II. What are Drones?

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in military parlance, are unpiloted aircraft controlled remotely. Equipped with sophisticated sensors, they are used for reconnaissance and attack. When armed, drones are referred to as Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs).

Drones provide numerous benefits to militaries over manned aircraft. Most obviously, UAVs do not place a pilot in danger. In addition, drones have much longer flying times, or "loiter" time, than manned aircraft; some are able to operate continuously for more than 24 hours. This loiter time provides militaries with "persistent look"-the ability to observe the battlefield continuously. Such extended observation allows a military to distinguish better between the movements and patterns of civilians versus combatants.

Due to drones' small size relative to manned aircraft, and therefore limited payload, they typically carry small missiles.[10] These munitions have smaller warheads with limited collateral effects. For example, where a 500-pound bomb would destroy a house, a drone-launched missile can limit destruction to a specific room. Recent advances in drone-launched missiles have reduced the damage further by replacing the missile's anti-tank warhead with a fragmentation sleeve meant to destroy targets in the open, such as personnel or soft-skinned vehicles, while limiting collateral damage. Judging from the blast patterns and missile fragments found at the six attack scenes in this report, all of the missiles had an anti-personnel fragmentation sleeve.

The drone-launched missiles detonate above the ground, which creates a narrow, relatively shallow crater from missile parts not involved in fragmentation hitting the ground. The detonation of the warhead inside the fragmentation sleeve creates an expanding sphere of fragments that fly out. The fragments are composed of tungsten, a dense inert metal, and their heavy weight and small size (3 mm cubes) create a rapid drop-off in kinetic energy that keeps the area of effect relatively small-approximately 20 meters in diameter. The hundreds of pieces of cubic tungsten fragments in the missile's fragmentation sleeve provide the killing power, literally shredding their targets while puncturing thin metal and cinder block.

Drones carry an array of sensors, often combining radars, electro-optical cameras, infrared cameras, and lasers. These advanced sensors can provide a clear image in real time of individuals on the ground, with the ability to distinguish between children and adults. According to the United States Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol, which purchased Israeli-manufactured Hermes drones in 2004, the sensors can enable a drone operator to read a license plate number and determine whether a person on the ground is armed.[11] Infrared sensors provide imaging by day and night.

One Israeli drone operator who flew missions in Gaza during the recent fighting spoke about the sensors' visual capabilities. He told the Israeli online military journal Shavuz that he was able to detect clothing colors, a large radio, and a weapon:

We identified a terrorist that looked like an Israeli soldier. Our camera enabled us to see him very clearly. He was wearing a green parka jacket and he was walking with a huge radio that looked just like an army radio. We saw that he was not wearing an army helmet and he was hunching down with a weapon, close to the wall wearing black trousers. It was very clear to us that he was not a soldier.

We saw him leaving an explosive device at a distance of 100 meters from the [Israeli] forces along with a dummy. These kinds of cases make it clear for me that I must help my friends that are fighting on the ground.[12]

Israel's primary armed drones are the Hermes, produced by the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd., and the Heron, produced by Israeli Aerospace Industries. The Hermes can stay aloft for up to 24 hours at altitudes of up to 18,000 feet and has an array of optical, infrared, and laser sensors that allow the operator to identify and track targets as well as to guide munitions in flight. The Hermes carries two Spike-MR (medium range) missiles, sometimes called the "Gil" in Israel, produced by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.  The Heron drone, which can fly for up to 40 hours at 30,000 feet, has similar optics to the Hermes and can carry four Spike missiles.[13] In Gaza, Israel used both the Hermes and Heron drones armed with the Spike, though it may have also used other missiles.[14]

Israel's drone-launched missiles are incredibly precise. In addition to the high-resolution cameras and other sensors on the drones themselves, the missile fired from a drone has its own cameras that allow the operator to observe the target from the moment of firing. The optics on both the drone and missiles include imaging infrared cameras that allow operators to see individuals at night as well as during the day. With these visual capabilities, drone operators should have been able to tell the difference between fighters and others directly participating in hostilities, who are legitimate targets, and civilians, who are immune from attack, and to hold fire if that determination could not be made. If a last-second doubt arises about a target, the drone operator can use the missile's remote guidance system to divert the fired missile, steering the missile away from the target with a joystick.

Circuit boards and missile pieces found by Human Rights Watch at attack sites were consistent with a small missile such as the Spike. The missile pieces were inconsistent with either the anti-tank versions of the Hellfire or TOW missiles, both of which Israel also used during Operation Cast Lead, fired from Apache and Cobra helicopters. During the fighting, Human Rights Watch observed Israeli Apache helicopters carrying Hellfire missiles and Cobra helicopters carrying TOW missiles from the Gaza-Israel armistice line, and inside Gaza researchers found numerous Hellfire and TOW missiles and their parts, but Human Rights Watch did not observe any Israeli helicopters carrying Spike missiles. Some missile debris and missile components that Human Rights Watch found contained labels from Motorola, based in the United States, and MCB Industrie of France.

In addition, blast and fragmentation patterns at strikes investigated by Human Rights Watch strongly indicate the use of the Spike: typically a shallow crater with cubic holes peppered throughout a radius up to 20 meters and cubic tungsten fragments lodged in many of the holes. During the 2006 armed conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, Human Rights Watch found similar missile pieces and blast and fragmentation marks at the site of an attack on two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances, which wounded six medical workers and three patients.[15]

The fragments that Human Rights Watch found at four of the sites investigated in this report, and fragments taken by doctors from the bodies of those wounded and killed, were all tiny metal cubes, approximately 3 mm on each side. Human Rights Watch took samples of the cubes and missile parts from two of the attack sites and sent them for analysis to the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Oslo, Norway.  The IFE reported that the cube was a metal alloy consisting primarily of tungsten, along with traces of nickel and iron.[16] A weapons expert from the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt, FFI), Ove Dullum, also analyzed the samples and reviewed the IFE test results.  He concluded, "The weapon used in the attacks was a guided anti-tank missile with sensors and other equipment to precisely hit its target, and was most likely a Spike missile."[17]

Hermes and Heron drones both have video recording devices so that everything viewed by the drone operator is recorded.  As such, each and every Israeli missile strike during Operation Cast Lead would be registered on video.