It would be interesting to also discuss the strategic implications of drone prominence. One thing that seems to have emerged is that drones shift the advantage to defense over attack. You can't occupy a territory with drones, but you can defend one.
I don't think it does one or the other. The ones with the most advanced drones in larger quantities will have an edge (along with all the other equipment).
Attacking with an overwhelming force of guided munitions gives the same edge as defending with them.
Yes, within the last few months Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to seize and hold enemy-occupied territory exclusively with drones. It is still small-scale, but that capability will only increase
I think we have seen that modern layered defensive layers can get overwhelmed by mass drone attacks. Israel may have the best such systems in the world and at some point; maybe 1000 drones or 5,000 drones, they can be overwhelmed and the "bullets" are expensive.
so not just defense. Ukraine has ground the Russians to a standstill But recently their long range "sanctions" are getting through Russian defenses in the heartland and key infrastructure
It's a reboot of trench warfare, that revolutionized warfare from the US Civil War onwards, to enormously benefit the defender. That saw its apogee in the insane bloodlettings of WW1 at the Somme, Verdun, etc. Where literally millions of mostly young men died.
Even the German Blitzkreig combined arms system that revolutionized WW2 didn't *end* trench dynamics. It only transformed battles of maneuver, once infantry (and artillery) had breached a trench line.
But MAGA is actively rejecting the Electro-stack. Sticking their red-hatted heads in the sand, because Big Oil wants them to do so. Yet another reason why the GOP is a danger to our collective safety and prosperity.
For balance it is not only MAGA that is trapped in a very "let us re-create 1960s-1970s" industrial vision - they're heavy weight on that, but much of the Left has been in lefty-flavor of the same. I suppose both ends of the spectrum heavy on backwards looking which ends up being doubly paralysing.
As my comment evoked MAGA and evoked lefty-left flavor and did not evoke either administration at all one can profitbly read outside of specific myopias focusing on a particular administration and rather exactly as I said both Left and Right generally and especially on their fringes having "a very "let us re-create 1960s-1970s" industrial vision"
that said Biden admin framing for the parts of their agenda I cared about, RE was indeed undercut by this - keeping Jones Act on offshore wind, 60s era style labor union pushing etc
Not that this is what I meant or targetted in my comment.
1. The electro stack is really overrated for current military applications. If you’re looking to go any distance. The shahed drone uses gasoline as a propellant, and there are no current long range of missiles that uses batteries as the main propellant. At the distance the US is fighting. It’s probably going to be missile or low-cost Shahed replicas.
2. It’s not big oil asking the GOP to stick their head in your sand. The majority of Americans favor fossil production, and even according to the UN use of fossil fuels will continue to grow, contrary to popular belief.
3. The Trump administration has a lot of issues, but it’s been really good at defense. From speeding up and revamping acquisition, revamping doctrine for drone warfare, pushing down the use of drones to the tactical level, and pushing defense firms to build out production, they’ve been pretty great. It’s telling that the US version of the shahed went from prototype to active deployment in less than 18 months under Trump, being used both in Venezuela and now in Iran. Trump has been a lot of terrible shit, but there’s been some good stuff too.
The Chinese are arguably the world leaders in android robotics, with models that can do back flips. Give it another few years before swarms of autonomous robotic infantry will work with their flying drone counterparts to dominate the battlefield.
I think I'd be cautions on 'few years' given how hard field conditions are, but it sure isn't SyFy fantasy any more and I do think "in my lifetime" is very very possible.
Submarines can make it so ships can't go within 1000 kilometers of Australia. Or, if you like, they can go to where their adversary launches ships from and not let them leave that spot.
Even the largest drones like the ones Noah is writing about today might not even scratch the paint on an aircraft carrier. The steel is 30cm thick is some spots and where it's not that thick, the hull is layer cake of thin steel, liquids and voids from 3 to 8 meters across.
There's a reason drone videos show them setting buildings on fire, dropping grenades on tanks or chasing squishy soldiers. That's what they are good at.
It’s really important to not over index on this. Yes, drones are a useful, even critical tool. But to argue that modern warfare will “center” on drones is overstating things. Medium to large size munitions are still essential, which means delivery platforms for those munitions are essential, which means things like air superiority, naval superiority, etc. are still essential. Russia and Ukraine are fighting a weird, even antiquated trench war. If either side had the ability to dominate traditional airspace, the way the US would, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So yes, drones have a role to play. But a military built solely around drones, especially small ones, won’t be suited for the full spectrum of modern warfare.
even massive swarms of small drones with low ceilings and miniscule munitions have no impact on modern fighters that can engage over the horizon at 50,000 ft. They are barely faster than helicopters and can't hardly get off the ground. I'm not disagreeing that drones have lots of value and replace a lot of legacy kit (artillery, tanks, etc). They just are not the centerpiece of modern conflict.
Yeah, you can fly your fighters around all day, but your soldiers on the ground are still under constant attack by cheap drones. You may still technically be "dominating airspace" but you aren't getting the tactical advantages that this gave you in the past.
But you *can't* fly your fighters around all day. At least not in a SAM-saturated zone like on both sides of the Ukraine battlezone, where fighter typically are forced to stay dozens of kilometers *behind* the lines to avoid enemy SAM's.
At least not with conventional 4th Gen fighters. *Maybe* the newer 5th Gen stealth models would fare better? Maybe that's why we lost F-15's to SAM's; but no 5th Gen models?
1. Yes, you would probably use stealth fighters and bombers two degrade enemy SAM systems. I’d be surprised if the US didn’t have most of Russia’s SAM batteries mapped out (after our they’re feeding the Ukrainians the targeting data)
2. Fourth generation fighters did fly pretty frequently over Iran. The F-15 got shot down doing a low pass, a significantly dangerous tactic. But given the fact that the US has flown almost 6000 sorties and only lost one jet is *insane*. We would expect significantly higher losses (as in a case of both Iraq wars) and such operational tempo with minimal losses points pretty decisively to air superiority.
Like I think we’re underwriting just nutty the air campaign over Iran has been mostly because the Strait of Hormuz has been a debacle
Doesn't that kind of lead to the question of why the US has been utterly unable to reopen the Strait of Hormuz?
Further, while I think Iran has done a reasonably good job with what it has, I don't think one can look at US air war success there as a template for success against a more advanced foe like, let's say, China.
The question for Australia is do we now need Submarines, as a continent we have always felt the need for a maritime presence to defend ourselves, but now rather than a $2 Billion Submarine, doesn't it make more sense to fill our northern coastline with a few million low cost drones instead, I fail to see how a seaborne invasion could make landfall if that was used as our coastal defence
Well, battery powered aerial drones have a limited range, and if China were to invade Oz they would likely be launched from ships, so the Anduril Ghost Shark submarine drones being built in Sydney would be important for defense. Even hundreds of small FPV drones would have a hard time sinking a large warship, but a Ghost shark or torpedo drone could do it pretty easily.
Ukraine has extensively proved that a low-cost combo of anti-ship cruise missiles and aquatic drones can destroy even a first-rate conventional navy.
If Taiwan were to--wisely--go massively into drone warfare, when PLA/PLAN launches their invasion, they would be forced to first "soften up" Taiwanese drone launchers and launch sites sufficiently to prevent massive naval losses.
Whoever can first weaponize AI for drone warfare will have a massive advantage. Because ECM (Electric Countermeasures) by actors like the Russians is so effective, it forces drones to use fiber-optic cable guidance. But fully autonomous AI-guided drones will negate ECM and fiber-cable limitations.
Why are people so compelled to retcon Russia's military capabilities? No, Ukraine HAS NOT extensively proved that, because in what universe was the Russian navy a "first-rate conventional navy?"
The Russian navy was about the sorriest possible excuse for a navy that was still technically floating. Staffed by inexperienced and top-to-bottom corrupt personnel, nonworking equipment, in a military with effectively zero combined-arms capabilities. Nevermind combined arms, they can't even effectively manage any single branch of their military.
Specifically for defending against a beach landing - which is Taiwan's situation - they are definitely a massive asset, you are right about that. But no semi-competent military - China included - would just dumbly send ships on obvious suicide runs, for months/years, until they exhausted their entire supply of naval ships for no gain. Russia is unique in doing things like that, and that will NOT be the case for China or the US.
In 2022--before poorly trained and equipped Ukrainian militias aided a relatively tiny professional Ukrainian military to repulse the Russian armored juggernaut--Russia's military services *were* considered serious top rate. The Black Sea Fleet was instrumental in providing unresisted tactical and strategic support to Russian efforts in the south. For years.
Maybe the Russians were never US- or Israeli-level. But were certainly on par with most NATO-member services.
As to how badly attrited PLAN amphibious forces would be if they attacked Taiwan...tomorrow, is simply unknown. Unless you are perhaps a retired USN SSN captain. "Dumb suicide runs" or a successfully created beachhead? Unless you've got classified level tactical info, you're just theorizing.
Considered serious top rate by laypeople on the internet, yes. Not by anybody who actually knew anything about the state of their military - or read Russia’s own reports after naval ship inspections. Moskva comes to mind. If any US naval captain left port to go to war with a ship in that condition, they’d have been court martialed.
In any case, the war exposed that even the already low expectations for the Russian military were dramatic overestimates. We’re talking about what would actually happen, not what would theoretically happen if perceptions of Russian military might had been true. Only the former matters in an actual war, and it should be clear by now that the Russian military is not and was not even remotely a peer to any western or East Asian military. They are a threat to countries like Ukraine, and to the broader world on account of nuclear weapons and successful propaganda campaigns.
