惊！连这些国家都拥有了武装无人机

2月初，尼日利亚空军轰炸了博科圣地组织（Boko Haram）在该国西北部的一个后勤基地。此次空袭本身并没有什么特殊之处。最近几个月来，尼日利亚空军已经对该军事组织发动了数百次空袭。但在这次轰炸中，尼日利亚空军首次动用无人机。

对很多人来说，这个新闻的爆点并非尼日利亚军队首次使用武装无人机进行实战，而是这样一个非洲国家的军队竟然也拥有武装无人机。尽管美国、英国和中国这些军事强国拥有武装无人机是人所共知的事实，但很少有人知道尼日利亚、南非和索马里也拥有武装无人机。巴基斯坦和伊朗已经分别在本国境内将武装无人机投入实战。另外，至少有十几个其他国家也公开宣称正在发展武装无人机技术。此外，正在秘密制造或购买武装无人机的国家更是不可胜数。

在过去18个月，“武装无人机俱乐部”的成员国至少已经达到两位数，这在很大程度上要归功于价格更便宜、比美国无人机技术更容易获得的中国技术。

那么，目前到底有多少个国家已经拥有了武装无人机？这的确一言难尽。它取决于我们怎样定义“武装无人机”。简短的答案是，至少有10个国家已经拥有武装无人机，而且这个数字很快还要大得多。

新美国基金会去年发布的一份报告显示，目前拥有武装无人机的国家包括美国、英国、中国、以色列、巴基斯坦、伊朗、伊拉克、尼日利亚、索马里和南非。此外这份名单上还有两个非政府组织——伊斯兰抵抗运动（哈马斯）和黎巴嫩真主党。

当然，大家要注意“武装无人机”和“绑着手榴弹的航模飞机”之间的差异。在国际军火市场上，一款飞机的航程和载弹量可以说是最重要的影响因素。根据军控协议，有些无人机是禁售的，而有些则不在军控的范围内。

举例来说，美国空军MQ-9“捕食者”无人机能够长途奔袭几百英里，向地面目标发射“地狱火”精确制导导弹。这种大杀器与那些绑着一颗遥控制导炸弹的小型航模飞机显然就不是同一种工具。而如今，“武装无人俱乐部”不仅在低端增长，而且在非常高端的领域也在增长。

2015年11月，美国国防部批准将MQ-9“捕食者”无人机技术销售给意大利，使该国成为继英国（2007年）之后第二个获得美国空军主流无人机打击技术的国家。差不多就在同一时期，西班牙也宣布将在未来某个时间点对自己的MQ-9无人机机队进行武器化升级。另据报道，加拿大空军也有意购买一款武装无人机，不过目前西班牙和加拿大都尚未获得美国对该技术的出口许可。

美国能否开放武装无人机技术的出口许可，是决定未来武装无人机将怎样繁荣发展的一个重要因素——特别是它将决定尼日利亚、伊拉克和巴基斯坦等国的战场上将出现哪种无人机的身影。美国是导弹技术管制协定（MTCR）的签约国——1987年，在冷战即将结束之际，以美国为首的一些国家自愿签署了这份旨在控制巡航导弹技术扩散的军控协议。

MTCR协定要求签约国对能够飞行185英里以上、载重超过1100磅的航空技术采取“强力否决推定”原则（意思是，如果不能证明你的用途是不违背禁运条例的，则推定为禁运范畴）。虽然该协定签定时主要针对的是巡航导弹技术，但它也将许多大型的长程无人机技术包含在内。

美国是MTCR的签约国，而中国和以色列等国却并未签署MTCR。这不仅损害了美国的无人机产业（包括军用和民用），同时也使中国成为一个极具吸引力的无人机供应国。以色列虽然也出口无人机技术，但出于自身安全考量，以色列在出售武装无人机技术时更加谨慎。

目前关于中国武装无人机的价格信息极少。据分析人士估计，中国制造的彩虹－4无人机的价格大概只有它所仿制的美国MQ-9“捕食者”的四分之一。另外，从中国购买武装无人机也不会碰到那么多监管方面的麻烦。

