stability risks of attacks against unmanned scouts would be tolerable, and if the resulting legitimization of equivalent attacks against U.S. unmanned systems would be acceptable, then it might be worthwhile for American diplomacy to advance unmanned scout neutralization (or destruction if the scout is outside the opponent’s internationally-recognized sovereign boundaries) as an international norm. This would not mean that the U.S. would automatically take such steps during a particular crisis—only that U.S. political and military leaders would reserve the option of taking them. If the opponent raised his forces’ combat readiness postures in response, that would be still be a preferable—and most likely more manageable—consequence than allowing the opponent to retain a high-confidence targeting picture that could decisively tilt him towards a decision to strike first.

The irony in all this is that it may incentivize potential adversaries to go 'back to the future.' If a potential adversary expects that U.S. forces will neutralize unmanned scouts without hesitation, then he may opt to return the brink-of-war tattletale role to manned scouts under the assumptions about U.S. rules of engagement during a crisis that I mentioned earlier. So the moral of the story may very well be: don't operate high campaign-value platforms in locations during crises where they would not be able to evade contact with the opponent's manned scouts for long. Instead, preserve those platforms in locations where the opponent cannot scout effectively, or contact with any manned scouts can be quickly and enduringly broken. And remember that whatever the opponent's prewar escalation dominance advantages of using manned scouts may be, those advantages evaporate once U.S. rules of engagement are relaxed upon the outbreak of open hostilities.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.