An UN-Manned Misconception: A Case for Unmanned-Aerial-System Support to Peacekeeping Operations

An UN-Manned Misconception: A Case for Unmanned-Aerial-System Support to Peacekeeping Operations

By Kyle Amonson

At the heart of every peacekeeping operation is the peacekeeper, the populace, and the mandate. In an international community that is currently supporting 12 United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) across three continents, with over 97,000 peacekeepers, it is imperative we ask ourselves if we are fielding the appropriate technological advantages to mitigate risk in the pursuit of regional peace and stability.[1] One key capability found in nearly every military and police force across the globe is the drone (the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV), or unmanned aerial system (UAS), when considering the entire package. While the UAS cannot replace the interpersonal relationships of working alongside a populace during a PKO, it can provide a variety of critical capabilities to revolutionize peacekeeping and humanitarian relief.

The thesis of this article is that the UN has a proven track record of successful UAS integration to add value for UN Force Commanders. However, many leaders in less developed countries are apprehensive to the application of UAS, not realizing that UN UAS are employed in the same ISR capacity, and held to the same standards, as the more expensive fixed and rotary wing assets. In a resource constrained environment, UAS capabilities should be prioritized among mission budgets, and can significantly buy down cost in areas where manned aviation is not affordable or realistic. Additionally, as the role of the UAS expands, the UN needs to take a realistic, policy-based approach to information management. This will ensure unmanned assets are operated in a legal and ethical manner, and in a way that does not infringe on the privacy of the populace. This article will begin with an overview of the current UN UAS utilization in the 21^st century, transition to a benefits-based analysis as a case to deploy and employ UAS alongside peacekeepers, and conclude with an acknowledgement of the pitfalls, considerations, and counterarguments for use of unmanned capabilities.

Successful UAS Employment in Support of Peacekeeping Operations

The deployment of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) in the DRC is contributing to situational awareness for the entire mission. We will continue to work closely with Member States in the roll out and use of UAS to ensure peacekeeping is an information-based endeavor. Beyond purely military aspects, making better use of existing and affordable technologies for peacekeeping as a whole is one of our priority areas in the year to come…

• Statement by Under-Secretary-General Hervé Ladsous to the Special Committee on PKOs,

24 February 2014

To discuss the origins of UAS in UN PKOs, it is important to recognize the difference between individual troop contributing country (TCC) capabilities that are self-deployed independently alongside peacekeepers, and the separate contract-based programs fielded through the UN Procurement Division and deployed to a UN PKO. This paper will largely focus on the contract-based programs, while the benefits, pitfalls, and policies will apply to both contract-based and TCC assets.

The emergence of UAS within PKOs began in the early 2000s. While the capability was welcomed as a method to support the mandates, it was problematic in the sense that the UAS were self-deployed by TCCs without significant UN Department of Operational Support consideration. Because these initial UAS were not formally considered by the UN, the mandate did not contain policies supporting their use, or consideration from a legal, ethical, rules of engagement, or privacy aspect. The initial informal nature of UAS application in PKOs caused friction, as any disruptive technology applied to an unstable PKO would. Notable uses were in support of MONUC and MINURCAT, with the capability rotating out as TCCs handed over mission responsibility.

In 2012 the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations formally announced their intent to integrate a UAS capability for future PKOs, and by January 2013 they identified MONUSCO as the priority for support.[2] On 31 July 2013, the UN Office of Central Support Services, Procurement Division, awarded Selex ES, an Italian based technology company, a $53 million USD contract to provide three years of UAS support to MONUSCO, focused on the Kivu provinces. This contract, and the follow-on support to MONUSCO, was the first formal UAS support package for a UN PKO. The Selex ES contract provided three Falco UAS consisting of the aircraft, operators, ground control stations, and logistics equipment. Their primary role was information gathering and surveillance.[3] Their deployment was set for December 2013, and a mere eight months after contract approval, by April 2014, the UAS system was fully operational in the DRC.[4] Throughout the conflict, the Falco systems were used to provide real-time full motion video (FMV) and gather intelligence to monitor the situation on the ground, with the overall goal of protecting civilians.   

