My childhood fantasy is your future nightmare
As a child and adolescent, I made plastic model aeroplanes. A list extracted from recent memory amounts to over seventy aircraft. I think it all started about 1966 when I was nine or ten. To begin with, I imagined the models to be real aircraft flying daring missions during the Second World War, or as part of a reheated Cold War, but soon the imaginary adventures took an unusual, perhaps unique, twist. Those impossible fantasies of my yesterday have become the reality of your today, and perhaps the nightmare of your tomorrow.
It’s probable that my fascination for aircraft was seeded by boys’ comics, especially The Victor, which was delivered every Saturday, but the greatest influence on my childhood imagination came from television. My favourite programmes included the masterful marionettes of Gerry Anderson and the iconic sci-fi stories in Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray and Thunderbirds, all of which featured model vehicles that supposedly flew in the air or under the sea. Those models ‘flew’ on wires which could sometimes be seen – though more obviously on the people puppets than on the machines. My imagined activities for my plastic miniatures soon switched to that. I stopped imagining real missions with life-size aircraft and pretended that my models were their genuine size and actually flew, powered by miniature engines, so that they could be filmed for television programmes.
I fantasised that I ran a TV company and the models flew inside a giant studio, with model scenery on the floor, studio lighting overhead and banks of cameras in the galleries around the walls. As my education progressed and I gained some basic maths and physics, I understood the nature of the space that would be required and the size of the imagined studio grew exponentially, until I had to resort to a vast underground cave system to make the project vaguely viable. In addition to having working engines and control surfaces (and weapons) the aircraft had tiny pilots whose faces were cameras that relayed video images to controllers sitting in mocked-up cockpits. In the 1960s what I imagined was technically impossible. It is now your daily reality. It is modern warfare, and very soon it could be coming to a peacetime near you. Very near.
The Ukrainian military have revolutionised warfare with their use of drones. They vary in size, but many are only a little larger than the plastic models I made as a child. As technology improves, they are likely to get smaller. With these big boys’ toys they have destroyed not only personnel, infrastructure and buildings, but also tanks, artillery, ships, and full-size fighters and bombers. It has been compared to the arrival of the machine gun in World War One which, at a stroke, confined equine cavalry to the history books. I’ve grown up to be no fan of warfare on any scale, but good for Ukraine I say. But what has this got to do with me and you?
Some of the drones used are known as FPV drones (first person view). Just as with my imagined model aircraft, the drone’s onboard camera relays video images in real time to an operator metres or miles away. The pilot controls the aircraft to carry out reconnaissance or deliver its deadly payload. The Ukrainians are not the only armed forces to use drones. Their enemies do too, and across the world military units have been flying unmanned aircraft for some time. The thing is, the Ukrainians have accelerated and extended their use. Military innovation always has civilian implications.
Drones already play significant roles in civilian life. They are used recreationally but also professionally for photography, aerial surveillance, examining high structures, and even delivering your online order. Such drones will proliferate. They will get smaller, which means they can access more places. They may also be armed. You will not be safe, even indoors, if there is an open door, window or chimney.
Perhaps they will become as ubiquitous as mobile phones? Perhaps we’ll all have one, to act as a tiny guardian angel. You may take your own personal drone with you, to watch over you, to record or relay your movements. It could help to protect you: your comfort drone. The problem is that similar models will belong to those who seek to harm you.
The malignant drones will have cameras too, and perhaps they’ll carry blades, or bullets, or bombs. The predator drones will shoot down your protection planes, and then they’ll be at liberty to do what ever their remote pilots desire.
In order to escape, you might summon a driverless taxi, but once inside, how will you be sure that it is not being remotely driven?
And then, of course, there is a whole additional layer of uncertainty that we call autonomy.
As a child, I fantasised that model aeroplanes would bring airborne warfare into every home. I no longer harbour that flight of fancy.
I fear it is on final approach.
Meanwhile…
You can add to future fears.
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