Editorial: Drones should be kept on Govt radar

In a relatively short time, remote-controlled drones have made a massive impact. They aroused debate when they were used to kill al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Yemen. Even more controversially, the British police have proposed using them for the surveillance of homes thought to house criminals.

More prosaically, they are seen as handy for work as diverse as fisheries patrols, drug trafficking, and preventing illegal immigration into the United States. Clearly, they are a tool of the future. It is little wonder, then, that the Defence Force is keeping a "watching brief" over their development.

New Zealand's interest in these unmanned planes centres on two uses. The first are hand-launched drones small enough to be carried on soldiers' backs. Several armies use these for "over the hill" observation.

The New Zealand Army has developed its own version, the Kahu. It appeals as something that would be extremely helpful for troops in Afghanistan. Additionally, drones have an obvious applicability to the monitoring of this country's exclusive economic zone and neighbouring waters for illegal fishing boats and search and rescue work.

New Zealand's economic zone is the fourth-biggest in the world. Patrolling this, and the world's largest search and rescue area, is mainly the responsibility of the Air Force's ageing Orions and the four inshore and two offshore boats built for the previous Government as part of the Project Protector fleet. While the patrol boats add much to that capacity, the sheer size of the task underpins the attractiveness of drones, some of which could spend up to 32 hours in the air, send back video images, and roam as far as Antarctica.

That attraction, which will only grow larger as technology advances, raises questions about the defence spending of the previous Government. It did not fully recognise the significance of the early drones and a trend that now sees the US Air Force training more drone operators than fighter and bomber pilots. Instead, a total of $350 million was committed to a rolling upgrade of the six Orions to improve their surveillance capabilities. Yet these aircraft are more than 40 years old, and an increasingly fraught proposition. An additional $323 million was spent on the Navy's patrol vessels, which, like the Orions' upgrade, have encountered more than their fair share of problems.

It should be noted that remote-control drones are not, and may never be, the complete answer to the difficulties raised by an economic zone that extends 370km from the shore. In the first instance, cameras and sensors will never monitor an area as well as a trained pilot or observer. Secondly, drones have a mixed record. In Afghanistan, they have proved vulnerable to extreme weather, a strong consideration in local conditions. Also, more sophisticated drones of the sort that would be required by New Zealand for patrolling its waters are not cheap. This has held up their deployment by the US Coast Guard. Cost will also be a factor in a country that has only recently committed large sums to patrolling its economic zone by more traditional means.

Nonetheless, consideration must be given to drones in the upcoming Defence White Paper that will shape the function and resources of the armed forces. It cannot be otherwise. Their usefulness has been underlined by the number of countries keen to lease drones from the manufacturers, thus bypassing a years-long purchasing process. The Defence Minister says he does not want that White Paper "turning into a shopping list". Perhaps so, and perhaps there is not yet sufficient cause to equip the armed forces with drones. Their time, however, is surely not far away.