Using them as a proxy for how and what the US would do in a similar conflict makes no sense. Maybe you could do so, very carefully and with some pretty extreme qualifiers.
Yeah, I mean I think it’s a while that he thought Russia had a top rated navy. No one believed that before 2022. Hell, their only aircraft carrier always breaks down 😭
The US seemed to have good look reaching downed airmen in a country armed with drones. Air superiority is necessary before launching any invasion- as Russia and Ukraine learned
The latest round of anti-US cope is trying to slip in the implicit assumption that the Russian military is just as capable as the US or Chinese military, and look how much trouble they've had!
The fact that 30k+ soldiers are being killed by drones every month should not be taken as proof of anything, other than that Russia has zero qualms about sending hundreds of thousands of people to their obvious and predictable deaths, for no gain, while learning absolutely nothing over years, until their warfighting capability collapses completely.
I don't know when "Wow Russia's military is a joke" turned into "oh my god, the US military is just like Russia's, and look how much trouble Russia is having!
But once S-300s and S-400s are taken out then lower risk high altitude bombing runs over fortified lines and supply depots is shooting fish in a barrel. Low altitude always risky with MPADs and older SAMs
How effectively our 5th Gen assets would be in neutralizing concentrated Russian made and operated S-300's and S-400's is still somewhat speculative.
Especially given Russia's SAM personnel are extremely experienced and on high alert. And their ECM and ECCM capabilities supposedly top-notch.
But the apparent ease with which we tore apart Iran's air defenses is pretty impressive. And I daresay that if this were a total war situation, that even spotty USN convoy assistance would suffice for all the tankers, etc. bottled up in the Gulf. A few would be lost. But the rest would get through.
How much debate is there actually within military circles? Our military has proven to be quite intelligent and adaptable. I don't think they're too blind to this, although maybe things could move faster. It's risky to just decide to radically change everything on account of a war that is very different to the kind of war the US would fight.
There's also the issue that assuming even half-decent drone defenses you would need to send a couple thousand shaheds at a cost of $80M+ to accomplish what an F15E or B-21 could do on a single sortie. The reason Ukraine and Russia lean so heavily on cheap drones is that they lack the capability to do almost anything else.
And even then Ukraine, unlike Russia, is actually learning and adapting and increasing their own capabilities at a rapid pace.
Yes, but the US would never *attempt* such a thing lol. Before any attack on a Russian defense lines, the United States would have spent weeks attacking every piece of infrastructure CnC and logistical support node. The would probably carpet bomb the defensive line for good measure.
And any advance will be backed by close air support
The drone war that’s happening in both. Russia and Ukraine is an outgrowth of both countries inability to do an effective air campaign or combined arms. That’s just isn’t the case for the US.
They still need to get there. 2,000,000 drones that can cross the strait are not cheap.
You can have 2,000,000 cheap drones or 100,000 expensive drones or 1,000 really expensive aircraft. Those things all serve different purposes and are not interchangeable, but more to the point: just because something can be called a "drone" doesn't mean it costs the same as a DJI Mavic.
You can have 20 trillion cheap drones and they will pose absolutely zero threat to a submarine or carrier. All the carrier needs to do is stay a few hundred miles away from the coast. If you still want to reach out and touch it, you're going to need something bigger.
And voila now you're back to the regular old game of developing more advanced (and yes, expensive) hardware because you need the capabilities that hardware brings.
That single submarine can bombard your entire country with absolute impunity from your quadrillions of $400 drones sitting uselessly on the coastline.
Yes, if we're talking old school great power wars of conquest, the drones are a game changer. That's what Russia is trying to do. That's notably NOT what the US generally does in its wars. Different paradigms.
Even a fraction of the 380 billion dollars Australia is spending on these 8 subs (assuming they every get delivered) would pay for a homegrown drone and battery manufacturing industry...
I am too lazy to look for it but I swear to God I posted something so similar a few months ago when I saw this I genuinely thought you had found it and clicked like getting it to show in my notifications.
Yes but drones vs nuclear subs do vastly different things. One is the strategic weapon, the other is a tactical one. Do you think Australia is just going to launch Quad copters to attack chinese ships 4,000 miles away? And you sure you can invest in long range cruise missiles, but to travel that distance it’ll probably just need to be a ballistic missile. So you’ll still need platforms to get even close to the fight. Which means building a pretty decent size surface fleet, which will be under heavy attack from China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles. Or … submarines, that can get close enough.
I know it’s fun the quarterback and there is definitely a lot to quibble about Australia’s purchasing of nuclear subs. But the Australian military is not stupid. But their threat environment is significantly different than that of Ukraine and requires different tools.
Great points. Subs are way more than just an expensive boat. Subs can stay underwater for months, and shoot missles that go hundreds if not a thousand miles. Totally different use cases.
Drones are a genuine capability shift. But the "drones win wars" argument has some significant problems.
C-UAS is catching up fast, and the economics are moving in the defender's favour. Intercept costs are falling. Some counter-drone systems are now cheaper per kill than the Shaheds they are destroying. That cost exchange rate, which made drones so compelling two years ago, is already narrowing.
Russia's air force has not won this war. It has been deterred by Patriot and Western air defence, not outmanoeuvred by drones. The strategic air campaign everyone predicted has not materialised.
Iran used drones to effect in the regional conflict, yes. But look at what the US did to Iranian-backed infrastructure when it chose to act. Minimal drone usage. Overwhelming conventional air power.
And Ukraine, the country actually fighting this, is still calling for armoured vehicles and artillery at scale. The people with the most skin in the game are not betting the farm on drones.
There is also the terrain problem. Large parts of contested environments are not suited to current drone doctrine. The technology performs brilliantly in specific conditions and struggles in others.
History has a pattern here. Artillery was going to make infantry obsolete. Tanks were going to end manoeuvre warfare as we knew it. Each new dominant technology produces counters, adaptations, and doctrinal corrections. Drones will be no different. They are a serious capability. They are not a panacea.
At least not until weaponized AI produces swarms of autonomous short-, medium- and long-range drones. That can fly nap-of-the-earth, loiter, ID--and discard--target decoys, and prioritize target value.
"Russian SP howitzer battery unleashes a barrage of shells at a Ukrainian position, then hits the road to another firing site. Ukrainian radar immediate triangulates location of Russian battery, and a swarm of two dozen autonomous kamikaze drones are dispatched from forward launchers to said location. AAR details destruction of 5 of 6 Russian 2S43 Malwa's"
AI + Drones = the next paradigm. That to counter will require a serious shift (out of ECM?) into point defense ballistic, counter-drone, and laser (?) capabilities.
There's the problem that you can't run a fiber optic for 600km above the southern china sea, and of course there's no way a 100 kmh FPV drone runs for 6 hours. And there's no way a 300g explosive can do anything to a destroyer or aircraft carrier.
There are also plenty of cheaper ways to destroy these drones, like lasers (they will work, I mean, they work right now), EMP (see Leonidas), other cheaper drones (a drone that just needs to run for a few km to destroy a drone that has to run for 100km will be cheaper), and so on.
An artillery shell has the penetration power and the speed (like 10x) a drone will never have, unless you put a jet engine or a rocket engine and a data-link/seeker, at which point you have a... missile.
Drones are anyway super-useful, and there will be much more of them, along with much cheaper classical munitions, like super-cheap missiles, etc.
This doesn't mean they're the right tool for everything or that there's no way to counter-them and shift the cost equation again.
"An artillery shell has the penetration power and the speed (like 10x) a drone will never have"
A sword in the guts is every bit as lethal as it was in 1000 AD; the problem is getting close enough to the enemy to land a hit.
Compared to 2022, classic artillery has been reduced to a sideshow in Ukraine. Even the most modern guns cannot efficiently fire from outside the range of drones, and moreover, the incessant drone warfare led to such a spreading of forces that there is a shortage of valuable targets. There used to be concentrations of manpower and supplies in the reachable rear; nowadays, everything is spread thin on the ground.
Because Ukraine doesn't produce modern artillery, and I'd say they don't produce artillery at all, mostly (unless something has changed in the last 1/1.5 years that I'm not aware of). And Russia doesn't do much better.
Modern artillery batteries can/will fire 60-100+ km away and the shells will be mostly guided (guided ones have been available for 15 years). The trend is also to just moving towards mobile artillery, not fixed tube artillery positions.
For rocket artillery the range is/will be in the 80-150km range.
These kind of guns cannot be replaced with cheap drones for a variety of reasons: range, speed (and this is huge for mobile or time-sensitive targets), warhead size and type, penetration if the target is protected.
Nobody is ditching fighters and bombers and ballistic missiles because they're not obsolete. Certainly they're not being rendered obsolete by 2k $ drones. It's like saying the RPG rendered aerial bombs obsolete but the RPG can hit ground targets at vastly lower costs. Yes, an aerial bomb is vastly more capable than an RPG.
The GP mentioned "artillery shells", so let us leave rocket artillery aside for a moment.
Ukraine does produce its own howitzers (2S22 Bohdana) and also deploys western models such as Slovak Zuzana, French Caesar, German PzH 2000 and American M777. When using shells, their range is usually limited to approx. 40-45 km, with a huge asterisk: firing classical shells to such extreme ranges induces much worse wear-and-tear on the gun. Cost of refurbishment is non-trivial and should be amortized when calculating the total cost of use. Availability of specialized shops to fix something as complex as Caesar is another obstacle. The Ukrainians do complain about impractical complexity of many modern weapons in the field.
