Pink and blue lights blink within the Danish sky. Is it a airplane, a satellite tv for pc, or a drone hovering overhead? Over the previous few weeks, increasingly Danes have been scanning the skies for mysterious flying objects, caught between curiosity and unease as sightings throughout the nation spark recent concern.
Drones have been sighted over airports and navy bases throughout Denmark. Air site visitors has been delayed, politicians have gathered for disaster conferences, and Nato has been known as on to behave.
We talk about drones in our espresso breaks, exchanging newly acquired professional information about flight heights and battery energy. We speak to our youngsters about “hybrid warfare”. And many people stroll round with an odd and eerie feeling that one thing within the sky is watching us.
Though Russia’s position within the latest drone incidents stays unconfirmed, the sightings come towards a backdrop of escalating tensions between the 2 nations, and simply after Copenhagen introduced it could purchase long-range precision weapons, drawing sharp threats from Moscow. Certainly, analysts have advised the drone flyovers might kind a part of a wider Russian technique to sow concern, check Nato’s defences, and erode Danish assist for Ukraine.
Learn extra:
How can Europe struggle again towards incursions by drone plane?
That monstrous stare
As a professor of tradition and expertise, my analysis focuses on surveillance, drones and the way we discuss battle. On this sense, surveillance from above is a story as outdated as time. Consider that godly “eye within the sky”, talked about by the Previous Egyptians and within the Bible. That celestial all-seeing entity with superhuman powers to determine whether or not it’s best to dwell or die, very like the drone itself.
This connection just isn’t solely highlighted in widespread tradition, comparable to within the title of the 2015 movie Eye within the Sky about navy drone strikes, but in addition by the navy business itself.
There may be, for instance, a US navy drone, Gorgon Stare, named after a monstrous determine from Greek mythology, most famously represented by the three sisters Stheno, Euryale and Medusa. The latter is thought for turning anybody who seems to be at her into stone. The Gorgon Stare is provided with many cameras and armed with Hellfire missiles.
But it surely’s not solely the assumed drone’s energy of hypervision that provides us the creeps. It’s additionally exactly its reverse characteristic: its invisibility. Though we’d see some dots and shadows within the sky, the drone pilot stays invisible. Who steers this Unmanned Aerial Car (UAV)? Who controls it – or does it even management itself? It’s deeply rooted in our human instincts that once we really feel noticed by an invisible pressure, we really feel alarm and our nervous system enters defence mode.
On this context, one other Greek fable involves thoughts: Gyges. The Greek thinker Plato wrote in regards to the shepherd Gyges, who found a magical ring that would make him invisible. Armed with this new energy, Gyges turned king and ruler over the nation. Drones function in an analogous method to Gyges’s technique, as their pilots additionally stay hidden within the shadows.
Threatening sky
People are inclined to thrive on eye contact. However drones will not be about seeing one another. On the subject of combating, there isn’t any duel anymore. Drones don’t announce themselves. They disregard worldwide treaties, break legal guidelines of battle, and fly below the radar.
The drone flyovers in Denmark expose our vulnerabilities and erode the sanctity of our airspace. Many have been left questioning if we’re ready for this new sort of warfare. Nonetheless, inside all this hype about drones, we now have to do not forget that aerial reconnaissance has been round for hundreds of years. Consider kites, sizzling air balloons and spy planes.
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It’s additionally essential to level out that new applied sciences often spark public unease. The primary automobiles had been met with nice anxiousness and concern. Electrical energy was seen as one thing supernatural. These examples don’t goal to normalise the excessive ranges of drone exercise we’ve seen over Denmark, or the sentiments of concern and uncertainty these aerial automobiles have induced.
However by taking a look at how new applied sciences have been considered traditionally, it opens up area for vital and nuanced dialogue about their societal implications and the way we navigate their presence in our on a regular basis lives.
The historical past of surveillance from above reveals us that human unease with aerial reconnaissance is nothing new. However in in the present day’s local weather of geopolitical rigidity, drones are greater than symbols of technological change – they’re markers of the delicate stability between visibility, energy, and belief. And proper now, that stability feels extra precarious than ever.
This text was commissioned with Videnskab.dk as a part of a partnership between it and The Dialog. The Danish model of the article is right here.
