Drones Are Key to Winning Wars Now. The U.S. Makes Hardly Any
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The US is making a big mistake giving up on the EV chain. In doing so it is ceding drones and robots, which are key to future wars and economies.
The countries that it is currently waging economic war against should instead be engaged in creating an alternative to the Chinese supply chain. For example, it is currently disassembling the automotive supply chain that included Canada and low-cost Mexico, but it should be doubling down on that.
Hell it’s more attributable.
What this conflict has shown is you need constantly supplies of basically garage-band single use drones that can be carried en-mass on the battlefield, which is a big change in the model.
A plausible next step would be, if not already done, to have a fleet of small but powerful naval drones that act as sea buoys to sweep the sea for submarines - this would have the potential to complete change submarine deployment strategy.
Especially for countries with massive borders, including maritime borders, a fleet of aerial and naval drones will seem indispensable if nothing else for deterrence.
[0]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drone-narco-sub-seized-first-ti...
For shorter distances, there are acoustic and optical devices, and near surface some low frequency radios can be used.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarine...
And it apparently bears repeating: communication with a submarine using VLF/ELF is one-way. Such is not the case with a spacecraft, even if the latency sucks.
So, not in any way an answer to the problem of controlling deep drone submarines?
Otherwise sure, drones will be everywhere soon. And since radio can and will be jammed, they already can autonomous find and kill their targets. Or whatever the AI classifies as enemy. Autonomous killer drones in our life time, yeah.
Since the basis of this is in every smart-phone, its odd it isn't used in military UAVs.
In the military cat and mouse game I don't think it will be an issue. Maybe that is why fibre was adopted instead.
Underwater drones are not anywhere near as relevant in this war as airborne drones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva
"Russia's Ministry of Defence said the large landing ship Novocherkassk was struck by Ukrainian aircraft carrying guided missiles....After a missile strike on the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol last September, satellite images showed that the Russian navy had moved much of its Black Sea fleet away from Crimea to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk," which is southeast of Crimea.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67821515
At the end of 2023, UK's defense minister said Russia had lost 20% of its Black Sea fleet in the prior four months.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-lost-fifth-black-sea-...
None of this implies that Russia's fleet has been entirely disabled. They are still firing missiles. But Ukraine has done them serious damage. (Some of that was by more conventional weapons though.)
This is kind of like saying that the Japanese dominated the Pacific in WW2 because they sunk the Lexington.
>At the end of 2023, UK's defense minister said Russia had lost 20% of its Black Sea fleet in the prior four months.
The UK have been coming up with ever more creative ways to declare that Russia is losing this war, each straining more credulity than the last.
They were the source of the rather famous "Ukraine faces off against poorly trained demoralized soldiers armed just with shovels" intelligence briefing from 2022.
In the case of the black sea fleet they made a huge a deal out of the destruction of fleet HQ while neglecting to mention that it was a poorly defended historic site rather than an operational hq and nerve center.
Which is to say, if they announce 20% you can probably safely assume the internal estimate is 10% with an upper bound of 20%.
>None of this implies that Russia's fleet has been entirely disabled.
Nothing of what I said implied that Ukraine didnt sink any ships in this war or that Russia hasnt sustained black eyes.
The idea that Ukraine has done such serious damage that it "denied" the black sea fleet the ability to operate is errs more on the side of shovel-flavored cope rather than trenchant analysis, however.
In any case, maybe you could post sources?
From a quick google, Russia lost at least several other large ships, include troop ships and missile launchers. I don't know whether Ukraine destroyed them as they claimed, but if not, then Russia has rather serious maintenance issues.
From afar, all this might seem like minor issue, but over the past few decades the US has gone through several wars without losing any ships to enemy action, and I think the national freak-out if that changed would be pretty dramatic.
You are ignoring the fact, that Russian Black Sea Fleet is not based in Sevastopol anymore, but in Novorossiysk, which is on eastern part of Black Sea. They have essentially vacated half of the Black Sea.
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-withdraws-black-sea-fleet-v...
Drones are a low cost, low intensity projectile. Similar to a missile. It has utility. But as we can see, you don't win a war with just projectiles otherwise these conflicts would've been long over.
In any case, drones and artillery are responsible for most kills. But to hold the land you still need boots and tanks on the ground. But they can also be soon replaced by drones. Or rather, there will be more and more of them and fewer humans with the main job of controlling and directing them.
