There is no sound worse than that of silent death.
Thus, with the abnormal buzz of the ear, he sees the end of his days Fadhil Ahmad Al-Hayali the vice Caliph of the Islamic State.
The car he was traveling on was incinerated by a Hellfire missile attack (HELicopter Launched FIRE and foRgEt missile - missile launches fires and forgets). The silent death has arrived, not even to say, shot by an American drone.
Fadhi Ahmad Al-Hayali aka Haij Mutaz coordinated the movement of weapons, explosives, vehicles and people between Syria and Iraq, and recently also dealt with operations related to the caliphate in the latter.
The analysts bring to the figure of Haji Mutaz the expansion of IS in Iraq, a great achievement if you are a terrorist in life but that risks turning you into the unknown recipient of a piercing head from 8kg.
The 18 August 2015, the drone delivered its special cargo rained from the sky, the hunter became prey just in the place where he felt safer. His home.
A perfect intelligence operation carried out successfully also and above all thanks to the use of remotely piloted aircraft. A must now inevitable on the skies of high-risk areas.
These small (but not so much) jewels of military technology are the children of teams made up of engineers and programmers who try in every way to make war less personal, to make it more intelligent and precise. On August 18th they succeeded and more.
In the night between 22 and 23 August, four suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in a raid carried out by an unmanned US aircraft in al Mukalla, a city in southern Yemen. The dynamics is almost the same as what happened a few days earlier: the four were in a car on the runway of the al Mukalla airport when they were hit by a missile launched by a drone that killed them instantly.
The raid follows a similar episode on Friday 21 August, where three suspected al Qaeda militants were killed while crossing the central province of Marib.
The United States is the only country to use armed drones in the skies of Yemen.
At the beginning of August, when we were preparing for holidays in Afghanistan, we looked at the sky waiting for the "silent death".
On the day of the 5 August, in fact, several American raids have conducted well 66 terrorists - 40 of Al-Quaeda and 26 of IS - to a better life with the use of armed drones and led by American bases on US soil.
For some decades now the drones have come out of the mind of the great dreamers who have designed them to become a tangible and fascinating reality. A sometimes inconvenient and certainly complex reality that we are refusing to deal appropriately in many ways, first and foremost the ethical - legal one.
The UAVs have been presented to the world as the great revolution that in effect they are for the military world; precise, infallible and lethal. The weapon of every army is considered by the insiders.
Starting from the universal assumption that an infallible weapon does not exist, we must also see the limits that a drone carries with it.
Unfortunately - and this will never change - the collateral damage associated with an aerial bombardment remains, the armed drone is a viable alternative to heavy bombers and airborne troops, but it is nevertheless a nice big project that should hit very small elements.
How to increase considerably the accuracy towards the human target, discriminating between innocent and guilty and still object of study for the insiders.
Anyone who thinks that UAVs are the 2.0 version of air warfare is wrong, the limits of these technological miracles are the same as those that characterized the first air battles. The third dimension, although more technological and precise, is not enough to win the war, it certainly allows us to obtain a great strategic and tactical advantage but not to win. There are many demonstrations from Vietnam to Yemen, passing through Somalia to Afghanistan.
The aviation has been attributed a magical aura of omnipotence, from the top the territories are controlled with a delicate intelligence system, but the actual and material control can not make a car.
What is essential to underline is that aviation - including drones - have a very strong dissuasive and deterrent impact.
Sometimes it is enough to take off some bomber to inoculate that terror of being always under fire to enemies.
In Basra - during the 2003 invasion - the bombing was so intense that even today children are traumatized and tremble at the thought that an aircraft could fly over their heads.
Before using a remotely piloted aircraft for fire operations, a very careful work of Human Intelligence is required to identify and hit the target at that most significant moment.
Despite the wonders that these very expensive toys can do, there are some political limitations that restrict their use in operating theaters. Especially for the United States, which is currently the only nation to use armed drones (other than surveillance drones) in the areas of operation.
Being in all respects comparable to fighter aircraft it is not possible for a UAV to overtake the airspace of a foreign country without the latter giving him the authorization. It would be equivalent to a declaration of war.
In highly destabilized countries without a legitimate government the problem of flying over a state air space is not a problem, Somalia knows something for example.
