What was "possible" yesterday is now a low-cost proven
capability, and the consequences are far from predictable.
Predictably, the mainstream
media is serving up heaping portions of reassurances that the drone attacks on
Saudi oil facilities are no big deal and full production will resume shortly. The obvious goal is
to placate global markets fearful of an energy disruption that could tip a
precarious global economy into recession.
The real impact isn't on short-term oil prices, it's on asymmetric
warfare: the coordinated drone
attack on Saudi oil facilities is a Black Swan event that is reverberating
around the world, awakening copycats and exposing the impossibility of
defending against low-cost drones of the sort anyone can buy.
(Some
published estimates place the total cost of the 10 drones deployed in the
strike at $15,000. Highly capable commercially available drones cost around
$1,200 each.)
The attack's
success should be a wake-up call to everyone tasked with defending highly
flammable critical infrastructure: there really isn't any reliable defense against a coordinated
drone attack, nor is there any reliable way to distinguish between an Amazon
drone delivering a package and a drone delivering a bomb.
Whatever
authentication protocol that could be required of drones in the future--an ID
beacon or equivalent--can be spoofed. For example: bring down an authenticated
drone (using nets, etc.), swap out the guidance and payload, and away it goes.
Or steal authentication beacons from suppliers, or hack an authenticated drone
in flight, land it, swap out the payload--the list of spoofing workaround
options is extensive.
This is asymmetric warfare on a
new scale: $20,000 of drones can wreak $20 million in damage and
financial losses of $200 million--or $2 billion or $20 billion, if global
markets are upended.
If it's
impossible to defend against coordinated drone attacks, and impossible to
differentiate "good" drones from "bad" drones, then the only reliable defense
is to ban drones entirely from wide swaths of territory.
So much for
the lightly regulated commercialization of drones.
What sort
of light bulbs are going off in the minds of copycats? It doesn't take much
imagination to see the potential for mayhem--and without sacrificing your own
life. I won't elaborate on the possibilities here, but they're obvious to us
all.
The range
and payload of low-cost drones is limited. The big drones can fly hundreds of
miles and carry hundreds of pounds of weaponry, but these can be targeted by
radar and conventional ground-to-air missiles. So-called hobby drones skimming
over the rooftops (or deserts or forests) are difficult to shoot down,
especially if the attack is coordinated to arrive from multiple directions.
Small hobby
drones may only carry 3 KG (roughly 6 pounds), but how much damage can 3 KG of
high explosives cause? The answer is "considerable" if the target is
flammable, or lightly shielded electronics.
Larger
commercially available drones can carry up to 20 KG or 40 pounds--more than
enough explosive capacity to take out any number of targets.
Defense and
intelligence agencies have no doubt war-gamed the potential for coordinated
drone attacks, and the world's advanced militaries are already exploring the
potential for self-organizing "drone hordes" of hundreds or even
thousands of drones overwhelming defenders with sheer numbers. The success of
the oil facilities attack proves the effectiveness of much smaller scale drone
attacks.
Put yourself in the shoes of
those tasked with securing hundreds of miles of pipelines carrying oil and
natural gas around the world. What's your defense against drone attacks? A.I.-controlled
or remote-operated gun towers every few hundred yards, along thousands of miles
of pipelines? Human patrols covering the entire pipeline 24/7? The cost of such
defenses would burden the defenders with enormous costs without providing 100%
reliable security. (Guards can be bribed, remotely operated guns can be
overwhelmed by an initial wave of cheap unarmed hobby drones, etc.)
It's
obvious there are no low-cost, effective defenses of thousands of miles of
pipelines. (Recall that the Saudis depend on seawater being piped hundreds of
kilometers into the desert to inject into oil wells to maintain production.
Taking out these water lines and pumps would cripple production, too.)
The only effective way to limit
drone attacks is to ban all drones and institute a shoot-on-sight policy in
restricted areas. But that will not negate the potential for coordinated drone
strikes or drone attacks on remote facilities.
The
mainstream media will be under permanent pressure to downplay the consequences
of this attack, but the cat is out of the bag: the Black Swan is a drone. What
was "possible" yesterday is now a low-cost proven capability, and the
consequences are far from predictable.
This
unpredictability alone should unsettle markets, as the risk of future
asymmetric warfare drone strikes just increased to a degree that is difficult
to measure or hedge.
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