By Federico Pinzón Arana
Since the US invasion of Afghanistan, as a result of the attacks of “September 11” (2001), the great military powers have chosen to use unmanned vehicles or aircraft (better known as “drones”) with the ultimate aim of expanding their geostrategic scopes in geo-politically complex scenarios to identify, spy on, and intercept high-value targets.
The term “geopolitically complex” spaces refers to sectors that are difficult to access and isolated or remote areas where operations of a military nature are carried out or where there is an enemy presence.
In their fight against terrorist organizations, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), essentially the Americans, the French, the English and the Turks, have carried out multiple operations using drones in anti-terrorist missions such as the attack on Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan (2011 ), the neutralization of jihadist cells in the Horn of Africa (Kenya and Somalia), and the hunt for different leaders of the self-styled “Islamic State” (Daesh or ISIS) in Syria and Iraq.
On the other hand, drones have also been used by Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to carry out operations against organized armed groups that operate both in border areas and in isolated internal sectors of the main urban centers.
In the South American context, Brazil and Peru are the most relevant actors in terms of the use of drones to safeguard natural and water resources. Since 2016, countries that share the Amazon basin, such as Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, have been developing joint projects for purely ecological purposes to safeguard the Amazon region from threats such as illegal mining, species trafficking, fires, and deforestation.
To achieve this objective, the aforementioned countries group together to promote and promote mixed cooperation mechanisms (both technical and financial) in programs such as the Andean Amazon Monitoring Project (MAAP). “The centerpiece of MAAP is the presentation of data and maps related to a new deforestation monitoring system in real time based on the analysis of satellite images”.
According to research carried out by the Association for the Conservation of the Amazon Basin (ACCA) and by the Office of the Special Prosecutor for Environmental Matters (FEMA) of Peru, the use of drones has been essential to obtain information on the areas where they are taken to carries out the multiple criminal activities that compromise the environment and the communities living in the Amazon basin.
In the context of security, defense and surveillance in the Amazon region, drones function as support aircraft so that satellites focus on very specific areas. In the same way, drones manage to capture movements and activities in real time in various environments, which allows an optimal performance of the logistical exercise of remote and digital satellite surveillance programs.
From the military perspective, both Brazil and Peru have focused on carrying out joint surveillance projects essentially for the Amazon region through the use of a complex satellite system backed by the use of drones which serve to identify and analyze movements, illicit operations and activities that take place throughout the jungles that Brazil shares with Peru.
On the other hand, Peru uses its drones to monitor the border areas that it shares with Ecuador and Colombia. In addition to that, it deploys from Lima, specialized drone management and control teams to tackle illegal mining that seriously compromises Peruvian biodiversity in the departments of Loreto, Madre de Dios and Ucayali (and some parts of Cuzco).
At the same time, in the Brazilian case, drones are used to a great extent for the surveillance of sectors with high crime rates located in large cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, particularly to supervise the favelas where the large Brazilian cartels of the drug. The Brazilian authorities have invested heavily in urban surveillance through the use of cutting-edge technology without losing sight of the importance of regions with wide jungle areas.
It is valid to emphasize that Brazil has been one of the Latin American actors that has most promoted the sector of the manufacture and use of drones for military and commercial purposes, since it has the Embraer air corporation, which has been in charge of closely monitoring the technical and development processes for drones.
On the other hand, in Colombia the first drones began to fly from 2005 in order to monitor military bases. To date, the armed forces have acquired other unmanned aerial vehicles such as the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900, manufactured by Elbit Systems of Israel.
More recently, the US Boeing Insitu Scan-Eagle arrived. Since the Colombian authorities chose to include drones in their inventory, the institutions responsible for supervising their maintenance and operation have been essentially the Ministry of Defense and the Colombian Aeronautical Industry Corporation (CIAC).
Contemplating the above, Ciac is dedicated to manufacturing unmanned aircraft with the capacity to carry out surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence tasks. However, for more invasive missions they may include electronic warfare equipment, signal interference, blocking of live data transmission and encrypted systems.
Currently, Colombia uses drones to monitor rural areas with difficult access, and above all; border areas, places where members of organized armed groups, migrants and other irregular associations transit. Both the Colombian academy and some companies have taken advantage of the great strategic boom that drones have had to develop new projects and various advances in terms of technological optimization and operational improvement.