这就是武装无人机出现在尼日利亚、巴基斯坦和伊拉克等战乱地区的原因之一。这些国家都购买了中国产的彩虹－3或彩虹－4无人机。据报道，去年阿尔及利亚空军在评估彩虹－4无人机的过程中，有两架失事坠毁，不过我们并不清楚在此事之后，阿空军是否继续执行其采购计划。另据报道，沙特阿拉伯和阿联酋也购买了中国产无人机，因为有关军控协议禁止他们从老买家美国那里购买该技术。

康奈尔大学政府学系副教授，武器扩散与国际安全问题专家萨拉•克雷普斯认为，中国产无人机的兴起，正在将国际武装无人机俱乐部分为两个层次。其高端是美国及其少数盟友，他们拥有卫星、全球数据链和海外军事基地等资源，使美国无人机具备了知名的“全球打击”能力。低端则是那些拥有中国产武装无人机平台的国家，这些无人机最远只能飞到离地面控制员几百英里的地方。

不过她还指出，航程有限并不意味着这类低端无人机的杀伤力有任何欠缺。对于许多正在本国境内与反叛组织交战的国家，或者主要以邻国为假想敌的国家来说，就算航程短了些，高科技元素少了些，也不是什么大问题，尼日利亚、巴基斯坦和伊拉克等地的致命空袭就是证明。中国产武装无人机作为世界上最受欢迎的产品，虽然在理论上不如美国货那么有效，但在实战中却锋芒不减。

好消息是，至少目前看来，那些已经将无人机投入实战的国家，都首先采用传统的载人飞机进行空袭。也就是说，尽管有人担心一些军事力量拥有武装无人机后，对一些以前不会出动致命武力的情况，也会采用相对低风险的无人机进行打击，但至少从最近几个刚加入武装无人机俱乐部的国家的情况来看，这一幕并未出现。

克雷普斯表示：“我从2009年起就开始研究这个问题，我觉得这个问题实际上没那么令人担忧了。比如从英国的经验上就可以看出，他们对无人机的使用还是相当严格的。对于卷入武装冲突的国家来说，武装无人机只是他们的工具箱中的另一个工具罢了。它并不是‘终结者’。”(财富中文网)

译者：朴成奎

审校：任文科

Last week Nigeria joined a dubious international clique when it bombed a logistics base used by the militant group Boko Haram in the country’s northeast. Though the airstrike itself was unremarkable—the Nigerian Air Force has conducted hundreds of strikes against Boko Haram in recent months—it was the first Nigeria has delivered via an unmanned drone.

For many, the news wasn’t that Nigeria had used a weaponized drone in combat for the first time, but that the Nigerian military has weaponized drones at all. While it’s well-understood that military powers like the U.S., U.K., and China possess armed drones, it’s less well-known that Nigeria, South Africa, and Somalia (most likely) have them as well. Pakistan and Iraq have both used weaponized drones in combat inside their own borders. At least a dozen other nations have publicly declared they are pursuing armed drone technologies, and countless others seek to discreetly build or buy them as well.

In the past 18 months the weaponized drone club has quietly grown to double-digit membership, largely thanks to Chinese technology that is both less expensive and easier to obtain than U.S. drone technology.

So how many countries now possess armed drones? The long answer is nuanced, depending on what exactly constitutes a “weaponized drone.” The short answer is at least 10, and soon it will be a far larger club than that.

According to a report the New America Foundation released last year, the list of countries that possess armed drones includes the U.S., the U.K., China, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and South Africa. Two non-state organizations—Hamas and Hezbollah—also make the list, though this is where the distinctions between “weaponized drone” and “model-aircraft-with-a-grenade-strapped-to-it” begin to become important, and not just in terms of tallying membership in the weaponized drone club. An aircraft’s range and the size of the payload it can carry has important ramifications in the international weapons marketplace, triggering international arms control agreements in some cases and not in others (more on that below).