Guided shells are available, but generally too expensive to be the norm - even Russians were fairly careful when spending their Krasnopols. American Excalibur have a unit cost of around 70 thousand dollars and turned out to be vulnerable to Russian jamming, with hit rates going as low as 6 per cent. If you have to fire 16 Excaliburs to destroy one target, you are in the million dollar territory, which is already the realm of missiles.
For me, though, the development of Russia away from tube artillery is the most interesting one. Russians always placed high priority on overwhelming artillery power and as late as 2022, the conquest of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk was an artillery superstorm.
I agree that the cost of munitions like the Excalibur is a major problem, but given the huge shift in munitions acquisition of the last few months/years, I expect that guided artillery will see huge drops in unit cost by expanding the production. I think a few 1000s of them were ordered, of course the quantity is laughable in a real conflict and the economies of scale can't just work out with these numbers. Another thing would be a production of 100s of thousands of shells.
The rest of the argument lies on the same problem. We're talking of pieces of equipment that are produced in numbers that are too small to really make an impact in a real war and that makes their costs explode. Germans have some really sophisticated artillery pieces, it's just that you can't make it cost effective if you order 120 pieces and 3500 guided shells (made up numbers just to make an example, but I think they're really close to reality).
If you compare a force that has few exquisite, old, artillery pieces with cheap drones, than it can look like it makes no sense. But a modern force with hundreds or more of tubes and tens or hundreds of thousands of shells capable of reaching tens of km, is another thing.
Why isn't Ukraine on the list of top 10 countries that manufacture drones? What are the leading use cases for drones in China and US if they aren't being used for military purposes?
I would ignore that chart - the source seems AI-sloppy and says that China both makes 4.5m drones a year and exports 40m drones a year.
Some drones used by Ukraine are refurbished dual-use drones from China or the US but I do believe they make them domestically from sourced components as well.
There are plenty of uses for drones including logistics (delivery), inspections, photography, entertainment etc. The US's industry is geared towards military drones though, there's tons of money flowing to the new prime contractors to create weapon systems.
Last time I checked, Kyiv was still standing despite scores of thousands of drone and missile strikes. See also: London Blitz
Maybe millions of drones will be decisive in the near future, but the Ukraine war is more a model of what happens when neither of two combatants can achieve air superiority and are unwilling to fly their aircraft over enemy airspace.
If a US-like power were fighting in Ukraine there would be no fortified lines from which to launch drones, there would be no rail or truck terminals from which to ship supplies, there would be no factories, no ports, no airports, no Russian oil industry. Of course then perhaps Russia would resort to tactical nukes. A few thousand drones carrying hand grenades aren’t relevant.
The US could do all of the above to Iran. The lesson is that Iran can hold friendly nations hostage by threatening their oil facilities, tourist facilities, etc with drones.
While the damage tens of thousands of drones can do is nothing at all compared to the scale of the London Blitz or Dresden or Tokyo during WW2, countries aren’t really willing to suffer that sort of damage and defenses (right now) are too expensive. However, we see what happens when a civilian population IS willing to suffer damage (Kyiv).
To me the lessons are
1) air superiority is still vitally important (largely to be handled by autonomous craft in the future, but not by small drones carrying inconsequential payloads)
2) satellite intel and ground mapping is essential (Iran and Ukraine being aided by others), meaning war will come to space
3) Hegemonic powers need to secure their near abroad - no serious threats within 500-1000km. The US is in a strong position but coercion of Cuba is inevitable. Also follows China’s and Russia’s strategy.
4) weak Allies (regional powers) can hold the hegemon hostage. The US could take out Russian infrastructure, but European infrastructure is essentially defenseless to counterattacks, just as the US could de-industrialize Iran, but not before Iran inflicts some damage (not on WW2 or Kyiv scale) to the GCC countries that they seem unwilling to suffer- the juice isn’t worth the squeeze in this instance.
5) major infantry movements or conquest of territory can only come after there is air superiority
But in a few years time, when militarized AI is married to short-, medium- and long-range drones, the drone revolution will fully flower.
Swarms of autonomous AI kamakazi drones flying NOE (nap-of-the-earth), intentionally avoiding areas with concentrated air defenses, recognizing and discarding target decoys, and with loitering and target re-prioritization capabilities--are gonna shake things up mightily. Both in the air, on land, and at sea.
Unfortunately for us in the USA, the GOP has destroyed much of the IRA investment in Electro-stack technologies. The factories that could've given us a fighting chance if/when China moves on Taiwan, starting WW3.
Good comment. One quibble. IMO, the IRA subsidized Chinese battery manufacturers so that we could get a few jobs for Americans assembling Chinese components using Chinese IP in American cars.
American workers have assembled BMWs for decades using German tech and German components (some assembled in the US), but that didn’t create an American BMW.
Both Biden with his handouts and Trump with his tariffs wanted assembly jobs - not home grown tech advances.
Had almost nothing to do, unfortunately, with small electric motors (also bought from China) and small batteries for drones.
Could these motors be assembled in Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina- yes. That is very slowly starting to happen but the components are still mostly Chinese.
Same with batteries. Even Tesla uses Chinese tech and battery components.
Maybe a decent idea would be to invest in next generation battery R&D and fund materials science programs and manufacturing operations programs at major state universities. That boring stuff doesn’t get union or activist donations or buy votes, though.
By the time you get to long range drones, you effectively have just reinvented the cruise missile. The US has been using artificial intelligence in drones for the last 25 years and has made significant strides in both the production and deployment of AI power cruise missiles. there are about a dozen active programs happening as we speak and I’ve been in work since at least 2018.
The problem is: the cost to make this effective at distance basically turns the drone into a low cost cruise missle, which is something the US already has been working on
Flying low. Below (most) radar coverage. Ultra sophisticated aerial radar systems like AWACS can detect NOE intruders; but not ground-based SAM targeting radar that would actually engage them.
It strikes me as imprudent to adopt a blanket black-and-white "it is all obsolete" PoV (after all e.g. battleships in WWII were 'obsolete' for original usage but still retained utility [of course it's completely bonkers to think of building one now...]) - but at same time it is also very clear that drones are indeed fundamentally changing the nature of potential war and the Western countries are way way too complacent on this issue.
On flip side as like Maurizio comment, it does appear that drones at present (at least until real robo soldiers are available) heavily shift advantage to defense.
Places like Taiwan should drop buying huge amounts really expensive American kit and build Ukraine style drone-defense net capacity.
I wouldn't go all in for dropping convention or pure man-portable or drone reservist as one leaves open for surprise air-drop or similar but certainly the eqautions are really shifting rapidly .... and certainly not spend billlions on super-fancy American missiles and systems that you're likely not to be able to resupply.
The frustrating part of this for me is that it didn't have to be like this. We could have partnered closely with Ukraine from the start. I don't even mean putting boots on the ground or anything. But we could have done the kind of lend lease "neutrality" we did with Brittain at the start of ww2. Military observers in Ukraine could have learned directly from them. We could have used supplying Ukraine as an excuse to scale up our own drone production capabilities, selling them to Ukraine at subsidized prices. It would have saved thousands of Ukrainian lives and left us much better prepared for future conflicts. Instead we draw up plans for absurd battleships that will be obsolete before the keel is laid.
We *were* doing just that. Every 155mm shell or Javelin we gave Ukraine, was older kit that our own assembly lines were expanded to replace. With brand new kit. Our software engineers and other professionals were working extremely closely with their Ukrainian counterparts to upgrade all the systems we were supplying, to rapid changes on the battlefield.
Until Trump + GOP decided to abandon Ukraine, and help Russia instead. 99% of Ukraine aid was cut in FY2025. The Biden IRA Electro-stack funding to establish new battery and other factories...has also been mostly clawed back or canceled.
“Help Russia instead” the reality is Trump reverse the Biden air policy of preventing Ukraine from using American weapons to target Russian proper. And America has consistently given Ukraine targeting data for Russian infrastructure. How else do you think they’re able to bomb Russia SAMS systems, oil capacity and tankers with such consistency? The US is literally giving them the targeting data. Never mind, turning off Starlink, which has genuinely materially hurt the current Russian offensive. And the United States, rolled out second sanctions against countries like India over Russian oil.
And contrary a popular believe, the United States are still given $2 billion a month to Ukraine as allotted FY2025. No one talks about it because it’s unpopular amongst the Republican base and Democrats do not want to give Trump any praise at all. But it’s actually happening.
This is the classic case of mistaking what people say versus looking at what people do
So you are doing some defending of Trump in the comments and getting a mix of accurate and misleading statemetns together regarding US policy regarding Ukrainne over the last few years.
First, "Trump reversed the Biden policy of preventing Ukraine from using American weapons to target Russian proper." That is just a straight up false comment. The restriction on striking deep inside Russian territory with American weapons (like ATACMS) was actually lifted by Biden in mid 2024 (in response to Russian advances in Kharkiv and the deployment of North Korean troops). While the current Trump administration has allowed some actions to stand, it did not initiate this reversal. In fact, current policies have shifted toward prioritizing U.S. stockpiles over foreign shipments.
Second, "America has consistently given Ukraine targeting data for Russian infrastructure... Starlink... secondary sanctions on India." Great points, and generally true for the most part. However you did forget to mention that the while the U.S. did levy secondary sanctions/tariffs on countries like India over Russian oil, they've been rolling them back due to the Iran war...
