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.
The book's focus is drone use during the 2000s, as the technology has become more readily available; today about 100 countries have access to military drones. Many have used them during tensions and skirmishes with other countries.
"Where I argue this is actually revolutionary is during periods of crises, which fall below the threshold of war, in that these new technologies take human operators out of harm's way and enable states to do things they wouldn't otherwise do," Lin-Greenberg says.
Indeed, a key point is that drones lower the costs of military action for countries - and not just financial costs, but human and political costs, too. Incidents and problems that might plague leaders if they involved military personnel, forcing major responses, seem to lessen when drones are involved.
"Because these systems don't have a human on board, they're inherently cheaper and different in the minds of decision-makers," Lin-Greenberg says. "That means they're willing to use these systems during disputes, and if other states are shooting them down, the side sending them is less likely to retaliate, because they're losing a machine but not a man or woman on board."
In this sense, the uses of drones "create new rungs on the escalation ladder," as Lin-Greenberg writes in the book. Drone incidents don't necessarily lead to wider military action, and may not even lead to the same kinds of international relations issues as incidents involving piloted aircraft.
Consider a counterfactual that Lin-Greenberg raises in the book. One of the most notorious episodes of Cold War tension between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. occurred in 1960, when U.S. pilot Gary Powers was shot down and captured in the Soviet Union, leading to a diplomatic standoff and a canceled summit between U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
"Had that been a drone, it's very likely the summit would have continued," Lin-Greenberg says. "No one would have said anything. The Soviet Union would have been embarrassed to admit their airspace was violated and the U.S. would have just [publicly] ignored what was going on, because there would not have been anyone sitting in a prison. There are a lot of exercises where you can ask how history could have been different."
None of this is to say that drones present straightforward solutions to international relations problems. They may present the appearance of low-cost military engagement, but as Lin-Greenberg underlines in the book, the effects are more complicated.
"To be clear, the remote revolution does not suggest that drones prevent war," Lin-Greenberg writes. Indeed, one of the problems they raise, he emphasizes, is the "moral hazard" that arises from leaders viewing drones as less costly, which can lead to even more military confrontations.
Moreover, the trends in drone warfare so far yield predictions for the future that are "probabilistic rather than deterministic," as Lin-Greenberg writes. Perhaps some political or military leaders will start to use drones to attack new targets that will inevitably generate major responses and quickly escalate into broad wars. Current trends do not guarantee future outcomes.
"There are a lot of unanswered questions in this area," Lin-Greenberg says. "So much is changing. What does it look like when more drones are more autonomous? I still hope this book lays a foundation for future dicussions, even as drones are used in different ways."
Other scholars have praised "The Remote Revolution." Joshua Kertzer, a professor of international studies and government at Harvard University, has hailed Lin-Greenberg's "rich expertise, methodological rigor, and creative insight," while Michael Horowitz, a political scientist and professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, has called it "an incredible book about the impact of drones on the international security environment."
For his part, Lin-Greenberg says, "My hope is the book will be read by academics and practitioners and people who choose to focus on parts of it they're interested in. I tried to write the book in way that's approachable."
Publication of the book was supported by funding from MIT's Security Studies Program.