The 17 March this year an Air Force Predator was lost during a nightly survey in Syria, near Latakia.
Too bad that this operation turned out to be a close inspection of the strongholds of Assad instead of a raid to destroy the positions of the Islamic State. The flyover of the drone in an unauthorized airspace is a very serious violation of international law and above all of the concept of statehood of a nation, even if in a struggle like the Syrian one.
The increasingly complex discussions related to drones, however, are not only of a purely military nature.
The ethical implications - whether we like it or not we must use this term - the use of these technologies are many, without counting the psychological implications of those who use them.
The armed drones used for the abatement of human targets have made huge strides, are increasingly smaller, quieter and yet unreliable.
The mathematical certainty that the target has been identified by the medium is close to 100% but absolute precision does not exist.
We must consider that they are highly technological means that exploit sophisticated programs but that have nevertheless been designed by human and therefore imperfect minds.
The error of the programmers makes these machines fall into their turn and our biggest mistake is to give them a power - that of omniscience - that they do not have.
In the reality of the facts it has already happened to be with an armed and working drone close to the target with the latter who in turn was in the company of his family or in a very crowded place.
The ethical and moral dilemma is the following: "I save 10 or 100 and let go of my goal which in turn will bring me a significant number of victims or I kill a hundred including my target and save future lives?".
No one has ever responded to this crisis of conscience either the pilots of the bomber bombers of the second world war or the pilots - remotely - of the drones.
Precisely from the moral issues mentioned above derive the related problems that we would now like to expose.
As we have already mentioned, a goal before becoming such undergoes careful and meticulous intelligence work. Military analysts, geopolitical experts and politicians themselves confront each other on the acquisition. No one questions lawyers or judges, the decision-making process underlying the acquisition of a human target is actually a mini-trial without a jury or defense.
If someone determines that you are guilty (or innocent) they do so solely and exclusively on the basis of specific information reported to them. That person, before becoming a military target, was not found guilty by anyone.
The questions are: does all this conform to the concept of democracy that we are exporting? Does the end justify the means, always and in any case?
We can stay and talk about it for a lifetime, but any person with whom we will discuss the moral implications of drones will have his own opinion about it dictated by his personal vision of the world.
To these ethical - legal questions it would not even be right for them to answer the military or even the analysts, there are excellent ethics teachers and experts on the subject that would be good to rely on in the world.
Italy has been directly involved in the diatribe: "drone yes, drone no" with the death of our fellow countryman Giovanni LoPorto.
During the blitz of the US forces, the two hostages in the hands of the terrorists died, among them, Giovanni.
"Another collateral damage" some define it, but Giovanni LoPorto was a "damage" to consider for the work to be done correctly. But no, to wash a little 'conscience men accuse the machines once considered infallible.
But if the machines are infallible then what went wrong? The simplest and most objective answer is that the biggest mistake of these machines is its operators. The perfect drones on paper are governed by a decision-making center that is not as perfect, the human mind is in fact a subject that often misses the target and is a victim of its very nature.
The drone does only what is said and is used according to its design features, a drone is not bad or good depending on how we want to paint it in the news pages.
If a drone fails, it is because before him a real-life man has failed and therefore before putting an end to the use of drones we begin to think of using more qualified people for such complex machines.
The remotely piloted aircraft are for them definition "unmanned", simple implacable and impersonal instruments of death, driven by who knows how many thousands of kilometers away.
The reality is different, as always from the journalistic and scandalistic narration, drones are machines driven by men trained to do so. They do not take off on their own and do not make independent decisions, if they are ordered to shoot, that shoots.
A car can only be intelligent if the man uses it intelligently.
If for us Westerners - first of all civilians - the use of drones is above all a moral issue, as it is what advantages therefore a UAV offers to the military apparatus.
The first advantage is the cost. At a time when any decision is made aiming for absolute savings, the drone represents a perfect union between performance and costs. The money spent between design and purchase of the vehicle is expensive but automatically pays for itself because its use will require a smaller presence of soldiers on the ground and a consequent saving. In fact, the concept of drone arises precisely from the need to have a top-down control of the occupied territory, expanding the concept of intelligence dramatically.
