On the Threat of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle as Weapon of Mass Destruction

Abstract

Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) has a capacity to cause death and destruction on a massive scale and considered the most critical threat to any nation. In the past, only a few nations known to possess WMD since deploying it can be very costly. On the other hand, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has secured it future since the cost of ownership is drastically lowered and it has been used in many applications including terrorist and insurgent activities. The problem is even more pronounced if the UAV is tailored to deliver WMD attack. We provide an insight to this matter as well as investigate crucial effects under various circumstances in which UAV is equipped with WMD. The key metrics in focus are affected entities and coverage area of the UAV flight. We employ several UAV flight patterns and observe the impact on these key metrics. We demonstrate, through simulation studies, how various UAV flight patterns put their toll on the key metrics under clustered distributed and uniformly distributed population.