DRONESHow Drones Are Altering Contemporary Warfare
A new book by scholar and military officer Erik Lin-Greenberg examines the evolving dynamics of military and state action centered around drones.
In recent months, Russia has frequently flown drones into NATO territory, where NATO countries typically try to shoot them down. By contrast, when three Russian fighter jets made an incursion into Estonian airspace in September, they were intercepted and no attempt was made to shoot them down — although the incident did make headlines and led to a Russian diplomat being expelled from Estonia.
Those incidents follow a global pattern of recent years. Drone operations, to this point, seem to provoke different responses compared to other kinds of military action, especially the use of piloted warplanes. Drone warfare is expanding but not necessarily provoking major military responses, either by the countries being attacked or by the aggressor countries that have drones shot down.
“There was a conventional wisdom that drones were a slippery slope that would enable leaders to use force in all kinds of situations, with a massively destabilizing effect,” says MIT political scientist Erik Lin-Greenberg. “People thought if drones were used all over the place, this would lead to more escalation. But in many cases where drones are being used, we don’t see that escalation.”
On the other hand, drones have made military action more pervasive. It is at least possible that in the future, drone-oriented combat will be both more common and more self-contained.
“There is a revolutionary effect of these systems, in that countries are essentially increasing the range of situations in which leaders are willing to deploy military force,” Lin-Greenberg says. To this point, though, he adds, “these confrontations are not necessarily escalating.”
Now Lin-Greenberg examines these dynamics in a new book, “The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft,” published by Cornell University Press. Lin-Greenberg is an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Political Science.
Lin-Greenberg brings a distinctive professional background to the subject of drone warfare. Before returning to graduate school, he served as a U.S. Air Force officer; today he commands a U.S. Air Force reserve squadron. His thinking is informed by his experiences as both a scholar and practitioner.
“The Remote Revolution” also has a distinctive methodology that draws on multiple ways of studying the topic. In writing the book, Lin-Greenberg conducted experiments based on war games played by national security professionals; conducted surveys of expert and public thinking about drones; developed in-depth case studies from history; and dug into archives broadly to fully understand the history of drone use, which in fact goes back several decades.
