The Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Contemporary Armed Conflicts – Selected Issues

Abstract

Armed conflicts which have been taking place since the end of the Cold War are characterized by, inter alia, the increasing scale of the use of unmanned means and systems, especially unmanned aerial vehicles. Scientists dealing with the history of technology look for the beginning of unmanned aerial vehicles not only in the time of the Second World War, but even earlier, going back to the beginnings of aviation. Undoubtedly, however, the development of unmanned aerial vehicles took place during the Cold War and resulted directly from the experiences of armed clashes in Vietnam, the Middle East and analyses of the hypothetical course of a Third World War. The armed conflicts initiated by the Arab Spring in 2011 and Turkey’s participation in them, the fighting in NagornoKarabakh in 2020 and the conflict in Ukraine have once again demonstrated the growing role of unmanned aerial vehicles used for military purposes. It is worth taking a closer look at the role of unmanned aerial vehicles in the aforementioned armed conflicts and try to answer the question whether they are a miracle weapon like the Excalibur, or rather an element of a more complex system involving the ability to reconnaissance, precision strike and electronic warfare? This issue is all the more interesting as not only United States, Israel, Turkey, and China are producers of effective unmanned reconnaissance and strike systems. This type of modern weapon system is also manufactured in Poland. It has been positively tested in the conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine and during the crisis on the border of Belarus and Poland in 2021.