Third, "The United States is still giving $2 billion a month to Ukraine as allotted FY2025." This is a bit of a misleading statement. The billions in aid were previously appropriate by Congress in massive bills and the Trump admin has heavily curbed the flow of new military aid commitments and explicitly withheld/paused shipments of previously approved weapons (like Patriot missiles and 155mm shells) following a DoD readiness review. Your claim that there is a big difference between what is being said vs what is happening in the background here is a bit untrue. The idea that the administration is quietly and intentionally funneling smooth, unhindered monthly aid to avoid a political backlash is an inaccurate reading of the current gridlock and drawdown pauses imo.
Overall, I agree with a most of your points on this thread at all. Again as usual Trump is his own worst enemy lol.
It’s true that Biden lifted the restriction. But the are significantly expanded the region. Hell, the New York Times just recently reported about how the US has been eating Ukraine and striking their logistics and oil infrastructure
Yes, some of those secondary sanctions had to be rode back mostly because we really didn’t want India not to have oil. The Iran war is a mess.
It is true that some weapon systems have gotten paused as they have been deployed to other theaters of war, but the aid is still flowing, particularly monetary. The Trump administration at any time could have stopped it or ask Congress to, and it has not.
So again... The Trump admin has absolutely asked Congress to stop funding Ukraine. They've tried to do it through executive actions and official budget requests...
They had actually zeroed out all of Ukraine aid in the 2027 budget, and in the current 2026 1.5T budge they submitted, the Trump admin explicitly asked to exclude all funding for military aid to Ukraine. The issue is that Congress has consistently rejected the cuts and the Senate Appropriations committee is actually doing their job in this case and put back $800 million to support the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) back into the spending bill.
This is in addition to the meeting where they insulted Zelensky and Trump ordered a total pause on all US intelligence sharing with Ukraine to force them to negotiate with Russia.
This is part of a larger issue with Trump going back to his first term where he withheld funds from Ukraine even though they had already been appropriated by Congress.
You're right that drones are replacing artillery. American would be in trouble if we got into a situation where we were within a few dozen miles of the front in a ground war. But if you make drones with a payload bigger than 20kg, capable of going further and faster, you have just reinvented the cruise missile. Armies that do not integrate cheap drones are in serious trouble. But armies that think cheap drones replace aircraft, missiles and logistics would be in bigger trouble. Ukraine is a static, heavily surveilled, artillery-saturated land war with huge tactical depth problems and very limited airpower freedom. The environment is almost tailor-made for cheap drones to look revolutionary.
It is a huge deal to collapse the cost of finding and hitting small exposed targets. 1,00,000 drones with 5-kilogram warheads and 50-mile range or 16 F-35s? Give me the drones for grinding down nearby infantry, trucks, artillery and logistics vehicles. That is tons of warhead mass and thousands of targets. Even with a terrible success rate that could create a persistent no-man’s-land. Cheap precision at scale is a nightmare for ground formations.
But for air defense suppression, hardened targets, bad weather strikes, rapid theater response, air-to-air combat, electronic attack, strategic signaling and penetrating defended airspace, drones are not up for the job. Which kill chain are you buying? Drones are great when targets are near, visible, soft and numerous but not when targets are far, hardened or fast.
And sure, Azhnyuk, makes a good point about lasers. But it feels like he is arguing against the weakest and also most glamorous countermeasure rather than the obvious cheap countermeasure: automated turrets. Shotguns are not good enough if you're one guy running from nine drones. What if you are one position protected by a turret with 1000 rounds that can take out 180 drones per minute?
Agreed regarding automated turrets. Drones will never be cheaper than shotgun shells or bullets and an automated turret shouldn't cost more than an automated drone.
Creating much smaller land-based equivalents using 7.62mm or 5.56mm or shotgun shells wouldn't be a stretch. But they'd need a small crew to operate. And transport to deploy/relocate. Even if/when the gunner is an AGI. But creating such a system for under $50k? Doubtful. But such systems will be absolutely essential in any modern war.
The US should be in Ukraine not with troops but with private-public teams of multi-disciplinary technologists trying to figure this next era of warfare out, and throwing some tries up into the sky. As VCs have long ago figured out, the best way to develop technology is with quick iterations tested against real life conditions. We simply can’t do it in splendid isolation.
Another thought: drone warfare may favor the defensive side. Netting is to drones as trenches are to artillery: a high-effort but low-cost and effective mode of defending a small, defined area.
US advisers and observers and intel liaisons have been in Ukraine from the beginning (also UK, German, Polish, etc). Everyone is poring over missile debris, drones, etc.
It is difficult to imagine any military conflict where the stakes are sufficiently high for (1) U.S. and China to engage each other directly, but (2) neither party, when losing, would be tempted to escalate to tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. If that is true, then drone dominance is irrelevant to direct great power conflict. The obsession with capability without regard to end-game (and strategy) is precisely what Kissinger diagnosed as an affliction of U.S. military and foreign policy in the 1950s, which, we eventually escaped. At least for a time.
The economics that Azhnyuk on laser systems are not as grim as they seem for anti-drone technology. Not all drones are equal, and the laser systems are just being developed.
He's talking about cheap short-range drones. Using long-range drones like Shahed/Lucas as the benchmark, those are ~$50k a piece, and go ~185 km/hr. Using his numbers, for one drone every 3 seconds at 2km, that is 13 drones or equivalent to a $650k system. But I am not sure the numbers are locked there. At 1/sec and 4km, that's 78 drones or $3.9m worth, and drones don't have much time to evade.
Further the laser system only looks expensive because of the way we talk about procurement costs. The R&D, testing, development, and factory buildout are divided across all the units. The US has exactly HELIOS laser for instance, but the cost of 1000 lasers is not x1000.
So its worth thinking about what happens when an anti-drone system can shoot down more drones than its worth? That flips the economics on its head - $50 of electricity to shoot down a $50k drone.
If anti-drone is viable, its all still in play. Enough anti-drone coverage of a sensitive target makes it unfeasible to take out with drones. So either the drones just hit another target - meaning the real issue is coverage. Or you have to take out the anti-drone systems with something else, like missiles. And then you need anti-missile systems, etc, and its starts to look like conventional war again.
So I think anti-drone tech will be a thing, but I think where anti-drone tech cannot compete is in short-range engagements where drones are playing the role of infantry not airforce. If you are fighting a land-war, everything in the killzone is vulnerable and the challenge will be advancing your drone deployment logistics while taking out theirs.
In a Taiwan straight scenario, China can field a small fraction of its drone force capable of flying over the straight, and will try to use missiles to take out the anti-drone systems. Then it will send ships carrying large numbers of short-range drones, which will be vulnerable to anti-ship missiles and USV in transit but unstoppable desolation at their destination. The future of drone warfare may be stalemate - China can pummel Taiwan into rubble, but Taiwan can destroy all the ships China may send.
Also, using 10KW lasers as an example is very convenient since they're the absolute minimum. I think that no US program currently has a laser with less than 20kw.
For a 50kw laser, we're talking of a fraction of a second, for drones, at 4-5 km.
And it's the equivalent of some dozens of grams of tnt, that on these kinds of drones it's enough to destroy them.
Just because a counter to a technology exists, doesn’t mean that it’s obsolete. That’s the first thing about military technology. It’s why bayonets are still used on the battlefield even though they’re “obsolete” because of rifles, missiles, and now drones.
The night I saw the murmurating lighted performance of Intel drones at the 2018 Seoul Winter Olympics, I thought uh, oh. It didn’t hurt that I knew someone at Skunk Works, now a Senior Fellow at Rockwell. The mistake the U.S. made is it didn’t see the application. Guys like Palmer Luckey (Anduril) and Will Marshall (Planet Labs) learned a long time ago that off-the-shelf components cannibalized from iPhones, game consoles, etc. could be used to make cheap satellites, smart drones and headsets (Eagle Eye). Again, the U.S. was slow to see the application.
I welcome the day when wars are eventually just video games with little actual blood shed, but unfortunately we are stuck finding ever more clever ways to shed blood. At the end of the day, two fully committed sides have no option but to try to kill the other first, whether with bombs, guns, or dones. Is there any chance drones could decide battles without blood?
It would be interesting to also discuss the strategic implications of drone prominence. One thing that seems to have emerged is that drones shift the advantage to defense over attack. You can't occupy a territory with drones, but you can defend one.
So maybe that discourages aggression wars ?
I don't think it does one or the other. The ones with the most advanced drones in larger quantities will have an edge (along with all the other equipment).
Attacking with an overwhelming force of guided munitions gives the same edge as defending with them.
Can you seize or hold ground with guided munitions, though?
Yes, within the last few months Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to seize and hold enemy-occupied territory exclusively with drones. It is still small-scale, but that capability will only increase
No, the same as with drones.
I think we have seen that modern layered defensive layers can get overwhelmed by mass drone attacks. Israel may have the best such systems in the world and at some point; maybe 1000 drones or 5,000 drones, they can be overwhelmed and the "bullets" are expensive.
so not just defense. Ukraine has ground the Russians to a standstill But recently their long range "sanctions" are getting through Russian defenses in the heartland and key infrastructure
It's a reboot of trench warfare, that revolutionized warfare from the US Civil War onwards, to enormously benefit the defender. That saw its apogee in the insane bloodlettings of WW1 at the Somme, Verdun, etc. Where literally millions of mostly young men died.
Even the German Blitzkreig combined arms system that revolutionized WW2 didn't *end* trench dynamics. It only transformed battles of maneuver, once infantry (and artillery) had breached a trench line.