This initial deployment was not without controversy, as neighboring countries associated UAS platforms with the precision strike capabilities employed in the Middle East and, as Rwanda’s deputy UN ambassador told Reuters, "It is not wise to use a device on which we don't have enough information. Africa shall not become a laboratory for intelligence devices from overseas."[5] Rwanda was not the only country to express apprehension. Multiple European countries, and UNSC members such as Russia and China, initially opposed the use of UAS in PKOs, citing concerns ranging from state sovereignty to intelligence management and dissemination. Additionally, key contributors to the mission still remembered the brief period in 2006 when the MONUC peacekeeping force TCC-deployed surveillance drones, and inadvertently crashed one, resulting in civilian casualties.[6] However, as the conflict progressed in the DRC, key opponents to UAS deployment eventually understood the utility in their use for information and surveillance.

Karlsrud and Rosen stated that the “MONUSCO drones” represented a defining moment in the history of UN peacekeeping and aerial surveillance.[7] For the peacekeepers on the ground, this new capability provided immediate effect. For the policy makers and UNGA nations…this capability provoked numerous questions regarding ethical use. However, the utility of UAS was recognized, and in 2015 the African Union deployed UAS to Somalia as part of their PKO in support of their peacekeeping force (AMISOM, now ATMIS). AMISOM leverages UAS, particularly micro-UAS due to the low cost, for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).

In 2015, only one year later from MONUSCO’s UAS deployment, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon requested unarmed UAS support for peacekeeping missions in South Sudan (UNMISS).[8] However, South Sudan vehemently opposed the use of UAS in the country, citing that they did not have a need for the capability, in addition to security concerns associated with potential photography of their military facilities.[9] The UN now understood the utility of UAS, but the new barriers to progress were government consent to support the mandates. For many, the “drone,” regardless of size or stated use, was still seen as a military asset, loaded with missiles and sensors, violating sovereignty, privacy, and prepared to strike.

Nevertheless, modern PKOs continue the proliferation of UAS as budgets and host nations allow, with recent applications in Mali, Nigeria, and South Sudan.[10] The current focus is MINUSCA in the Central African Republic, with the UN currently seeking “five to nine vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drones capable of rapid flight in challenging environments, and equipped with optical and infrared sensors of sufficient resolution to distinguish fighters from civilians, or the heat signature of a vehicle at night.”[11]  

Currently, many UN contracts are still utilizing the original Italian based Falco drones. However, the UN Procurement Division is now expanding their contract requests, currently assessing MAG Aerospace, a US based company, that the African Union is utilizing for ISR. In addition to pilots and UAS logistics, the UN is pursuing personnel to process the immense amount of data collected, a challenge for any UAS operation, military or civil. The current overview of UN UAS classes is below:

Figure 1: UN PKO UAS/RPAS Table

Source: Guidelines - UN Use of UAS Capabilities

As the UN increases comfort and capability in the application of UAS, countries hosting PKOs must develop trust in the UN’s use of these assets. This trust gained by many positive actions can be lost by one. However, the application of UAS in PKOs is not nearly as controversial as the past 10 years would imply. UAS are currently employed in an ISR role, the same UN ISR role that rotary and fixed with aircraft have been for decades. To make the case even less complex, UN UAS are not armed, meaning that much of the apprehension is merely a misunderstanding. In addition, the UN already has a robust standardization and inspection program for both manned and unmanned aviation as a role of the Aviation Programme within the DOS. For the UN Aviation Programme, this was a simple extension of the existing standardization requirements based in fixed-wing ISR. Several of the clear benefits of UAS are below.

Benefits of UAS Operations

1. Improved Situational Awareness

“With the use of the drone images, we want to provide a new level of mapping to strengthen our analysis of the context.”

- UNHCR External Relations Officer Benoit Moreno

ISR can provide real-time FMV that drastically increases the effectiveness of peace support operations. In Dr. Walter Dorn’s book, “Keeping Watch: Monitoring, Technology and Innovation in UN Peace Operations,” he noted that “ground-level surveillance is obviously indispensable, but there are distinct advantages to using observation from above. Aerial and ground surveillance are complementary.”[12] With better information, peacekeepers can make better decisions with greater clarity. In addition to monitoring armed groups and detecting potential threats, Andrew Harper, head of UNHCR’s Innovation unit, noted the use of UAS in settlement mapping for IDPs.[13] In various PKOs, the numbers of IDPs can be in the tens of thousands. PKOs can, and have, used UAS to identify the required support for the displaced populace, create and manage camps, and assess environmental impacts to the associated areas.

