A broad-sweeping view of the security environment throughout the Asia pacific region – and therefore relevance of technologies like UAVs to a number of foreseeable strategic scenarios – came from Adm. Premvir Sara Das, a retired Indian naval officer who is now head of a maritime security co-operation group concerned with Asian and pan-asian affairs. Adm Premvir scoped out the trends: moves away from nation state actor influence to non-traditional threat concerns, sectarian insurgencies and asymmetric strikes - the day to day concerns faced by managers of today’s overall security environment. But he’s thought hard about UAVs and believes that while they are a key part of the equation there is risk ahead. ‘The time may be coming when they have to be evaluated on their cost benefit analysis basis,’ he says.’ His thesis – or one of his thoughts – is that the environment faced by UAVs operated today by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan is a relatively benign one (in that there is no counter-threat by the insurgent actors) and that wrong conclusions about their effectiveness could result. Not enough work has been done for the Admiral’s taste on survivability and understanding what it could mean in a more coercive hostile operating environment. One result he foresees: maintaining a mix of manned and unmanned systems is the choice for military services now and well into the future.

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