Today Colombia wants to develop its own drone industry, which it develops and manufactures in the vicinity of Bogotá, where the most representative models are: the Iris UAV, the ART Quimbaya, the Atlante Plus and the Coelum-mini ART.
In contrast, in Bolivia, the army and air force have worked to strengthen their reaction capabilities through the use of drones since 2010. However, the efforts were purely investigative, being fostered in spaces of non-international cooperation between military institutions. and some national universities. Then, in 2014, Bolivia begins to receive technical support from Brazil in security matters to expand the scope and effectiveness of its precarious monitoring systems. The initiative to use drones in Bolivia was based on two particular pillars; border surveillance and security supervision in major cities.
According to the former Bolivian president, Evo Morales; Bolivia has acquired a series of relatively advanced drones (Typhoon H), which it obtains from a Chinese company due to bilateral cooperation agreements signed with the Asian country in 2017.
In order to improve the operation of unmanned devices, Bolivia purchased sophisticated communications equipment that allows guiding drones, encoding and encrypting information, and also improving the quality of communications to improve synchronization between drones and radars / monitors.
According to the Bolivian expert on aviation security issues, Francisco J. Triveño, Bolivia invests in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) due to the bordering tensions with Chile, the rise of drug trafficking on the borders with Argentina and Paraguay, and above all because of the arms race in Latin America to modernize, and improve the capabilities and margin of maneuvering of air defense systems.
In retrospect, it is necessary to clarify that the main advantages of using drones lie particularly in that they can spy and track high-importance targets in real time without taking greater risks. On the other hand, human lives are taken care of, as controllers and supervisors are generally at very safe distances without necessarily having to be in the theater of operations.
Ultimately, drones facilitate mission logistics and operations by identifying and tracin g targets across a geopolitical dashboard. In addition to that, drones are not easy to detect, as they do not emit high levels of sound in an open space like a combat helicopter or supersonic aircraft do, and can be kept below the level of radar perception. , since it can fly at very low altitude.
However, the use of drones has also manifested a wide series of disadvantages, although drones manage to detect targets in complex scenarios, they very rarely have the ability to attack or intercept enemy assets or personnel by launching remote-controlled missiles.
Therefore, the enemy can be detected in an “X” zone and can quickly move to an “Y”, so that espionage and identification work can be affected by not having long-term detection instruments, because at some point the drone will have to return to its original military base to receive special maintenance, while the enemy moves to another position.
Similarly, the use of drones requires a large investment, since such machines have highly advanced instruments and Global Positioning Systems (better known as “GPS”), which is why having a large fleet of drones comes at a price. very high given the maintenance costs and the training of the personnel in charge of controlling and maintaining them.
By way of conclusion, it is prudent to highlight that drones can be considered as military assets that offer a wide list of advantages from the logistical and, above all, geostrategic point of view. Because these extend the ability to detect, react and identify targets in inaccessible scenarios where threats are concentrated and are in maximum alertness. However, there are also a series of shortcomings directly linked to the real effectiveness that these devices can offer.
As supported by Natalia Suarez and Josefina Salomón, investigators on transnational organized crime issues for Latin America from the InSight Crime Foundation: “Although new technologies can provide many advantages in fighting criminal activities such as illegal mining, they cannot replace the need for long-term strategies against this activity and against the organizations behind it.”
Finally, it is clear that in the long term, the use of drones in the Latin American scenario will boom, given that many decision makers working in the political, commercial and military spheres place security as a priority on their agendas. However, many technical, tactical and strategic reforms are expected to be made to optimize the effectiveness of drones in all scenarios where they are used.
Of course, to achieve such objectives in terms of security and defense innovation, a significant investment must be made and fostering ties of international cooperation of a technical nature with geostrategic actors such as NATO members, Israel, South Korea, Japan, etc.
Author: Federico Pinzón Arana (Expert of International Relations and Foreign Affairs. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogota. Master in National Security & Defense of the National Army of Colombia. Researcher on issues of security, defense, foreign policy and contemporary armed conflicts at the Colombian Army Superior War College and at the Organized Crime Studies Foundation, InSight Crime).
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)