Drone warfare has unveiled everything to the world that drones are not toys for the garage or a sign of uniqueness, but, in fact, are radically changing the way wars are fought. The smallest quadcopters are used as spotters to loiter over missiles and their flight paths; all are drones that are winning the battles of wars that were not even thought of before. Wars in Ukraine and future wars are the potential dangers of such devices, which compel the armed forces to discard the old ideas about defense and strategy. Maybe the most surprising thing is that drones have come to be very close both physically and figuratively to the very hub of the action of war.
The opposition and Ukrainian military forces have used, within weeks, from cheap hobby drones to costly war drones, and technology keeps rolling on. Good enough will be too good enough tomorrow and the next day, but one thing is certain: discounting the drone as a flash in the pan is costly. And also a graciousness, sure enough, against whom a person is drone-shooting.
Stationary high-value targets can usually be re-directed by interceptors or sensors, but are practically impossible to re-direct when mobile. No-GPS-based or un-jammable-based swarms are not that deadly, and multi-angle swarms will attack defenses sequentially, one after another, at high speeds of velocity, overwhelming convoys and open orders. The multi-domain nature of unmanned vehicles has already been the cost of investment in previous wars.
Blindingly dense clouds of drones will inundate advanced defenses, and governments will be wasting millions of dollars’ worth of interceptors for pennies’ worth of drone platforms. These wars warn us to expect to have integrated defenses with cyber, electronic, and kinetic capabilities to counter increasingly close threats.
Drone defense will be more expensive and more difficult. It is preferable to send vast swarms of weak air defense drones, but hundreds of tiny drones are out of even the finest systems’ range, if not somewhere else. The military has tried jammers, spoofer guns, and high-powered lasers, but there is never a fully foolproof solution with a constant cost vs. operational defense seesaw. Air superiority doctrine is also changing.
Air supremacy air altitude is no longer safe due to low-readiness unmanned air vehicles that challenge the opponent with radar, can transmit reconnaissance, and conduct surprise attacks. New conventionalism on the air is forced to accept the pervasiveness of the drone threat to the combatant military and non-military minds of a sort. UAVs have never held a greater information edge and are competing for protection.
Live battlefield video messaging provides commanders, civilians, and audiences with unmatched situation awareness. Ukrainians are deluging surveillance networks, and thus the potential of drones in bridging knowledge gaps between intelligence collection, morale enhancement, and de-mystification of orientations across wide areas.
Drone war cost asymmetry is the second wake-up call. Low-cost, small drones can destroy and eliminate far more costly systems, and the military has been forced to rethink how it utilizes drones as well as how it acquires assets.
Less costly drones, for instance, have replaced costly surveillance networks, surviving costly munitions. This is just one illustration of innovative power and versatility. As soon as the drones are being manufactured on both war fronts, it is unimaginable, and new designs, strategies, and countermeasures are optimized daily.
Whoever can innovate at speed, mass-produce, and deliver useful new technology has a mauling edge at war. The UAVs have also triggered mini-armies unimaginably. Poorly armed states or groups of states utilize unmanned systems to strike high-priority targets, conduct reconnaissance, and are capable of influencing much more broadly than otherwise.
The technologies have shown worldwide that mini-nations are disproportionately powerful in influencing better-armed and stronger opponents at low training and low equipment cost. Evidently, the most apparent lesson of all is that war is being revolutionized by drones. They cut decision time, accelerate targeting, and deliver laser-guided bombing deep in enemy depths.
As spies, direct strike, artillery spotters, or reporting incidents, drones are a tool of versatility and are increasingly used in operations. The key to success in the future will be how well the use of drones is integrated with the general, multidomain operations, technology-enabled guidance, and ongoing tactic reduction as an effort to cope with the dynamic nature of the battlefield environment.