How AI Killer Robots Won the Nagorno-Karabakh War
The new era of warfare is already here.
Somewhere in the sky above Nagorno-Karabakh a shrieking wail grows louder and louder. The sound is evocative of the infamous World War II Stuka dive-bomber as it careens downward to unleash its payload, but this isn’t a Stuka siren. This is an Israeli Aerospace Industries Harop kamikaze loitering munition. To those on the ground, it’s terror from the sky as they scramble for cover not knowing where the drone will detonate its 51lb warhead.
Across the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, drones have been causing mayhem. The IAI Harop drone is one of a growing number of autonomous weapons that provide access to modern weapons for countries that do not have major weapons manufacturing capabilities like the US, China, or Russia. The use of autonomous drones in the Nagorno-Karabakh region is the beginning of a new era in warfare. An era where autonomous weapons will dominate future conflicts pushing the boundaries of ethics and safety.
Now it’s right above us
For civilians on the ground in Nagorno-Karabakh, autonomous drones mean even more psychological pressure than they would normally have experienced during an armed conflict. Not only does the sound of the drones evoke fear, it is the omnipresent danger of a drone strike that terrorizes the inhabitants of the war zone. “It is the constant fear, the constant alertness that puts a heavy strain on us” said George A. from Stepanakert, one of the hardest-hit cities in the region. “You can never be safe. The drone strikes can come at any time of day or night”. Especially so-called suicide drones like the IAI Harop drone, who hover above their target and then dive and explode right into it, exert this constant psychological pressure.
Another Harop attack was captured from the ground by Russian journalist, Alexander Kots as he, according to his Telegram account on October 7, helped clear an unexploded ordnance in Stepanakert. “Drone in the sky over Stepanakert. Explosions are heard,” he writes in his Telegram post accompanying the footage. He and his partner ran for safety as the wailing of the diving drone grew with intensity. They sprinted from their car and took shelter down a tight alley between two buildings to wait out the attack. “I think it was going for an attack, but we can still hear the sound,” he says, breathless. “Now it’s right above us.”
The IAI Harop is a kamikaze loitering munition that, according to the manufacturer’s website, has both a “human-in-the-loop” or a fully autonomous function that homes in on radio emissions to track and attack autonomously. This “combat proven” weapon has capabilities in “detection, recognition, acquisition and attack of a wide range of high value target types.” The drone is launched from canisters to loiter in the sky for up to 6 hours where it waits for a target. It will either detect and attack a radar-defense system autonomously or an operator will remotely control the targeting and attack through the optical sensor.
The manufacturer’s promotion video for the Harop depicts the drone through its lifecycle. After being launched from a vehicle-mounted container, the drone flies off to the target area. Silhouetted against the sky, the Harop searches for its target. It locks onto the target ship and dives for the bullseye. From two angles, on-board the drone and from the ship, the video shows the Harop collide with its target followed by clips of the Harop exploding its warhead into target vehicles.
While not the only drone used in the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Harop is one of the most recognizable for its very public employment by the Azerbaijani military. Many videos have been released by the Ministry of Defense showing on-board cameras of Harop drones and Turkish Bayraktar TB2 Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs).
The Azerbaijani MoD has been officially releasing videos on their website as well as age-restricted videos on their YouTube account page that are recordings from TB2 and Harop on-board cameras. The videos from the TB2s show the moment it’s missile impacts its target from high above. Convoys, fortifications, and vehicles can be seen destroyed below in an explosion of smoke and fire. The Harop videos are shown from the point of view of the drone as it chases down a truck, a tank, or soldiers as they scatter, running away from the incoming kamikaze drone. The video cuts out mere feet from the target.
The age restriction is warranted as many of these videos are disturbing, but these videos, and similar ones showing success on the battlefield have been shared widely on social media
platforms such as Telegram where they are meant to encourage backing among the supporters and stoke fear in the enemy.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has shown just how effective drone warfare can be. If the sheer number of videos are to be believed, the Harop is among the most used in the Azerbaijani military. As Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, wrote on the RealClearDefense website, “each drone costs far less than a crewed platform or a fully reusable UAV.” With further development, kamikaze drones would be “a potential game-changer for land warfare.”
According to Rob Lee, of King’s College London, the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh confirms the Harop’s purported capabilities. “It’s showing they can knock out enemy air defense systems and it’s difficult to shoot them down.”
At relatively low cost and high-impact, it’s possible to see that future wars will be influenced by the successes of Azerbaijan’s investment in drone warfare. As technology journalist David Hambling notes, “other countries will be looking at who won and why and will be wondering whether unmanned systems ought to be the way that they should go.”
Although loitering munitions were featured heavily in Nagorno-Karabakh, weapons that can act autonomously are not new. From landmines to heat seeking missiles, autonomy has been a developing feature of modern weapons, but with the advent of increased capacity in data collection, rising processing power, and expanding algorithms, autonomy is seeing a golden age through machine and deep learning. Naturally, these developments will be enveloped into weapons research and development placing autonomy at the forefront.
“There is a lot of investment into drone-jamming systems,” says Hambling. Jamming the communication between the operator and the drone makes the standard UCAV inoperable. “That’s going to push autonomy forward,” because an autonomous drone does not require a radio connection.
Can the killer robots be stopped?
September 2020 saw the meeting of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which aims to provide rules for the international community on the protection of civilians and the needless suffering of combatants. The CCW includes restrictions on landmines and incendiary weapons.
According to Mary Wareham, the global Coordinator of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the CCW is “currently deliberating on developing a normative operating framework,” but they are not yet drafting a treaty. Wareham states, “dozens of nations seek a ban,” but the CCW meetings have consisted of discussions concerning human control over the use of force sparking debates on what is acceptable and unacceptable.
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots calls for a complete ban of fully autonomous weapons. Thirty countries, the UN Secretary-General, the European Parliament, private companies like Google and Microsoft and over 4,500 AI experts have joined the effort. The campaign’s call, according to Wareham, is for a preemptive ban on LAWS. “Regulations are coming,” she says, but the “issues are with consensus.” Major military powers are resistant to putting pen to paper, instead calling a ban “premature.”
Without a ban, LAWs appear to be an essential part of how modern warfare will be conducted. The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh was just a pre-taste of how autonomous weapons can and will be utilized. However, Mary Wareham remains somewhat optimistic. The current use of LAWS “is worrisome,” but she notes, “it’s never too late to regulate.”
While international advocacy organizations are busy drafting legislation against killer robots, LAWS are being used in warfare and, at times, against civilian targets. During the four-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2016, a Harop drone was reported to have attacked a bus full of Armenian volunteers in Martakert.
Mimicking that 2016 attack, on September 29th, 2020, the Harop attack also targeted a civilian bus. It took place within the Armenian border in Sotk, just 10km from the town of Vardenis. The damage caused to the bus can be seen in the video recorded on Facebook by Artsrun Hovhannisyan, the former press secretary of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia.
For anyone shocked about these images, there is ample reason for concern. Autonomous weapons are not going anywhere soon, and governments around the world have seen their effectiveness and fear-inducing capacity in the recent conflict. The sound of the stuka dive bomber appears to be back.
