Zachary Kallenborn
Following a November 2022 Pentagon report on China’s military build-up that used the term “uncrewed aerial systems,” the “uncrewed” adjective has become an increasingly fashionable alternative to the previously dominant “unmanned” descriptor. The term has been used in DoD, NATO, and congressional defense publications, by defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, and among popular defense intellectual authors—one well-respected analyst declaring, “Its official—now its ‘uncrewed,’ not ‘unmanned’ vehicles.” The concern appears to be that the déclassé “unmanned” terminology is problematic in today’s gender-integrated force. Representation matters, and unmanned vehicles excludes.
Although searching for more gender-neutral and precise alternatives to “unmanned” is not a bad thing—and “unmanned” definitely has its own flaws—replacing it with “uncrewed” does more harm than good. The problem is “uncrewed” vehicles have crews, and sometimes quite extensive ones. Failing to recognize the crewed nature of drones risks distorting the way we conceptualize them—and consequently risks inhibiting the way we plan for their employment and integration into military operations—while being needlessly confusing. Conversely, thinking about how the composition of drone crews changes over time is quite critical to understanding their long-term security implications.
In Ukraine, a first-person view (FPV) drone team typically consists of three to four people: not just a pilot, but intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance specialists, maintainers, and observers. These teams also maintain significant electronic warfare capability, both to ensure friendly drones keep flying and to provide countermeasures against Russian drones. In this respect, despite FPV drones like quadcopters often being thought of differently than much larger and more expensive, fixed-wing drones, they are not dissimilar. The US Air Force states that for the MQ-9A Reaper, “the basic crew consists of a rated pilot to control the aircraft and command the mission, and an enlisted aircrew member to operate sensors and guide weapons.” Likewise, in the United Kingdom, the Reaper requires “a crew comprising a pilot, sensor operator and mission intelligence co-ordinator.” Teams of intelligence analysts may also provide support, analyzing the reams of data the drones collect. So, if the Air Force adopted the new, in vogue terminology, it would find itself describing “the basic crew” of the “uncrewed” MQ-9A Reaper”—which makes little sense.
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