Figure 2: Sayam Forage refugee camp in Niger

Source: UNHCR

            The map above is an example in which UN personnel used UAS to track over 250,000 personnel fleeing from Boko Haram. They used this imagery to identify, provide, and emplace a full spectrum of life support. In Burkina Faso, Alpha Oumar, head of the UNHCR field office stated that “aerial views and camp mapping can help reshape our ability to respond to short-term and long-term needs. For instance, we could track the evolution of the locations of the shelters and the movements within the camps, but also document the evolution of the environmental context and the available natural resources in and around the camps.”

2. Reduced Risk to Personnel

UAS provide PKO leadership the opportunity to decrease risk to force and risk to missing in environments that pose a threat to peacekeepers. The UN Operations and Crisis Centre reports state that, since 1948, 4,266 UN peacekeepers have died in the line of duty. Of those, 1,108 have died through malicious acts, averaging 15 peacekeepers killed a year (with 25 in 2021 and 29 in 2022).[14] Eliminating risk in high threat areas is unavoidable. Peacekeepers must have a presence on the ground and interface with the populace. However, UN leaders can mitigate risk through both UAS based ISR and decreasing personnel in locations conducting any task that could be supported through UAS. The mere presence of UAS in an area of operations is also a deterrent to violence. Leveraging UAS to decrease risk to personal can save lives, decrease cost, and make UN PKOs more palatable to potential risk averse TCCs.

3. Logistics Capability

UN PKOs are typically conducted in less developed countries with underdeveloped infrastructure. PKOs can leverage UAS to provide logistics, be it sustenance or medical supplies, to hard-to-reach, high threat, or austere locations. Currently, many of the UAS in use by the UN and troop contributing nations are configured for sensor optimization and are not capable of carrying sizable loads. However, increased loads may be an option as the UN looks to expand their UAS program. In a PKO, even one vaccine carried by UAS to a previously inaccessible location could mean life or death for those in need. The UN does not currently have cargo-based standards for UAS, but this would be as simple as correlating fixed and rotary wing standards to the UAS capability within the UN aviation regulatory regime.[15]

Considerations and Drawbacks

            Beginning with the initial TCC use of UAS in PKO, and continuing through the contract use of UAS, countries, to include the host countries, often vehemently opposed the use of UAS to support the mandate. Much of this concern was mere misunderstanding, and the PKOs earned trust in time. However, nations had, and still have, concerns regarding the lack of UN UAS standardization and policy regarding privacy, ethical use, legality, and access to the information gathered. Adding the layer of complexity introduced with TCC UAS only exacerbates the potential pitfalls.

1. Abuse

Weapons of any type are NOT to be used from UAS in the United Nations Peace Operations.

• United Nations Aviation Unit Manual, 2021[16]

Among the many opponents to the use of drones in PKO, a common theme is the potential for abuse through use of force. At this time, the UN is not seeking an armed capability for UAS. However, the UN has used attack helicopters in support of mission mandates, so there is already a precedent for armed aerial assets (Mi-35s in MONUC and AH-64s in MINUSMA). The UN must recognize that as TCCs bring new capabilities to the missions, and UAS contract providers introduce multi-role options, the potential for misuse and abuse of remotely piloted armed assets has to be discussed, particularly in the case of civilian operation associated with the UN contracts. Just as UN leadership has to assess the pros and cons of arming peacekeepers, they will have to address the same considerations for arming UAS. However, if the capability is requested, the UN already has regulations and SOPs for armed reconnaissance and close air support written for both fixed and rotary wing assets.[17]

2. Privacy

The discussion on privacy is two-fold. One, what are the ethical rules of what the UAS can observe and where? This gray area could quickly devolve into a distrust by the populace based on their perception of the UAS, even if they know it is unarmed. Second, and transparent to the populace, is based in the storage, classification, and dissemination of the massive amount of data collected. Is the data available to any UN country? Is it available to only those supporting the mission? Is it available to the host-nation government? Where and how is it stored? What is the cyber security protocol for how it is stored? If a TCC brings UAS assets do they have sole ownership of the footage?