But MAGA is actively rejecting the Electro-stack. Sticking their red-hatted heads in the sand, because Big Oil wants them to do so. Yet another reason why the GOP is a danger to our collective safety and prosperity.
For balance it is not only MAGA that is trapped in a very "let us re-create 1960s-1970s" industrial vision - they're heavy weight on that, but much of the Left has been in lefty-flavor of the same. I suppose both ends of the spectrum heavy on backwards looking which ends up being doubly paralysing.
Please explain how you think Infrastructure, IRA and CHIPS--"Leftie" industrial policies passed by Dems + Biden--were "...backwards looking..."
Please explain why you think your non sequitor has any relevance to my comment.
Assumed you were criticizing the Biden/Dem industrial policy bills.
Conservatives fought tooth and nail to defeat passage of IRA, for example. Trump2 finally succeeded in axing much of it.
As my comment evoked MAGA and evoked lefty-left flavor and did not evoke either administration at all one can profitbly read outside of specific myopias focusing on a particular administration and rather exactly as I said both Left and Right generally and especially on their fringes having "a very "let us re-create 1960s-1970s" industrial vision"
that said Biden admin framing for the parts of their agenda I cared about, RE was indeed undercut by this - keeping Jones Act on offshore wind, 60s era style labor union pushing etc
Not that this is what I meant or targetted in my comment.
1. The electro stack is really overrated for current military applications. If you’re looking to go any distance. The shahed drone uses gasoline as a propellant, and there are no current long range of missiles that uses batteries as the main propellant. At the distance the US is fighting. It’s probably going to be missile or low-cost Shahed replicas.
2. It’s not big oil asking the GOP to stick their head in your sand. The majority of Americans favor fossil production, and even according to the UN use of fossil fuels will continue to grow, contrary to popular belief.
3. The Trump administration has a lot of issues, but it’s been really good at defense. From speeding up and revamping acquisition, revamping doctrine for drone warfare, pushing down the use of drones to the tactical level, and pushing defense firms to build out production, they’ve been pretty great. It’s telling that the US version of the shahed went from prototype to active deployment in less than 18 months under Trump, being used both in Venezuela and now in Iran. Trump has been a lot of terrible shit, but there’s been some good stuff too.
Absolutely my thought and in a conversation elsewhere re Taiwan yesterday same thought.
At least until there are robot soldiers - androids. Which maybe isn't quite so SciFi as it was a mere 5 years ago...
The Chinese are arguably the world leaders in android robotics, with models that can do back flips. Give it another few years before swarms of autonomous robotic infantry will work with their flying drone counterparts to dominate the battlefield.
I think I'd be cautions on 'few years' given how hard field conditions are, but it sure isn't SyFy fantasy any more and I do think "in my lifetime" is very very possible.
Submarines can make it so ships can't go within 1000 kilometers of Australia. Or, if you like, they can go to where their adversary launches ships from and not let them leave that spot.
Even the largest drones like the ones Noah is writing about today might not even scratch the paint on an aircraft carrier. The steel is 30cm thick is some spots and where it's not that thick, the hull is layer cake of thin steel, liquids and voids from 3 to 8 meters across.
There's a reason drone videos show them setting buildings on fire, dropping grenades on tanks or chasing squishy soldiers. That's what they are good at.
It’s really important to not over index on this. Yes, drones are a useful, even critical tool. But to argue that modern warfare will “center” on drones is overstating things. Medium to large size munitions are still essential, which means delivery platforms for those munitions are essential, which means things like air superiority, naval superiority, etc. are still essential. Russia and Ukraine are fighting a weird, even antiquated trench war. If either side had the ability to dominate traditional airspace, the way the US would, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So yes, drones have a role to play. But a military built solely around drones, especially small ones, won’t be suited for the full spectrum of modern warfare.
You can't dominate air space unless you can deny access to swarms of cheap drones.
even massive swarms of small drones with low ceilings and miniscule munitions have no impact on modern fighters that can engage over the horizon at 50,000 ft. They are barely faster than helicopters and can't hardly get off the ground. I'm not disagreeing that drones have lots of value and replace a lot of legacy kit (artillery, tanks, etc). They just are not the centerpiece of modern conflict.
Yeah, you can fly your fighters around all day, but your soldiers on the ground are still under constant attack by cheap drones. You may still technically be "dominating airspace" but you aren't getting the tactical advantages that this gave you in the past.
But you *can't* fly your fighters around all day. At least not in a SAM-saturated zone like on both sides of the Ukraine battlezone, where fighter typically are forced to stay dozens of kilometers *behind* the lines to avoid enemy SAM's.
At least not with conventional 4th Gen fighters. *Maybe* the newer 5th Gen stealth models would fare better? Maybe that's why we lost F-15's to SAM's; but no 5th Gen models?
1. Yes, you would probably use stealth fighters and bombers two degrade enemy SAM systems. I’d be surprised if the US didn’t have most of Russia’s SAM batteries mapped out (after our they’re feeding the Ukrainians the targeting data)
2. Fourth generation fighters did fly pretty frequently over Iran. The F-15 got shot down doing a low pass, a significantly dangerous tactic. But given the fact that the US has flown almost 6000 sorties and only lost one jet is *insane*. We would expect significantly higher losses (as in a case of both Iraq wars) and such operational tempo with minimal losses points pretty decisively to air superiority.
Like I think we’re underwriting just nutty the air campaign over Iran has been mostly because the Strait of Hormuz has been a debacle
Doesn't that kind of lead to the question of why the US has been utterly unable to reopen the Strait of Hormuz?
Further, while I think Iran has done a reasonably good job with what it has, I don't think one can look at US air war success there as a template for success against a more advanced foe like, let's say, China.
Would ground dominance with drones make it easier to park anti-air ahead of fighters?
The question for Australia is do we now need Submarines, as a continent we have always felt the need for a maritime presence to defend ourselves, but now rather than a $2 Billion Submarine, doesn't it make more sense to fill our northern coastline with a few million low cost drones instead, I fail to see how a seaborne invasion could make landfall if that was used as our coastal defence
Well, battery powered aerial drones have a limited range, and if China were to invade Oz they would likely be launched from ships, so the Anduril Ghost Shark submarine drones being built in Sydney would be important for defense. Even hundreds of small FPV drones would have a hard time sinking a large warship, but a Ghost shark or torpedo drone could do it pretty easily.
Ukraine has extensively proved that a low-cost combo of anti-ship cruise missiles and aquatic drones can destroy even a first-rate conventional navy.
If Taiwan were to--wisely--go massively into drone warfare, when PLA/PLAN launches their invasion, they would be forced to first "soften up" Taiwanese drone launchers and launch sites sufficiently to prevent massive naval losses.
Whoever can first weaponize AI for drone warfare will have a massive advantage. Because ECM (Electric Countermeasures) by actors like the Russians is so effective, it forces drones to use fiber-optic cable guidance. But fully autonomous AI-guided drones will negate ECM and fiber-cable limitations.
Why are people so compelled to retcon Russia's military capabilities? No, Ukraine HAS NOT extensively proved that, because in what universe was the Russian navy a "first-rate conventional navy?"
The Russian navy was about the sorriest possible excuse for a navy that was still technically floating. Staffed by inexperienced and top-to-bottom corrupt personnel, nonworking equipment, in a military with effectively zero combined-arms capabilities. Nevermind combined arms, they can't even effectively manage any single branch of their military.
Specifically for defending against a beach landing - which is Taiwan's situation - they are definitely a massive asset, you are right about that. But no semi-competent military - China included - would just dumbly send ships on obvious suicide runs, for months/years, until they exhausted their entire supply of naval ships for no gain. Russia is unique in doing things like that, and that will NOT be the case for China or the US.
In 2022--before poorly trained and equipped Ukrainian militias aided a relatively tiny professional Ukrainian military to repulse the Russian armored juggernaut--Russia's military services *were* considered serious top rate. The Black Sea Fleet was instrumental in providing unresisted tactical and strategic support to Russian efforts in the south. For years.
Maybe the Russians were never US- or Israeli-level. But were certainly on par with most NATO-member services.
As to how badly attrited PLAN amphibious forces would be if they attacked Taiwan...tomorrow, is simply unknown. Unless you are perhaps a retired USN SSN captain. "Dumb suicide runs" or a successfully created beachhead? Unless you've got classified level tactical info, you're just theorizing.
Considered serious top rate by laypeople on the internet, yes. Not by anybody who actually knew anything about the state of their military - or read Russia’s own reports after naval ship inspections. Moskva comes to mind. If any US naval captain left port to go to war with a ship in that condition, they’d have been court martialed.
In any case, the war exposed that even the already low expectations for the Russian military were dramatic overestimates. We’re talking about what would actually happen, not what would theoretically happen if perceptions of Russian military might had been true. Only the former matters in an actual war, and it should be clear by now that the Russian military is not and was not even remotely a peer to any western or East Asian military. They are a threat to countries like Ukraine, and to the broader world on account of nuclear weapons and successful propaganda campaigns.
Using them as a proxy for how and what the US would do in a similar conflict makes no sense. Maybe you could do so, very carefully and with some pretty extreme qualifiers.
Yeah, I mean I think it’s a while that he thought Russia had a top rated navy. No one believed that before 2022. Hell, their only aircraft carrier always breaks down 😭
It should be USV drones and anti-ship missiles.
