The Journal. - Cheap Drones Are Transforming the Battlefield

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Cheap drones, once the domain of hobbyists, are now in high demand on battlefields. Following Hamas's attack on October 7, Israel has been flooding suppliers with requests for drones: it wants as many as possible, as soon as possible. WSJ’s Heather Somerville unpacks the benefits and perils of the use of off-the-shelf drones in modern warfare. Further Reading: -Israel Wants Inexpensive Drones. Chinese, American—It Doesn’t Matter.  -How the Technological Revolution in Ukraine Is Reshaping Modern Warfare  -U.S. Drone Startups See an Opening in Ukraine  Further Listening: -The Surprising Origins of Russia’s Drones  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our colleague Heather Somerville covers national security. And after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, she started hearing about some urgent requests coming out of Israel. People there wanted drones. Within 12 hours of Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7th, of Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7th, there were requests that were just flooding in from Israel to U.S. company executives, drone dealmakers,

all sorts of people in the U.S. drone industry asking for help, and they wanted drones. As many as possible, as quickly as possible. Drones. What kind of drones are we talking about? I mean, what we're talking about are commercial drones, to be clear. These are not the big old honking military lethal drones. These are drones that have traditionally been used for other reasons. Like the drones you could buy

at Best Buy or Target that I can fly around with the camera on top. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. You can get them on amazon.com. You can get them wherever. The requests were coming from the Israeli government, military officials, and even from everyday civilians over WhatsApp. They were asking anyone they knew to help get them drones. We don't want one or two drones. We want hundreds of them. We want them as quickly as possible. You know, the specifications. We don't care so much right now. Just get them over here. Why? Why did they want drones so bad? I think that there was a realization very quickly of the landscape where this war would take place in Gaza, this dense urban environment, tall buildings,

where this war would take place in Gaza, this dense urban environment, tall buildings, very crowded, these small drones that can fly a few hundred feet off the ground can be very effective. And so the adoption of small, inexpensive drones in modern warfare can't really be understated. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Tuesday, November 21st. Coming up on the show, how the consumer drone industry is reshaping modern warfare. Your team requested a ride, but this time, not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers.

Add your teen to your Uber account today. Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been used by major militaries like Israel's for decades. But the drones we're talking about today are a different kind of drone. They're the recreational kind, the kind you might have seen buzzing around the beach or a park. So these drones are small. Some of them are extremely easy to use. They're out of the box. You go to Best Buy, you open up the directions. And then others like those that are sold from some U.S. startups require some training, but people can figure them out.

U.S. startups require some training, but people can figure them out. And their main capabilities are they can provide very clear, very accurate real-time footage from the sky. It's not just hobbyists who like them. They're also used by local governments and businesses. They've been used by all sorts of police agencies, oil and gas companies, companies that operate dams and need like really good visuals that a drone can provide them. And it saves people from doing dangerous work and it can help search and rescue crews, firefighters respond to situations much more quickly. They are very helpful, effective tools. So how do these tools that are helpful and effective for hobbyists and photographers and businesses, how do they start to become used in warfare? We started to see some significant use of these drones in the Middle East several years ago

with conflicts in Syria and in Iraq. Terror terrorist organizations and other groups, they were able to launch effective attacks by strapping some grenade or other explosive on them and create some mayhem. And that's really when we started to see, oh, these little drones, they can have an impact in conflict. So these drones aren't just being used by big traditional militaries? No, no, not at all. And their origin in warfare is with small criminal groups, terrorist organizations that maybe didn't have significant resources or military heft. And what we've seen with small commercial drones is that they have, when utilized by otherwise under-equipped, under-resourced, under-trained groups, those organizations are much more effective. And they can wreak havoc on even strong, sophisticated militaries. strong, sophisticated militaries. It kind of reminds me in some ways of the AK-47,

like a sort of inexpensive, easy-to-build machine that really changed warfare in major ways because it allowed smaller groups to have more power and more influence because they could now suddenly get these really powerful weapons. Yes, that's exactly right. But it's not just ragtag groups that are using them. Drones are also being used by Ukrainian soldiers against Russia. The invasion of Ukraine really became the first war that is a drone war. Ukraine leaned heavily on and still leans heavily on small, inexpensive drones to wage their

battle against Russia. How so? How are they using them? They're using them in every way you can think of. They're using them largely to figure out where the enemy is. They're trying to figure out the next move by the enemy. They're trying to keep track of where the Russians are going and where they're coming from. And they're also trying to use drones to defend against Russia's use of drones. So if the other side has drones, you want these drones too. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th,

it also used drones. Hamas' strategy was drones and people. And they were not using, by and large, sophisticated drones. They were using cheap ones that they outfitted with explosives to do damage. So if these drones are becoming so important to modern warfare and Hamas was them, and Ukraine has been using them, why didn't Israel already have a bunch of them? Why were all these people scrambling to get them once the war broke out? It's a brilliant question for which I don't really have a straight answer,

except that there's a few things I can offer. One is that, as we have reported, Israel was really prepared for a different sort of war than what they got. And as I pointed out, if your enemy has these drones, you want to have them too. I also get the sense from my reporting that the more than 240 hostages that Hamas took from Israel created this need for a search and rescue effort that I think wasn't fully thought about in advance and was such a shock to the system that there was a thinking of

