From Hollywood to airbases and backyards: why 2018 will be the year of the drone

Advances in technology, combined with sensible and easily enforced regulations, set the stage for a boom in pilotless aircraft

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Drones fly above the statue of Lord Laozi during the Laojun Mountain Drone Convention in Luoyang in China's central Henan province in August. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:49am, 30 Dec 2017Updated: 10:49am, 30 Dec 2017

Last month, a fresh diplomatic row broke out between two Himalayan neighbours as Chinese state-run media reported that an Indian drone crashed in Chinese territory. The crash site appeared to have been in or around Doklam, where soldiers from the two sides were locked in a months-long face-off in the summer. It might seem like a one-off, but the crash points to an increase in the use of drones for both military and commercial purposes in recent years. Next year, however, looks set to be a period of great expansion in their use, making 2018 the breakout year for drones.

Drones were used for light shows in Hong Kong last year. Photo: Felix Wong

So, what is a drone? Most simply put, it is a pilotless aircraft. If you like acronyms, you might call it a UAV or a UAS, but whatever you call it, the drone has been in use for more than 100 years. The first time drones were used in large numbers was in 1944, when the Germans hit on the charming idea of launching large numbers of V-1 flying bombs at the British mainland. They were about the size of a small plane and had a jet engine, but could not be steered. My father saw one, its underside painted light green. It flew over his house on Leswin Road in London, glided silently over the next two streets and crashed on the third.

An electric company employee in Ivory Coast uses a drone to inspect high-voltage power lines. Photo: AFP

Drones to love

Drones are now used by armed forces in greater numbers than ever before, as well as by Asian spy agencies like India’s RAW (this is one of the few areas where India has the upper hand on China), but civilian use is even more widespread. Many pioneering companies and individuals use drones to supplement their business processes. These include inspection services (of monuments, pylons and power cables, oil rigs, solar farms, etc), media, journalism, fire and rescue, law enforcement, crop-spraying, bomb detection, flood monitoring, wildlife watching and cinematography, map surveys and anything else you can think of. You do not need to be a company or organisation to own a sophisticated drone: individual enthusiasts can buy a very capable observation drone like a DJI Phantom 4 for as little as US$2,000 (HK$15,600).

Wider drone use can bring great benefits to humanity. The Christchurch earthquake of 2011 unfolded a large area of the South Island of New Zealand and destroyed the coastal road to Kaikoura; in the aftermath not only were the roads blocked by whole hills that had collapsed, but telecommunication masts were down and cellphones rendered useless. Drones were deployed to film inaccessible areas, their findings alerted emergency teams to the whereabouts of people who were stranded. Lives were saved.

Drones to fear

The sinister side to drones – such as being used to kill alleged terrorists – has been much debated, but there is no slowing of their development as weapons. In the US, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding research on micro-drones of many types.

An MQ-9 Reaper drone at a US military base. Photo: AFP

Some are intended to hide in plain sight, for example, by being disguised as moths. The US Air Force has already tested micro-drones at its Wright-Patterson base in Ohio. They can be armed, and relatively small ones can still carry a charge equivalent to an L109 grenade.

At least 50 nations, as well as terrorist groups, possess drones.

Off-the-shelf drones can also be deadly. Criminals have already tried loading a quadcopter with explosives, poison gas and remote-operated firearms. They have tried to deliberately crash them into targets, and used them to deliver weapons and drugs.

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Even when handled properly, commercial drones are insecure because they use unencrypted data links, which are vulnerable to hacking. You can lose control of them, even without hacking, if flying them in an urban area, because of higher electromagnetic interference created from the heavy use of communications equipment. Sometimes GPS signal can be lost due to masking by buildings.

A RQ-4 Global Hawk drone. Photo: Handout via Reuters

We shouldn’t be too scared, however. Some of the horror stories about drones bringing down passenger airliners are simply that: stories. You might remember the excitement in April 2016 when news media described a drone strike on a British Airways A320, which landed without damage. The investigation concluded it was probably a plastic bag, but not before much media speculation about the deadly dangers of drones at airports and predictions that fleets of aircraft would tumble from the skies as terrorists cackle with glee. This was all nonsense. According to Barry Harris of Proelium Law, a security-focused law firm, counter drone technology is already offered by specialist firms to companies and governments. The advanced products have been designed with military application in mind – such as the Anti-UAV Defence System (AUDS) made by the UK company Blighter Surveillance Systems – but civilians will benefit from this too.