Developing drone technology is a critical factor in defining people's daily lives, commercial services and relationships, and more importantly, the military power capacities of states. With their ever-increasing usage rates, drones have become an element that affects the transformation of the commercial and military sectors beyond being a technological tool that brings many benefits and concerns. In addition to many positive features, drones are now far beyond an exciting tool; they bring many physical and cyber dangers. With the contribution of many other developing technologies such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence, drones have become highly effective tools.
Drones, which can be produced in entirely different sizes and can be used for many other purposes, offer a wide range of uses, from photography at weddings to the destruction of a tank in military operations. Thanks to the drones, which gained the capacity to carry weapons with the help of developing technology and started to be called armed unmanned aerial vehicles, it has become possible to hit the target by controlling these vehicles from kilometres away without sending soldiers to the conflict zones.
The development of drone technology, which started to be used in the military field with the United States' first use in the conflict area, has been accompanied by the motivation to use it in military operations ever since. While drone technology was a kind of observation tool used for target identification and intelligence gathering, today, it is a tool that has reached the capacity to attack. Drones, which are still used for surveillance operations and target destruction, have become the new actors of the arms race between states, which significantly affect the course of conflicts with their ever-increasing capacities. Of course, military conflicts are not the only use of drones. The use of drones is increasing daily in many areas such as cargo transportation, entertainment shows, search and rescue activities in challenging and hard-to-reach geographical areas, border security, forest fire prevention and fire-fighting.
Drones promise a wide range of uses, some of which are very casual, such as the delivery of food orders, and some are critical for many businesses and transactions. Equipping vehicles with drones and using a guiding tool to guide the driver in rugged terrain or poor light environments are just a few of the advantages it offers. In their current state, drones provide the opportunity not only to streamline or speed up some processes but to change the way work is done radically.
Drones, which can eliminate the need for human labour, offer the opportunity to stop the human factor in delivering a package from one place to another. It makes it possible for the courier on duty to make this delivery from the computer. Moreover, it is not very unlikely that drones equipped with artificial intelligence, which can eliminate the need for a human to control the drones, will be able to make their deliveries. As in every stage of developing technology, the concerns of people losing their jobs to these technological tools can be expressed at this point, but this is not the main focus of the discussions on drones at the moment. In fact, the ability to provide courier services through drones is one of the most straightforward features of their capacity.
The widespread use of drones, especially in the military, raises many concerns. There are serious concerns and debates, whether drones flying over the city skyline with minimal dimensions violate people's freedoms or a drone carrying weapons or explosives can cause a massive massacre.
In general, when we look at both the time when the debates arose and the concern at the focal point of these discussions, we see that the criticisms of unmanned aerial vehicles are primarily on their ownership status, not on these devices or their capacities. Today, in many countries, a license document is required for the use of drones that are over a specific size and have the ability to carry something. Many solutions are sought in order to prevent the problems that may arise through these tools, which anyone who wants can have at very low fees. This license obligation put into practice is required to prevent crimes and unwanted situations that can be committed through drones. In addition, drones have become the source of many radical changes and significant concerns with their use on the battlefields. The biggest factor in the emergence of these concerns is who owns it, that is, who is the user, rather than the opportunities offered by these technological tools, which make it necessary to reconsider even the International Law of Armed Conflict.
These technological tools, which enable the reduction of terrorist incidents and the destruction of terrorist groups without sending any soldiers to the conflict zone, can also be used by some terrorist groups to organize terrorist acts in military or civilian areas. Drones are rapidly moving towards becoming a new generation of war machines that can be easily controlled remotely, can easily overcome existing defence methods, and even have the capacity to identify and destroy targets with the help of artificial intelligence. There is currently no effective defence mechanism against the sudden appearance of drones ready to attack with explosives in swarms over a city. These tools lead to a change in the classical perception of power. In today's world, where countries are racing to develop drone technology, similar to the nuclear arms race, these efforts mean the search for something more deadly.
These tools can help prevent conflicts as a deterrent, depending on who owns them. Or they can become one of the most effective means of unstoppable terrorist acts for both military and civilian elements. After all, having an unmanned aerial vehicle is not as complicated and costly as a nuclear weapon. All these possibilities show us that a series of legal and international regulations are essential, from producing these unmanned aerial vehicles to their sales. In addition, the development of defence tools against drone attacks is significant to prevent them from becoming an unstable force.
Drones, capable of producing results that may vary depending on who owns them, seem to continue to be at the centre of criticism as a vital power.
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