At some point an invading force has to land, good luck landing on a beach that is covered by 25,000 suicide drones
The US seemed to have good look reaching downed airmen in a country armed with drones. Air superiority is necessary before launching any invasion- as Russia and Ukraine learned
The latest round of anti-US cope is trying to slip in the implicit assumption that the Russian military is just as capable as the US or Chinese military, and look how much trouble they've had!
The fact that 30k+ soldiers are being killed by drones every month should not be taken as proof of anything, other than that Russia has zero qualms about sending hundreds of thousands of people to their obvious and predictable deaths, for no gain, while learning absolutely nothing over years, until their warfighting capability collapses completely.
I don't know when "Wow Russia's military is a joke" turned into "oh my god, the US military is just like Russia's, and look how much trouble Russia is having!
If the US/Israel tried that against the Russian defensive line inside Ukraine, there would have been more losses. Perhaps considerably more losses.
Which cuts to the heart of the debate within Western military circles about how heavily we should adopt drone technology.
Of course we should adopt it asap.
But once S-300s and S-400s are taken out then lower risk high altitude bombing runs over fortified lines and supply depots is shooting fish in a barrel. Low altitude always risky with MPADs and older SAMs
How effectively our 5th Gen assets would be in neutralizing concentrated Russian made and operated S-300's and S-400's is still somewhat speculative.
Especially given Russia's SAM personnel are extremely experienced and on high alert. And their ECM and ECCM capabilities supposedly top-notch.
But the apparent ease with which we tore apart Iran's air defenses is pretty impressive. And I daresay that if this were a total war situation, that even spotty USN convoy assistance would suffice for all the tankers, etc. bottled up in the Gulf. A few would be lost. But the rest would get through.
How much debate is there actually within military circles? Our military has proven to be quite intelligent and adaptable. I don't think they're too blind to this, although maybe things could move faster. It's risky to just decide to radically change everything on account of a war that is very different to the kind of war the US would fight.
There's also the issue that assuming even half-decent drone defenses you would need to send a couple thousand shaheds at a cost of $80M+ to accomplish what an F15E or B-21 could do on a single sortie. The reason Ukraine and Russia lean so heavily on cheap drones is that they lack the capability to do almost anything else.
And even then Ukraine, unlike Russia, is actually learning and adapting and increasing their own capabilities at a rapid pace.
Yes, but the US would never *attempt* such a thing lol. Before any attack on a Russian defense lines, the United States would have spent weeks attacking every piece of infrastructure CnC and logistical support node. The would probably carpet bomb the defensive line for good measure.
And any advance will be backed by close air support
The drone war that’s happening in both. Russia and Ukraine is an outgrowth of both countries inability to do an effective air campaign or combined arms. That’s just isn’t the case for the US.
Unless you're China, and can mobilize 2,000,000 attacking drones.
They still need to get there. 2,000,000 drones that can cross the strait are not cheap.
You can have 2,000,000 cheap drones or 100,000 expensive drones or 1,000 really expensive aircraft. Those things all serve different purposes and are not interchangeable, but more to the point: just because something can be called a "drone" doesn't mean it costs the same as a DJI Mavic.
You can have 20 trillion cheap drones and they will pose absolutely zero threat to a submarine or carrier. All the carrier needs to do is stay a few hundred miles away from the coast. If you still want to reach out and touch it, you're going to need something bigger.
And voila now you're back to the regular old game of developing more advanced (and yes, expensive) hardware because you need the capabilities that hardware brings.
That single submarine can bombard your entire country with absolute impunity from your quadrillions of $400 drones sitting uselessly on the coastline.
Yes, if we're talking old school great power wars of conquest, the drones are a game changer. That's what Russia is trying to do. That's notably NOT what the US generally does in its wars. Different paradigms.
That was indeed the original point of my comment. Do drones give the advantage to the defender in an invasion (or "war of conquest" as you put it) ?
Absolutely, if their goal is actual invasion. Sooner or later boots and vehicles need to be on the ground.
Even a fraction of the 380 billion dollars Australia is spending on these 8 subs (assuming they every get delivered) would pay for a homegrown drone and battery manufacturing industry...
I am too lazy to look for it but I swear to God I posted something so similar a few months ago when I saw this I genuinely thought you had found it and clicked like getting it to show in my notifications.
So obviously I agree
Yes but drones vs nuclear subs do vastly different things. One is the strategic weapon, the other is a tactical one. Do you think Australia is just going to launch Quad copters to attack chinese ships 4,000 miles away? And you sure you can invest in long range cruise missiles, but to travel that distance it’ll probably just need to be a ballistic missile. So you’ll still need platforms to get even close to the fight. Which means building a pretty decent size surface fleet, which will be under heavy attack from China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles. Or … submarines, that can get close enough.
I know it’s fun the quarterback and there is definitely a lot to quibble about Australia’s purchasing of nuclear subs. But the Australian military is not stupid. But their threat environment is significantly different than that of Ukraine and requires different tools.
Great points. Subs are way more than just an expensive boat. Subs can stay underwater for months, and shoot missles that go hundreds if not a thousand miles. Totally different use cases.
Especially given the distance of the Pacific versus the Ukrainian war
Facts...
Drones are a genuine capability shift. But the "drones win wars" argument has some significant problems.
C-UAS is catching up fast, and the economics are moving in the defender's favour. Intercept costs are falling. Some counter-drone systems are now cheaper per kill than the Shaheds they are destroying. That cost exchange rate, which made drones so compelling two years ago, is already narrowing.
Russia's air force has not won this war. It has been deterred by Patriot and Western air defence, not outmanoeuvred by drones. The strategic air campaign everyone predicted has not materialised.
Iran used drones to effect in the regional conflict, yes. But look at what the US did to Iranian-backed infrastructure when it chose to act. Minimal drone usage. Overwhelming conventional air power.
And Ukraine, the country actually fighting this, is still calling for armoured vehicles and artillery at scale. The people with the most skin in the game are not betting the farm on drones.
There is also the terrain problem. Large parts of contested environments are not suited to current drone doctrine. The technology performs brilliantly in specific conditions and struggles in others.
History has a pattern here. Artillery was going to make infantry obsolete. Tanks were going to end manoeuvre warfare as we knew it. Each new dominant technology produces counters, adaptations, and doctrinal corrections. Drones will be no different. They are a serious capability. They are not a panacea.
https://challengerresearch.substack.com/p/the-drone-frenzy-why-preparing-for?r=5jzlze
At least not until weaponized AI produces swarms of autonomous short-, medium- and long-range drones. That can fly nap-of-the-earth, loiter, ID--and discard--target decoys, and prioritize target value.
"Russian SP howitzer battery unleashes a barrage of shells at a Ukrainian position, then hits the road to another firing site. Ukrainian radar immediate triangulates location of Russian battery, and a swarm of two dozen autonomous kamikaze drones are dispatched from forward launchers to said location. AAR details destruction of 5 of 6 Russian 2S43 Malwa's"
AI + Drones = the next paradigm. That to counter will require a serious shift (out of ECM?) into point defense ballistic, counter-drone, and laser (?) capabilities.
There's the problem that you can't run a fiber optic for 600km above the southern china sea, and of course there's no way a 100 kmh FPV drone runs for 6 hours. And there's no way a 300g explosive can do anything to a destroyer or aircraft carrier.
There are also plenty of cheaper ways to destroy these drones, like lasers (they will work, I mean, they work right now), EMP (see Leonidas), other cheaper drones (a drone that just needs to run for a few km to destroy a drone that has to run for 100km will be cheaper), and so on.
An artillery shell has the penetration power and the speed (like 10x) a drone will never have, unless you put a jet engine or a rocket engine and a data-link/seeker, at which point you have a... missile.
Drones are anyway super-useful, and there will be much more of them, along with much cheaper classical munitions, like super-cheap missiles, etc.
This doesn't mean they're the right tool for everything or that there's no way to counter-them and shift the cost equation again.
"An artillery shell has the penetration power and the speed (like 10x) a drone will never have"
A sword in the guts is every bit as lethal as it was in 1000 AD; the problem is getting close enough to the enemy to land a hit.
Compared to 2022, classic artillery has been reduced to a sideshow in Ukraine. Even the most modern guns cannot efficiently fire from outside the range of drones, and moreover, the incessant drone warfare led to such a spreading of forces that there is a shortage of valuable targets. There used to be concentrations of manpower and supplies in the reachable rear; nowadays, everything is spread thin on the ground.
Because Ukraine doesn't produce modern artillery, and I'd say they don't produce artillery at all, mostly (unless something has changed in the last 1/1.5 years that I'm not aware of). And Russia doesn't do much better.
Modern artillery batteries can/will fire 60-100+ km away and the shells will be mostly guided (guided ones have been available for 15 years). The trend is also to just moving towards mobile artillery, not fixed tube artillery positions.
For rocket artillery the range is/will be in the 80-150km range.
These kind of guns cannot be replaced with cheap drones for a variety of reasons: range, speed (and this is huge for mobile or time-sensitive targets), warhead size and type, penetration if the target is protected.
Nobody is ditching fighters and bombers and ballistic missiles because they're not obsolete. Certainly they're not being rendered obsolete by 2k $ drones. It's like saying the RPG rendered aerial bombs obsolete but the RPG can hit ground targets at vastly lower costs. Yes, an aerial bomb is vastly more capable than an RPG.
The GP mentioned "artillery shells", so let us leave rocket artillery aside for a moment.
