Use of Low Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in non Lethal Warfare

Drone warfare is not limited to large UAVs that roam and search the territory where air superiority has been established. There exist a wide rage of solutions for smaller drones, often related to surveillance, accessing buildings remotely or dropping small munitions beyond the line of sight at locations that would otherwise be unreachable without large bombs being dropped from aircraft. There exist however a vulnerable target in warfare that has not as of yet been targeted by small drones, namely power lines and communication cables.

Small UAVs can be used to burn garbage off high power lines, this of course has a commercial use and these solutions are readily available for purchase. However, were one to deploy the same type of drone with a cutting tool, these drones can just as easily cut power lines and do so clandestinely at night. The drone can be deployed from a truck or car, retrieved after conducting a mission and deployed again. In other words is it a reusable weapon that can attack grid infrastructure and take power plants off line without so much as firing one shot to get attention. Fallen power lines take quite a while to restore, wires that are live are a natural obstacle and often start fires. Cutting the lines in multiple spots creates an obvious advantage.

Taking out communications that connect command centers and intelligence headquarters and doing so routinely and cheaply can mean the difference between winning or losing a war. Destroying power supply to adversarial factories can make them come to a halt. Stopping power and communication connections used by the regime bureaucracy, can keep people from being persecuted, falsely incarcerated, tortured, murdered and cremated, without so much as a notice to the next of kin, until years later after they lost all hope and gave up on ever seeing the missing.

Let us consider the Assad regime for instance laying sieges to rebel territory and having air superiority in the conflict with little to no defenses against air strikes on the rebel side. The Russians and the Syrian regime laid multiple sieges to cities, cutting off power lines, telephony and internet cables. When these are above ground, they can be attacked asymmetrically by low tech adversaries with commercially available drones. The cutting tool can be electric, or even a small welding torch and laser solutions can be deployed.

 In effect, this allows for non lethal siege to a territory's telephony, internet and electric power supply without holding the territory. The Syrian and Ukrainian theaters could prove an interesting testing ground for such weapons. The Russian side had no problem attacking Ukraine with cybernetic attack taking off power plants in the middle of winter, in case of these clandestine drone attacks, Russia's vast territory is an obvious disadvantage.

If we consider another scenario where an EMP weapon were to be deployed against an adversery, it would draw attention and the use of the weapon would be an immediate cause for casus belli. Were a number of small drones deployed to sever the nodes of energy infrastructure in an attack, it could leave entire cities without power, and thus communication networks could be overcome along with internet infrastructure, prior to a preemptive nuclear strike.

The solutions can vary in types of applications and uses. For instance, an EMP weapon would be an obvious no-no, if USA were to attack Russia on its territory, as it would immediately trigger a nuclear counter-strike, but if the American side were to deploy small drones to bring down the cell phone towers, by attacking Russian power supply and causing blackouts, their use as a weapon system aimed to defeat incoming cruise missiles could be overcome. An actor like USA which has stealth aircraft, could deploy fleets of such drones unnoticed. Other actors could rely on sleeper cells which can deploy such drones from trucks when triggered to do so. In America for instance, the infrastructure of mass mind control could be challenged and the population itself when released from the regime's attack, would very likely become pacifist and demand political change that ends wars of invasion. Like I said, possible applications are many, whether war, insurgency, civil war, or non-lethal domestic insurrection.