Let's imagine a territory like the Afghan one, where urban areas are densely populated and urban planning leaves much to be desired.
The impossibility of passing through heavy and hyper-armored military vehicles through the winding streets is evident, opting for lighter vehicles risks being highly risky and falling victim to ambushes.
Absurd is to pass troops appiedate for the narrow alleys, perhaps densely populated. The need for constant and widespread surveillance is at the basis of intelligence, especially in highly asymmetric theaters such as modern ones.
So how to do it? UAVs are the answer.
Equipped with great autonomy and very high resolution shooting, the remotely piloted aircraft are sent to the previously difficult to access areas for surveillance from above.
Psychological deterrence is an important role played by massive surveillance from the air.
The awareness of being controlled every day, with millimeter precision, generates a different psychological dimension in the supervised populations.
The drone being a new technology also has a visible impact on the economy of the country that produces them. Italy is at the forefront in this sector together with other big European companies.
Alenia Aermacchi (Finmeccanica group) is building reconnaissance drones, in a team with the German Cassidian and the French Dassault Aviation.
In the 2013, Piaggio Aero Industries presented the new UAV P.1HH Hammerhead, an evolution of a turboprop twin-engine aircraft, for "surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance missions".
On site there is also the Italian killer drone (but it would be better to say European) Male - Medium Altitude Long Endurance - for long distance bombardments.
The project was considered highly confidential and extremely secret, never mentioned in the Defense's financial statements, until the end of last year.
The maintenance of these aircraft will obviously be of the construction companies that could branch over several Italian operational poles on Italian and European territory. This will lead to an increase in jobs and greater employment.
The second aspect to be evaluated is more related to the strategic sphere of military operations: the human component and public opinion.
The UAVs obviously do not need military personnel in direct contact with the threat limit the deployment of troops, so it also limits and above all the possible loss of human lives that has a major impact on public opinion.
Losing a drone is a negligible fact - despite the price - when a soldier dies, the nation stops, wonders, wonders. Questions arise from doubts and doubts arise from oppositions. No government would risk being questioned, being able to use scandalous means.
Although the human component is reduced to historic lows even the pilots of UAV suffer from a concrete problem of stress disorder.
This cognitive disorder derives from a doubling of the plans with which one relates to everyday life: a real and a virtual level.
A drone pilot is closed for several hours in a cockpit, knows that he is sitting on the "right" side of the world, but at the same time is aware of exercising his power in an unknown and distant part of the globe.
After his job - be it surveillance or attack - he returns home to his wife and children, or to his family in general. He is used to reading reality from his computer screen with which - as in a game - he takes victims and controls entire populations. In 2014 alone, about 3.300 operations were conducted in this way, by Predator and Reaper military drones, with 875 missiles and bombs dropped against the Islamic State in Iraq.
The difficulty of reading reality as it should be read, this live, with one's own eyes and the difficult work-family relationship creates an ever less manageable stress problem in UAV pilots.
When this stress becomes unbearable, because it is not adequately followed, it leads to voluntary leave.
Colonel James Cluff - commander of the 432nd, who manages drone operations from a base near Las Vegas - told NYTime: “The fact that our people make this mental shift every day, from thinking 'here, I'm going to battle. 'driving to stop for milk before going home from Walmart is putting pressure on families and on the drivers themselves.'
It seems that not even the establishment of the Human performance team, a team composed of a psychologist and a chaplain ready to help the riders at any time of the day, has served to nothing. A solution, obviously, not very effective given that the UAV pilots who took leave - in 2014 - from the US Army are numerically more than those trained for the same role.
Excluding the human implications of drone use, could we define this modern technology as "the perfect weapon"?
Versatile, relatively inexpensive and well protected, the drone seems to meet all the requirements that a weapon requires to be considered perfect.
However, Boeing is not of the same opinion and is employing huge resurgences to create an anti-drone.
High Energy Laser Demonstrator (HEL MD) is the first true military drone killer. Thanks to a contract by 36 million dollars with the US Army, the leading company in the aeronautics sector, we are already working on it for 10 years.
The latest tests at the Eglin Air Base in Florida have shown that the performance achieved nears the time of use in the field.