Ukraine does produce its own howitzers (2S22 Bohdana) and also deploys western models such as Slovak Zuzana, French Caesar, German PzH 2000 and American M777. When using shells, their range is usually limited to approx. 40-45 km, with a huge asterisk: firing classical shells to such extreme ranges induces much worse wear-and-tear on the gun. Cost of refurbishment is non-trivial and should be amortized when calculating the total cost of use. Availability of specialized shops to fix something as complex as Caesar is another obstacle. The Ukrainians do complain about impractical complexity of many modern weapons in the field.
Guided shells are available, but generally too expensive to be the norm - even Russians were fairly careful when spending their Krasnopols. American Excalibur have a unit cost of around 70 thousand dollars and turned out to be vulnerable to Russian jamming, with hit rates going as low as 6 per cent. If you have to fire 16 Excaliburs to destroy one target, you are in the million dollar territory, which is already the realm of missiles.
For me, though, the development of Russia away from tube artillery is the most interesting one. Russians always placed high priority on overwhelming artillery power and as late as 2022, the conquest of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk was an artillery superstorm.
I agree that the cost of munitions like the Excalibur is a major problem, but given the huge shift in munitions acquisition of the last few months/years, I expect that guided artillery will see huge drops in unit cost by expanding the production. I think a few 1000s of them were ordered, of course the quantity is laughable in a real conflict and the economies of scale can't just work out with these numbers. Another thing would be a production of 100s of thousands of shells.
The rest of the argument lies on the same problem. We're talking of pieces of equipment that are produced in numbers that are too small to really make an impact in a real war and that makes their costs explode. Germans have some really sophisticated artillery pieces, it's just that you can't make it cost effective if you order 120 pieces and 3500 guided shells (made up numbers just to make an example, but I think they're really close to reality).
If you compare a force that has few exquisite, old, artillery pieces with cheap drones, than it can look like it makes no sense. But a modern force with hundreds or more of tubes and tens or hundreds of thousands of shells capable of reaching tens of km, is another thing.
It's all about cost-effectiveness. A 155mm M109A7 SP Artillery gun costs about $2million. Extremely useful--but expensive.
In a few years, a flight of autonomous $50,000 fire-and-forget kamikaze drones will destroy a SP howitzer battery in minutes...
The robots are coming, and unfortunately we are in collective denial over the changes we need to make.
An artillery shell can cost much less than 50k, and an autonomous drone does not have the speed of a shell.
Why isn't Ukraine on the list of top 10 countries that manufacture drones? What are the leading use cases for drones in China and US if they aren't being used for military purposes?
I would ignore that chart - the source seems AI-sloppy and says that China both makes 4.5m drones a year and exports 40m drones a year.
Some drones used by Ukraine are refurbished dual-use drones from China or the US but I do believe they make them domestically from sourced components as well.
There are plenty of uses for drones including logistics (delivery), inspections, photography, entertainment etc. The US's industry is geared towards military drones though, there's tons of money flowing to the new prime contractors to create weapon systems.
Last time I checked, Kyiv was still standing despite scores of thousands of drone and missile strikes. See also: London Blitz
Maybe millions of drones will be decisive in the near future, but the Ukraine war is more a model of what happens when neither of two combatants can achieve air superiority and are unwilling to fly their aircraft over enemy airspace.
If a US-like power were fighting in Ukraine there would be no fortified lines from which to launch drones, there would be no rail or truck terminals from which to ship supplies, there would be no factories, no ports, no airports, no Russian oil industry. Of course then perhaps Russia would resort to tactical nukes. A few thousand drones carrying hand grenades aren’t relevant.
The US could do all of the above to Iran. The lesson is that Iran can hold friendly nations hostage by threatening their oil facilities, tourist facilities, etc with drones.
While the damage tens of thousands of drones can do is nothing at all compared to the scale of the London Blitz or Dresden or Tokyo during WW2, countries aren’t really willing to suffer that sort of damage and defenses (right now) are too expensive. However, we see what happens when a civilian population IS willing to suffer damage (Kyiv).
To me the lessons are
1) air superiority is still vitally important (largely to be handled by autonomous craft in the future, but not by small drones carrying inconsequential payloads)
2) satellite intel and ground mapping is essential (Iran and Ukraine being aided by others), meaning war will come to space
3) Hegemonic powers need to secure their near abroad - no serious threats within 500-1000km. The US is in a strong position but coercion of Cuba is inevitable. Also follows China’s and Russia’s strategy.
4) weak Allies (regional powers) can hold the hegemon hostage. The US could take out Russian infrastructure, but European infrastructure is essentially defenseless to counterattacks, just as the US could de-industrialize Iran, but not before Iran inflicts some damage (not on WW2 or Kyiv scale) to the GCC countries that they seem unwilling to suffer- the juice isn’t worth the squeeze in this instance.
5) major infantry movements or conquest of territory can only come after there is air superiority
Agree 100%.
But in a few years time, when militarized AI is married to short-, medium- and long-range drones, the drone revolution will fully flower.
Swarms of autonomous AI kamakazi drones flying NOE (nap-of-the-earth), intentionally avoiding areas with concentrated air defenses, recognizing and discarding target decoys, and with loitering and target re-prioritization capabilities--are gonna shake things up mightily. Both in the air, on land, and at sea.
Unfortunately for us in the USA, the GOP has destroyed much of the IRA investment in Electro-stack technologies. The factories that could've given us a fighting chance if/when China moves on Taiwan, starting WW3.
Good comment. One quibble. IMO, the IRA subsidized Chinese battery manufacturers so that we could get a few jobs for Americans assembling Chinese components using Chinese IP in American cars.
American workers have assembled BMWs for decades using German tech and German components (some assembled in the US), but that didn’t create an American BMW.
Both Biden with his handouts and Trump with his tariffs wanted assembly jobs - not home grown tech advances.
Had almost nothing to do, unfortunately, with small electric motors (also bought from China) and small batteries for drones.
Could these motors be assembled in Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina- yes. That is very slowly starting to happen but the components are still mostly Chinese.
Same with batteries. Even Tesla uses Chinese tech and battery components.
Maybe a decent idea would be to invest in next generation battery R&D and fund materials science programs and manufacturing operations programs at major state universities. That boring stuff doesn’t get union or activist donations or buy votes, though.
By the time you get to long range drones, you effectively have just reinvented the cruise missile. The US has been using artificial intelligence in drones for the last 25 years and has made significant strides in both the production and deployment of AI power cruise missiles. there are about a dozen active programs happening as we speak and I’ve been in work since at least 2018.
The problem is: the cost to make this effective at distance basically turns the drone into a low cost cruise missle, which is something the US already has been working on
what is nap of the earth
Flying low. Below (most) radar coverage. Ultra sophisticated aerial radar systems like AWACS can detect NOE intruders; but not ground-based SAM targeting radar that would actually engage them.
It strikes me as imprudent to adopt a blanket black-and-white "it is all obsolete" PoV (after all e.g. battleships in WWII were 'obsolete' for original usage but still retained utility [of course it's completely bonkers to think of building one now...]) - but at same time it is also very clear that drones are indeed fundamentally changing the nature of potential war and the Western countries are way way too complacent on this issue.
On flip side as like Maurizio comment, it does appear that drones at present (at least until real robo soldiers are available) heavily shift advantage to defense.
Places like Taiwan should drop buying huge amounts really expensive American kit and build Ukraine style drone-defense net capacity.
"Places like Taiwan should drop buying huge amounts really expensive American kit and build Ukraine style drone-defense net capacity."
This. And instead of conventional infantry, instead train up a few million reservist infantry trained to use man-portable missile and drone systems.
I wouldn't go all in for dropping convention or pure man-portable or drone reservist as one leaves open for surprise air-drop or similar but certainly the eqautions are really shifting rapidly .... and certainly not spend billlions on super-fancy American missiles and systems that you're likely not to be able to resupply.
The frustrating part of this for me is that it didn't have to be like this. We could have partnered closely with Ukraine from the start. I don't even mean putting boots on the ground or anything. But we could have done the kind of lend lease "neutrality" we did with Brittain at the start of ww2. Military observers in Ukraine could have learned directly from them. We could have used supplying Ukraine as an excuse to scale up our own drone production capabilities, selling them to Ukraine at subsidized prices. It would have saved thousands of Ukrainian lives and left us much better prepared for future conflicts. Instead we draw up plans for absurd battleships that will be obsolete before the keel is laid.
We *were* doing just that. Every 155mm shell or Javelin we gave Ukraine, was older kit that our own assembly lines were expanded to replace. With brand new kit. Our software engineers and other professionals were working extremely closely with their Ukrainian counterparts to upgrade all the systems we were supplying, to rapid changes on the battlefield.
Until Trump + GOP decided to abandon Ukraine, and help Russia instead. 99% of Ukraine aid was cut in FY2025. The Biden IRA Electro-stack funding to establish new battery and other factories...has also been mostly clawed back or canceled.
“Help Russia instead” the reality is Trump reverse the Biden air policy of preventing Ukraine from using American weapons to target Russian proper. And America has consistently given Ukraine targeting data for Russian infrastructure. How else do you think they’re able to bomb Russia SAMS systems, oil capacity and tankers with such consistency? The US is literally giving them the targeting data. Never mind, turning off Starlink, which has genuinely materially hurt the current Russian offensive. And the United States, rolled out second sanctions against countries like India over Russian oil.
And contrary a popular believe, the United States are still given $2 billion a month to Ukraine as allotted FY2025. No one talks about it because it’s unpopular amongst the Republican base and Democrats do not want to give Trump any praise at all. But it’s actually happening.