how do we get as many eyes in the sky as possible to figure out where these people are and figure out how to get them home. But a lot of the hostages are thought to be in these underground tunnels. So how would a drone help in a situation like that? Yeah. And to be clear, we don't know if these drones are actually in those tunnels. It is one possible use case. There are certain drones that have the ability to see and to navigate in environments that are pitch black and that are totally deprived of GPS and other forms of communications

and locate people through thermal imaging and heat sensing, basically. And those capabilities are also very helpful when searching in buildings, kind of looking around corners, getting into dense apartment buildings. That's really where having these sorts of drones can become extremely helpful to military leaders that are planning their next move. While drones are becoming more popular on many battlefields, they're not a perfect weapon.

And there are concerns about where many of these drones are coming from. That's after the break. Seth and Riley's Garage Hard Lemonade. A delicious classic with a vibrant taste of fresh lemons. The perfect balance of sweet and sour with a crisp, zesty edge. Welcome to The Garage, the place of refreshing hard lemonade. Available at the LCBO. Must be legal drinking age.

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primarily through its flagship company, DJI. The United States doesn't have a lot of drone companies, and that's largely because China just has put so many out of business. There's some in Silicon Valley along the West Coast in New York that build a small number of drones, primarily sold to law enforcement and various local agencies. But again, the numbers are very small. A lot of Chinese and American drone makers see warfare as a business opportunity. But China's flagship drone maker, DJI, says military combat is an inappropriate use of its products. of its products. DJI, the big Chinese company, is very uncomfortable with the reality that its drones are so widely used in conflict. And it has tried to put limitations on its drones getting

into countries where there's war, and it has export rules. It can't really control where its drones go, given they're sold on Facebook Marketplace and Amazon.com and Alibaba.com. They're everywhere. But it has said time and again, its drones are not supposed to be used in warfare. And there are good technical reasons for that. There are safety hazards. There are security pitfalls when you use a DJI drone in war. What kind of security pitfalls?

So DJI drones have beacons that basically mean it's very easy to track DJI drones electronically. And therefore, it is also very easy to know where the pilot is who is flying that drone and to make that pilot a target and take them out. And DJI says, well, this is why you shouldn't be using these drones in warfare. We didn't design them to be secure for this sort of environment. Now, Ukraine discovered this the hard way and had a lot of security problems and had a lot of pilots targeted when they were using DJI drones. And they figured out workarounds and hacks to make that less of a risk. But the fact of the matter is that they don't have the security and the protections that you would want if you're putting this vehicle into a combat zone. The DJI drones are also less sophisticated in the sense that it's very easy to jam them. If the enemy wants to jam the communications, which would result in the pilot losing track of the

drone, losing control of the drone entirely, it crashes and you lose it. And a study has shown that Ukraine loses something on the order of 10,000 drones a month. And part of that issue is how easy it is to take out some of these hobbyist drones that weren't designed for that environment. Another concern is the data. The U.S. government says China might be able to access information coming off drones that are made by Chinese companies. The U.S. certainly thinks there's a national security issue here. The Defense Department has for long banned use of DJI drones. There is proposed legislation that would create further

restrictions on federal agencies using Chinese drones. And there's a general perception by the U.S. government that DJI drones are a security risk because the Chinese government can gain access to the data that these drones collect and that there could be sensitive data shared with the Chinese government. DJI said its drones are secure and that the U.S.'s national security concerns are without merit. It also said it's not involved in shipping drones to Israel. Israel's Ministry of Defense didn't respond to requests for comment. The U.S. has taken some measures to discourage the use of Chinese drones, but it hasn't done much to support a domestic American

drone industry. And you talk to a lot of the American companies that are trying to build drones, and it's like, you know, it's like trying to build an iPhone in the U.S. It's expensive, it's slow, it's super challenging. And so that's why we're still in a situation where China, through its government subsidies and manufacturing prowess, it really continues to dominate this space. So is this just going to be another strategic industry that China has total dominance over? It's not that they're going to, it's that they do.

And they have for a while. And I think, Ryan, what's interesting is now we're in a situation where Chinese companies have a windfall every time there's a new war that breaks out. Chinese components become abundant in battlefields because China has successfully dominated this technology that was once really just for hobbyists and is now being used by militaries and terrorist organizations all over the world. It feels like we're just at the beginning of this new era of warfare where these small little drones are really going to be the front and center of a lot of future conflict. I think that's right. I think that, you know, Ukraine

really was a turning point in how militaries think about and are strategizing for the future of warfare. I mean, certainly the traditional big honking military equipment is still out there and still being used. But there's a lot of consideration and contemplation about how do we have more mobile, autonomous, intelligently powered fleets that are nimble, that can be mass produced quickly, and can be effective. That right there is the future of warfare. And so drones check those boxes. So yeah, drones are a cornerstone of modern conflict. And we're going to continue to see these drones, and especially Chinese drones, for the foreseeable future.

That's all for today. Tuesday, November 21st. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Yaroslav Trofimov. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.