The Hand Behind Unmanned

Episode 8 (Bonus): Julia and Jackie Weigh In

Join Julia and Jackie in this bonus episode as they discuss what they’ve learned throughout the podcast, including what this means for the Trump administration and the future of defense innovation. Join Julia and Jackie in this bonus episode as they discuss what they’ve learned throughout the podcast.  Who are the new defense influencers that will shape America’s unmanned arsenal?  What does this all mean for the Trump administration and the future of defense innovation?

Episode 7: The Future Hands Shaping the US’s Unmanned Arsenal

The episode looks at what unmanned the US is currently buying and what it should buy for a war against China.  How is the US responding to unmanned innovation across the globe?  This episode looks at what unmanned systems the US military is currently investing in and then turns to experts to ask what they think the US should be investing in. These interviews highlight a debate between different characteristics of war—precision vs. mass, attrition vs. maneuver, quality vs. quantity, and argue that too little emphasis is put on how these systems allow states to manage the long term economic and political cost of warfare.

Episode 6: Autonomy Now! Ukraine, Iran, China, and the “Drone” Revolution

How will the US respond to new experimentations of unmanned systems? The US built an expensive, exquisite, and highly controlled inventory of unmanned systems for the wars on terror. What would happen to that arsenal when faced with a new political world of a rising China, an expansionist Russia, and a nuclear North Korea?  Enter today’s world where the unmanned investments of the war against terror may no longer feel relevant for the wars of today. As AI and autonomy advances, we are seeing new experimentation on the battlefield with small quadcopters, increasingly autonomous land and naval mines, cheap drones and cruise missiles, hypersonic ballistic missiles, and an increasingly crowded and important space domain.  How will the US respond? In this episode, we discuss Ukraine, China, and Houthi rebels and talk to those leading the ideas and decisions about technology in the American military.  How will autonomy shape the future of war and what should the US invest in?

Episode 5: War Against Terror – The Predator Age

The episode looks at unmanned systems and the global war on terror, focusing on the rise of the Predator and Reaper.  On September 11th, everything changed. James Roche, then secretary of the Air Force, cut all remaining bureaucratic tape and armed General Atomic’s MQ-1 Predator. Over the next two decades and combat in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the Horn of Africa, the US would fight for the hearts and minds of foreign publics with an increasingly prolific arsenal of remotely piloted armed aircraft providing persistent and pervasive intelligence over insurgents and terrorists across the world. The Air Force, the service of pilots, led the adoption of these systems.  But while this was a golden age for unmanned platforms like the Predators, Reapers, or space-based satellites, other unmanned systems stagnated: strategic missiles atrophied, tactical missile inventories dwindled, and anti-ship and anti-submarine munitions were de-prioritized.

Episode 4: American Primacy and the Information Revolution – Setting the Scene for the Predator

The episode looks at the rise of cruise missiles in the early information age, tracing a belief in military revolutions from the Gulf War to 9/11. It is 1989. The US has won the Cold War and is about to have a dramatic victory in Iraq.  Meanwhile, in the bowels of the Pentagon, a small office of ivy league elites headed by career bureaucrat Andy Marshall, introduces a new idea about the burgeoning information technology revolution in the American military. In what are called “revolutions in military affairs," these civilians predict a world of rapid, precise wars fought on the backbone of new technologies like unmanned systems.  These beliefs get a stunning endorsement in the Gulf War which ushers in a golden age for precision-guided munitions, cruise missiles, space-based navigation, and the birth of a small but promising company, General Atomics.