These are the several of the critical questions that emerge as the string of privacy is pulled. As urgently as South Sudan could have used the drones, as early as 2011, the country’s leadership was opposed to their use primarily based on security concerns. In the modern security environment, countries such as Russia, associated with the Wagner Group, and China, with an increased presence in many less developed countries, continue to expressed concern with the use of UAS and accessibility of the data.[18] However, and once again, the concept of ISR based privacy concerns was neither introduced with UAS or unique to UAS, the UN already has standards and performance-based inspection criteria created for manned aircraft, and applied to UAS.[19]

3. Legality

Recognizing the potential abuse and privacy concerns, Michael Yekple made the point in a brief at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center that the “national jurisdictions of UN’s current peacekeeping engagements are those whose legal regimes are not robust as those in developed countries capable of protecting populations against privacy violations associated with surveillance drones. The legislative and legal lacuna raises questions of whether the UN would not be handed a carte blanche which could be abused to violate the rights of populations whom they are supposed to protect.”[20] This line of thinking is correct in that the many of the countries would not have adequate laws to protect against potential abuses by UAS. The burden for ethical and appropriate use would fall on the UN. However, this is a worthwhile undertaking for UN self-regulation if it truly is identified as a priority for fielding and should be emphasized in any UN ISR operation.

Recommendations

            The benefits of UAS use in PKOs are clear. However, the UN is still in its nascent stages of applying this capability and requires several key steps in order to ensure success during future operations and program scaling. I briefly identify three recommendations:

1. Education

The greatest barrier to progress in the UAS program is misunderstanding. While the application of UAS for UN PKO may be a novel concept, the UN has been utilizing manned assets for the exact same mission tasks for decades. While the amount of data collected may vary, based on airborne endurance, the ISR missions conducted are essentially the same as fixed or rotary wing aircraft, which are also depicted in the UN Peacekeeping Mission Military Aviation Unit Manuals.

The UN has to recognize and address an educational aspect in the application of UAS. First with the host nation government. The host nation needs to understand the intent, capabilities, and policies associated with the UAS. They need to be comfortable with the program. Second is the populace. The relationships between the Peacekeepers and the populace are paramount. If the populace does not know whether the UAS is armed and does not know whether it is violating their privacy or not, the presence of UAS will breed distrust and erode the human factor of the PKO, regardless of existing standards internal to the UN.

2. Standardization

In 2000 the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) notified the UN DPKO that they should establish a formal standardization office and procedures for their PKO air operations. Currently the UN Air Transport Service serves this role. The Convention on International Civil Aviation does not apply to military operations, so UN operations are guided by the UN Peacekeeping Missions Military Aviation Unit Manual and their own regulations.[21] The hierarchy of layered UN Aviation regulatory documents is below.

Figure 3: UN DOS Aviation Regulatory Regime

Source: UNDOS Aviation Manual, 2020

Additionally, the UN has a robust SOP for Planning and Conducting Assessments and Advisory Visits (AAVs) that specifically addresses UAS while conducting the designated tasks of ISR, communications relay, and search operations as depicted in Annex K of the DPO AAV SOP.[22] The UN is currently taking the application of UAS very seriously and is conducting deliberate analysis on the implementation of a robust standardization and inspection package.

3. Delineation

The UN needs to clearly delineate which missions will receive contract UAS support and which are receiving TCC UAS support, regardless of UAV class. Based on the capability provider, the standardizations office would provide clear guidance through the lens of the mandate. Additionally, if the UN transitions to armed UAS operations, they should shift to a military operated controller for weapons approval and release, even if the civilian contractor is the primary pilot. The UN cannot accept the risk in added complexity of contract based UAS support also having to manage use of force to support the mandate.

Conclusion

            UAS can provide a relatively low-cost capability and the ability to revolutionize UN peacekeeping. Countries around the world are beginning to understand that UAS are not only weapons of war but instead can assist in a humanitarian and peacekeeping capacity. However, the use of UAS is a fine line for utilization in a responsible and safe manner. The UN’s Aviation Programme within the DOS is continuing to develop robust and detailed UAS SOPs to ensure success and support their mission to “deliver safe, secure, effective and efficient aviation services.”[23] Additionally, and one aspect that the UN has shown that they are consistently successful in, is transparency. If the UN can continue to engage with key stakeholders and ensure transparency and accountability, with a collaborative approach alongside a safe and ethical flight program, the UAS capability can continue to save lives, decrease cost, and increase the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping operations.

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