NEWSWEEK.COM 25
School of Policy and Government and a research
affiliate with the University of Maryland’s Uncon-
ventional Weapons and Technology Division of the
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism
and Responses to Terrorism. He has also served as
a national security consultant and contributed to
the U.S. Army as part of its Mad Scientist initiative
on the future of warfare. “Drones are definitely ca-
pable of causing mass casualties,” Kallenborn tells
Newsweek by email.
“Growing drone technology also increasingly
allows drones to be flown autonomously or in
collaborative swarms,” Kallenborn says. “That in-
creases the damage potential significantly. Imag-
ine a terrorist air raid: a group of drones dropping
bombs on a concert or stadium crowd.” Even more
damaging, attackers could vastly multiply casualties
by employing weapons of mass destruction, Kallen-
born warns. “Drones would be highly effective de-
livery systems for chemical, biological, radiological
and nuclear weapons,” he says. “Drones could, say,
spray the agent right over a crowded area.” Kallen-
born adds he is “also quite concerned about drone
attacks on airplanes, because aircraft engines and
wings are not designed to survive drone strikes.”
But he also says that “who the attacker is mat-
ters a lot,” adding that “a big limiter” for worst-case
scenarios “is the ability of terrorists to acquire the
chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agent,
which they have historically struggled with.” It
would be difficult, he says, for a militant group to
acquire both the material and manpower to fly a
swarm-sized fleet while avoiding detection.
“But that limitation is not an issue for state mili-
taries,” Kallenborn says. “Militaries have the resourc-
es and technology to make truly massive swarms
that could rival the harm of traditional weapons of
mass destruction, including small nuclear weapons.”
Even well-funded militaries face obstacles, how-
ever. “Not only is such a weapon massively powerful,
it would be quite difficult to control,” Kallenborn
says. “If you have 1,000 drones working together
without human control, that’s 1,000 opportuni-
ties for failure. And even more, because in a true
drone swarm, the drones talk [to each other]. As
we’ve seen with COVID vaccine paranoia, misin-
formation can spread easily even among beings far
smarter than an algorithm-guided drone.”
Notwithstanding their operational challenges,IN AUGUST 2018,
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VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT
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