Its 10 kilowatt laser is able to break down drones and mortars, the operating autonomy is "unlimited" because in the prototype version mounted on a thinking vehicle it is sufficient to constantly feed the diesel tank of the generator. The lithium-ion super battery does the rest.
Since the designers' dream is to increase the power of the 50 / 60 kilowatt laser, it is likely that in the future we can talk about the possibility of intercepting missiles, artillery strikes and other long-range weapons.
To use it, only two operators are needed: one assigned to the aircraft and the other to the tracking and fire activities.
Boeing has chosen the most complex method to destroy a drone, there is a much more immediate and secure one: hacking.
A study by the Federal Aviation Administration has sounded the alarm on the possibility of IT incursions against civilian remotely piloted aircraft.
Unfortunately, this is a rather significant structural vulnerability, which can have important consequences.
You understand for yourself that in the case of a personal computer, the maximum damage that can be done is to steal data, for an aircraft the risk is that they will cause physical damage to other people.
Technically the problem concerns the control system of drones, which are managed by radio waves or wi-fi. An attacker could hijack the vehicle, taking control of it without leaving the operator an opportunity to intervene.
Different speech, however, for military drones. Even these, in fact, could end up in the crosshairs of hackers but the procedure is much more complex. In the event of a "hijacking" of a military garrison - for example a Predator - the damage inflicted would obviously be equal (if not greater) to the effort that was invested to hijack it.
Looking at the statistics, however, it is clear that the main problem of a drone is the drone itself.
Airplanes lost due to accidents far exceed those killed or hijacked. It turns out that half of the 269 Predators in the hands of the Air Force have been lost due to malfunctions.
The drones generally far exceed the 18 thousand feet of altitude, here are immune to small arms in infantry equipment but are perfectly traceable by a missile battery.
Once the stereotype of the infallible drone has been dismantled, given the inoculated stress towards the soldiers and the repercussions on the civilian population we should ask ourselves, but in the end do these drones really serve us?
It seems all beautiful and super-technological like in a film but the dream has to deal with reality, especially in our country.
Yes, we really need drones.
Starting from purely economic reasons - priceless cost / benefits - for the purely operational ones - versatility and protection - UAVs are the future of combat but will not replace the current techniques with which a conflict takes place.
Taking into consideration a problem that concerns our country from very close: the emergency landings and migrants.
Well it may be this emergency to benefit first of the services of UAVs.
In this context, drones would be an economic and optimal solution but always opposed by public opinion that it is not clear what they want.
The hypothesis put forward last year by the Renzi government was to make available to our country remotely piloted aircraft to destroy the boats of migrants even before they escaped from the Libyan coast.
An economic plan at the extreme limit but the main obstacle is that the United States should lend the weapon system.
The bases for the take-off of UAVs are not lacking in our country which from Sigonella to Amendola have teams of expert maneuvers and maintenance poles for operational efficiency.
Italy - directly involved in the trafficking of human beings - could be in the forefront in the use of drones for reconnaissance purposes to combat departures from Libya.
The 28 ° "Witches" group of the 32 ° Wing of Amendola's Air Force has cutting-edge technologies that today use to accurately monitor the areas of operation under Italian control.
The "local" Predators have already distinguished themselves in the Horn of Africa, where they collaborate to identify the pirate boats that rage off the coast of Somalia and in the Arabian peninsula with the international anti-Isis coalition.
Until last year, remote-controlled aircraft flew over the Mediterranean as part of the Mare Nostrum operation, helping to save many lives.
High-resolution movies have also made it possible to identify the smugglers and arrest them once they have been rescued on land.
Whatever the drones say to stars and stripes will continue to buzz in the ears of those who by profession sow terror and destruction.
Their use in an anti-terrorist key should be widely regularized in Italy, finally opening a clear and clear dialogue about it after decades.
Remember that there are no drones that perform actions independently, do not carry out missions for which they are not programmed, never take the initiative. The drones are just a scapegoat of human deficiency.
The use of these magnificent machines will depend above all on the clarity with which they will want to speak in the future in Europe and in the world with clear and univocal legislation that allows them to express themselves to the best of their technological capabilities.
Until that moment, the drones will fly over our skies in a blind and deaf way, bringing - to those who deserve it - the gift of death.
(photo: US Air Force / Defense / Boeing)