This is the classic case of mistaking what people say versus looking at what people do
So you are doing some defending of Trump in the comments and getting a mix of accurate and misleading statemetns together regarding US policy regarding Ukrainne over the last few years.
First, "Trump reversed the Biden policy of preventing Ukraine from using American weapons to target Russian proper." That is just a straight up false comment. The restriction on striking deep inside Russian territory with American weapons (like ATACMS) was actually lifted by Biden in mid 2024 (in response to Russian advances in Kharkiv and the deployment of North Korean troops). While the current Trump administration has allowed some actions to stand, it did not initiate this reversal. In fact, current policies have shifted toward prioritizing U.S. stockpiles over foreign shipments.
Second, "America has consistently given Ukraine targeting data for Russian infrastructure... Starlink... secondary sanctions on India." Great points, and generally true for the most part. However you did forget to mention that the while the U.S. did levy secondary sanctions/tariffs on countries like India over Russian oil, they've been rolling them back due to the Iran war...
Third, "The United States is still giving $2 billion a month to Ukraine as allotted FY2025." This is a bit of a misleading statement. The billions in aid were previously appropriate by Congress in massive bills and the Trump admin has heavily curbed the flow of new military aid commitments and explicitly withheld/paused shipments of previously approved weapons (like Patriot missiles and 155mm shells) following a DoD readiness review. Your claim that there is a big difference between what is being said vs what is happening in the background here is a bit untrue. The idea that the administration is quietly and intentionally funneling smooth, unhindered monthly aid to avoid a political backlash is an inaccurate reading of the current gridlock and drawdown pauses imo.
Overall, I agree with a most of your points on this thread at all. Again as usual Trump is his own worst enemy lol.
It’s true that Biden lifted the restriction. But the are significantly expanded the region. Hell, the New York Times just recently reported about how the US has been eating Ukraine and striking their logistics and oil infrastructure
Yes, some of those secondary sanctions had to be rode back mostly because we really didn’t want India not to have oil. The Iran war is a mess.
It is true that some weapon systems have gotten paused as they have been deployed to other theaters of war, but the aid is still flowing, particularly monetary. The Trump administration at any time could have stopped it or ask Congress to, and it has not.
So again... The Trump admin has absolutely asked Congress to stop funding Ukraine. They've tried to do it through executive actions and official budget requests...
They had actually zeroed out all of Ukraine aid in the 2027 budget, and in the current 2026 1.5T budge they submitted, the Trump admin explicitly asked to exclude all funding for military aid to Ukraine. The issue is that Congress has consistently rejected the cuts and the Senate Appropriations committee is actually doing their job in this case and put back $800 million to support the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) back into the spending bill.
This is in addition to the meeting where they insulted Zelensky and Trump ordered a total pause on all US intelligence sharing with Ukraine to force them to negotiate with Russia.
This is part of a larger issue with Trump going back to his first term where he withheld funds from Ukraine even though they had already been appropriated by Congress.
You're right that drones are replacing artillery. American would be in trouble if we got into a situation where we were within a few dozen miles of the front in a ground war. But if you make drones with a payload bigger than 20kg, capable of going further and faster, you have just reinvented the cruise missile. Armies that do not integrate cheap drones are in serious trouble. But armies that think cheap drones replace aircraft, missiles and logistics would be in bigger trouble. Ukraine is a static, heavily surveilled, artillery-saturated land war with huge tactical depth problems and very limited airpower freedom. The environment is almost tailor-made for cheap drones to look revolutionary.
It is a huge deal to collapse the cost of finding and hitting small exposed targets. 1,00,000 drones with 5-kilogram warheads and 50-mile range or 16 F-35s? Give me the drones for grinding down nearby infantry, trucks, artillery and logistics vehicles. That is tons of warhead mass and thousands of targets. Even with a terrible success rate that could create a persistent no-man’s-land. Cheap precision at scale is a nightmare for ground formations.
But for air defense suppression, hardened targets, bad weather strikes, rapid theater response, air-to-air combat, electronic attack, strategic signaling and penetrating defended airspace, drones are not up for the job. Which kill chain are you buying? Drones are great when targets are near, visible, soft and numerous but not when targets are far, hardened or fast.
And sure, Azhnyuk, makes a good point about lasers. But it feels like he is arguing against the weakest and also most glamorous countermeasure rather than the obvious cheap countermeasure: automated turrets. Shotguns are not good enough if you're one guy running from nine drones. What if you are one position protected by a turret with 1000 rounds that can take out 180 drones per minute?
Agreed regarding automated turrets. Drones will never be cheaper than shotgun shells or bullets and an automated turret shouldn't cost more than an automated drone.
The USN has been using the 20mm Phalanx CIWS since 1977: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
Creating much smaller land-based equivalents using 7.62mm or 5.56mm or shotgun shells wouldn't be a stretch. But they'd need a small crew to operate. And transport to deploy/relocate. Even if/when the gunner is an AGI. But creating such a system for under $50k? Doubtful. But such systems will be absolutely essential in any modern war.
The US should be in Ukraine not with troops but with private-public teams of multi-disciplinary technologists trying to figure this next era of warfare out, and throwing some tries up into the sky. As VCs have long ago figured out, the best way to develop technology is with quick iterations tested against real life conditions. We simply can’t do it in splendid isolation.
Another thought: drone warfare may favor the defensive side. Netting is to drones as trenches are to artillery: a high-effort but low-cost and effective mode of defending a small, defined area.
US advisers and observers and intel liaisons have been in Ukraine from the beginning (also UK, German, Polish, etc). Everyone is poring over missile debris, drones, etc.
And Eric Schmidt’s company Swift Beat is making drones over there — I just think it’s not enough.
The US cutting 99% of Ukraine aid in FY2025 hasn't helped. Especially since we're now diplomatically and economically aiding Russia.
It is difficult to imagine any military conflict where the stakes are sufficiently high for (1) U.S. and China to engage each other directly, but (2) neither party, when losing, would be tempted to escalate to tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. If that is true, then drone dominance is irrelevant to direct great power conflict. The obsession with capability without regard to end-game (and strategy) is precisely what Kissinger diagnosed as an affliction of U.S. military and foreign policy in the 1950s, which, we eventually escaped. At least for a time.
The economics that Azhnyuk on laser systems are not as grim as they seem for anti-drone technology. Not all drones are equal, and the laser systems are just being developed.
He's talking about cheap short-range drones. Using long-range drones like Shahed/Lucas as the benchmark, those are ~$50k a piece, and go ~185 km/hr. Using his numbers, for one drone every 3 seconds at 2km, that is 13 drones or equivalent to a $650k system. But I am not sure the numbers are locked there. At 1/sec and 4km, that's 78 drones or $3.9m worth, and drones don't have much time to evade.
Further the laser system only looks expensive because of the way we talk about procurement costs. The R&D, testing, development, and factory buildout are divided across all the units. The US has exactly HELIOS laser for instance, but the cost of 1000 lasers is not x1000.
So its worth thinking about what happens when an anti-drone system can shoot down more drones than its worth? That flips the economics on its head - $50 of electricity to shoot down a $50k drone.
If anti-drone is viable, its all still in play. Enough anti-drone coverage of a sensitive target makes it unfeasible to take out with drones. So either the drones just hit another target - meaning the real issue is coverage. Or you have to take out the anti-drone systems with something else, like missiles. And then you need anti-missile systems, etc, and its starts to look like conventional war again.
So I think anti-drone tech will be a thing, but I think where anti-drone tech cannot compete is in short-range engagements where drones are playing the role of infantry not airforce. If you are fighting a land-war, everything in the killzone is vulnerable and the challenge will be advancing your drone deployment logistics while taking out theirs.
In a Taiwan straight scenario, China can field a small fraction of its drone force capable of flying over the straight, and will try to use missiles to take out the anti-drone systems. Then it will send ships carrying large numbers of short-range drones, which will be vulnerable to anti-ship missiles and USV in transit but unstoppable desolation at their destination. The future of drone warfare may be stalemate - China can pummel Taiwan into rubble, but Taiwan can destroy all the ships China may send.
Also, using 10KW lasers as an example is very convenient since they're the absolute minimum. I think that no US program currently has a laser with less than 20kw.
For a 50kw laser, we're talking of a fraction of a second, for drones, at 4-5 km.
And it's the equivalent of some dozens of grams of tnt, that on these kinds of drones it's enough to destroy them.
Lol this is just a moronic take.
Just because a counter to a technology exists, doesn’t mean that it’s obsolete. That’s the first thing about military technology. It’s why bayonets are still used on the battlefield even though they’re “obsolete” because of rifles, missiles, and now drones.
The night I saw the murmurating lighted performance of Intel drones at the 2018 Seoul Winter Olympics, I thought uh, oh. It didn’t hurt that I knew someone at Skunk Works, now a Senior Fellow at Rockwell. The mistake the U.S. made is it didn’t see the application. Guys like Palmer Luckey (Anduril) and Will Marshall (Planet Labs) learned a long time ago that off-the-shelf components cannibalized from iPhones, game consoles, etc. could be used to make cheap satellites, smart drones and headsets (Eagle Eye). Again, the U.S. was slow to see the application.
I welcome the day when wars are eventually just video games with little actual blood shed, but unfortunately we are stuck finding ever more clever ways to shed blood. At the end of the day, two fully committed sides have no option but to try to kill the other first, whether with bombs, guns, or dones. Is there any chance drones could decide battles without blood?