Suffice it to say that a U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper capable of traveling hundreds of miles to hurl precision-guided Hellfire missiles at targets on the ground is in practice a very different tool than a small recreational drone crudely hacked into a remotely guided missile. The weaponized drone club is growing not just at the less-sophisticated end of that spectrum but also at the very high end as well.

In November, the U.S. State Department approvedthe sale of weaponized MQ-9 Reaper technology to Italy, making it only the second country to receive the U.S. Air Force’s signature drone strike technology (following the U.K. in 2007). Around the same time, Spain also acknowledged that it would pursue weaponization of its own fleet of MQ-9s at some undetermined point in the future. The Canadian air force reportedly is shopping for an armed drone capability as well, though neither Spain nor Canada has received clearance from the U.S. to import the technology.

That clearance is key to a larger trend in the proliferation of weaponized drones, particularly the ones now emerging in combat roles in places like Nigeria, Iraq, and Pakistan. The U.S. is signatory to something called the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR—a voluntary 1987 arms control agreement aimed largely at controlling the proliferation of cruise missile technologies as the Cold War came to a close.

The MTCR requires member nations to apply a “strong presumption of denial” on the sale and export of airborne technologies that can travel 185 miles or more and carry a 1,100-pound payload. Though signed with cruise missile exports in mind, the MTCR has ensnared many large, long-range aerial drones in its language as well.

While the U.S. is signatory to the MTCR, drone exporters like China and Israel are not. Not only has that hurt the U.S. drone industry (for both armed and unarmed models) in the global marketplace, but it’s made China a particularly attractive vendor. (While Israel exports its drone technologies, its security situation requires that it be a more discerning seller of weaponized drone technology.) Though pricing information is scarce, analysts estimate the price tag on a Chinese CH-4 drone isroughly a quarter that of the American MQ-9 Reaper it is designed to emulate. Buying weaponized drones from China also entails far fewer regulatory hurdles.

That’s one reason we’re now seeing armed drones entering combat in places like Nigeria, Pakistan, and Iraq, each of which operates Chinese CH-3 or CH-4 models. Two CH-4s reportedly crashed in Algeria last year during evaluation by the Algerian military (though it’s not clear if Algeria went through with its purchase after the botched demo). Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have reportedly purchased Chinese drones as well, as arms control considerations have thus far barred them from purchasing the technology from their usual weapons vendors in the United States.

The proliferation of armed Chinese drones is stratifying the weaponized drone club somewhat, says Sarah Kreps, an associate professor in Cornell University’s department of government and an expert on weapons proliferation and international security. At the high end of that strata there’s the U.S. and a handful of its allies that have the resources to sustain satellites, global data links, and foreign bases that offer the kind of global reach the U.S. drone program is renowned for, she says. Then there’s a lower tier that includes those countries operating Chinese-made weaponized platforms capable of flying only a few hundred miles from their ground controller.

That limited range doesn’t make the lower tier any less deadly, she says. For many countries battling insurgencies within their own borders or targeting the neighbor next door, a shorter range and fewer technological bells and whistles isn’t all that limiting, as evidenced by deadly strikes inside the borders of Nigeria, Pakistan, and Iraq. The fact that the weaponized drones most popular on the global market are theoretically less effective than U.S.-made drone hardware has not blunted their effect in practice.

The silver lining, at least for the time being: The countries that have thus far used armed drones are doing so in conflicts where conventional, manned airstrikes are already underway. That is, the argument that having armed drones will prompt militaries to launch relatively low-risk drone strikes in situations where they otherwise wouldn’t have used deadly force has not yet manifested itself among the latest inductees to the weaponized drone club.

“I’ve been working on this issue since 2009, and I feel like it’s actually become a little less worrisome,” Kreps says. “You look at the U.K. experience, for example, and they’re using them in pretty restrained ways. For countries involved in armed conflict this is another tool in their toolbox. It’s not Terminator.”