The United States will keep a close eye on how countries use drones they received under new rules announced by the State Department this week that will allow for the wider export of armed and unarmed unmanned aerial vehicles, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said defense officials will work closely with the State Department to ensure that any nations using American-made drones do so consistently with international law and for purposes of national defense, and do not apply them for domestic espionage.
“We will have a role in what we call end-use monitoring, so I mean, we will have a role as well as the State Department, in monitoring the use of these things,” Kirby said, adding the U.S. government will also carefully evaluate which nations will be eligible to buy the drones.
“There are proscriptions here that will be in place for transfers of these systems, and each, as it is in any foreign military sales program, each case would be examined individually and very scrupulously before a decision got made to actually transfer,” Kirby said.
The State Department on Tuesday outlined a new policy that allows for the sale of armed drones to allied and friendly nations, saying that as other countries begin to operate military unmanned systems, the United States needs to ensure the technology is responsibly used.
The new policy would also be a boost to the U.S. defense industry, as the United States has only allowed a handful of countries to buy unarmed drones, such as variants of the Air Force’s high flying Global Hawk, built by Northrop Grumman [NOC].
Among the armed drones that could be made available are General Atomics’ Predator and Reaper, which have been widely deployed by the Air Force and CIA to target terrorists. They are equipped with Hellfire missiles.
The Navy is also in the process of arming its Fire Scout unmanned helicopters–also built by Northrop Grumman–with the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System (APKWS), a laser guided missile.
AeroVironment [AVAV] makes a small munitions-tipped UAV, a remotely piloted aircraft called Switchblade, which launches from a tube and is designed to smash into targets much like a missile.
The international market could be fertile ground for UAVs as the defense industry copes with declining U.S. defense budgets.
The State Department said it will apply “stringent standards” for the sale of military unmanned aerial systems and that they will all be reviewed on a “case-by-case basis,” and that the sales of sensitive technology will go through the Foreign Military Sales program, meaning companies cannot directly sell products to other governments.
The State Department said any sales will be compliant with the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime, and that it will operate on the notion of a “strong presumption of denial” of the sale, setting a high threshold for foreign governments to make the case for needing the technology.