Because that's what they have. This situation is effective survivership bias, you need to consider what modes of war they don't have access to.
Take the first gulf war for reference. A coalition force bombed the shit out Iraq and then the ground forces were able to occupy territory relatively unimpeded.
Russia and Ukraine cannot use the bomb the opposing military into oblivion because they just don't have those weapons.
The US should not look to emulate a long drawn out drone war. It should look to incorporate drones as a cheaper alternative to where it would've used a missile but if you rewind the clock to the gulf war you're still going to see a bombing campaign first and then maybe some drone strikes from the ground offense.
Lots of tanks and lots of bombers.
But they stopped doing so aggressivly and rather use them from the second line, because the tanks got obliterated by drones and the bombers by anti air missile because Ukraine had modern antinaircraft missiles unlike Iraq..
Perhaps drones can work as a low cost projectile to take out anti-air capabilities instead of more expensive missiles and guided bombs. But again, be careful what takeaways are in a long drawn out war because that is generally not the goal when you attack another nation.
It wasn't Putins goal either.
But Ukraine turned out way stronger than expected. Because like I said, it had modern weapons unlike Iraq.
And besides, attacking another nation is maybe also not the goal of supposedly peaceful nations in the first place.
China will win this anytime.
Some time in the near future the west is in for a very rude awakening.
I cant think of any.
The conquest of Aztecs is another example: Spain annihilated a country with twice the population. Though they cheated with bioweapons of course.
They are being jocular. Emit broken sounds of rapid exhalations to signal acceptance of the joke.
Some of the smartest people I've encountered in academia were Chinese. One Chinese guy was so smart that it left my professor (and me) puzzled about the speed at which he could absorb complicated concepts. I also see Chinese people and institutions on many research papers these days. Imho, it is foolish to rely on Western military supremacy, as if that were a thing.
The US dominates in one thing right now: computers, and software in particular. That includes AI's.
Whether that's enough to win a war is anybodies guess. It's like predicting the effect AI will have on the future of work. A few million slaughter bots that rest in the sun in the country side to recharge via their solar panels is a terrifying thought. For now it's science fiction, but if the USA found itself in a war long enough, it would become a reality. Musk's problems with the reliability of AI driven FSD would vanish, so possibly it's a reality coming sooner than you might think. But would any war China found itself in last that long, given their manufacturing capacity?
Lets hope we don't find out.
It wasn't true after Pearl Harbor, when the US turned its factories from making cars and radios and dolls into warships and weapons and combat boots.
Especially funny was to observe how both sides stopped using tanks because their survivability - even that of "tracked garden shed" or "tortoise" varieties - is now nil. Where are the active protection systems pioneered by Soviet Union and propagandised all the way until today? Trajectory of an FVP is linear in the final second or so, and it is twice slower and a lot more fragile than an RPG round which was what active protection systems were supposed to protect from. Now suddenly, no one remembers of them anymore. Sounds like they were a scam all the way.
Ok, why isn't EU/NATO helping Ukraine with an airforce then?
Are you sure about that? I'd say that the war could be ended rather quickly if Russians were attacked the moment they set foot on Ukrainian land. Also, an air force could destroy supply lines going deep into Ukraine.
I think the only reason to be scared of Putin firing nukes is if he or the existence of Russia was threatened in some way. But he can stop this war any time he likes.
This means US/NATO planes above Ukraine are OK, but not above Russia.
This war has been nothing but a blessing to the West. Putin's forces and weapons have been very publicly tested (and failed expectations). His reserves are being drained; in some cases emptied. Western weapon systems are being field-tested, at the low-low cost of their purchase cost, plus shipping and handling.
It took a while for me to realize that the West doesn't want Ukraine to win, outright. First, they want Ukraine to bleed Putin until he's too feeble to stand. That will take a while.
I expect air superiority still has uses and advantages, but I will admit to not being excessively knowledgeable about how war is best waged in 2025.
If you are from US / EU you should urgently advise your government. They seem to lack this wisdom and have integrated this active protection into some of their tanks.
https://kyivindependent.com/impeccable-results-new-skynex-vi...
And even with air superiority, the US hasn’t been able to win a single war since WW2 except 1991 Gulf.
Currently the US and Israel are failing to oust the Houthis from Yemen and Hamas from Gaza even with a massive multi year sustained bombing campaign from the air.
Planes have never won a war.
Assumptions:
- 5 drones per vehicle to achieve a neutralization
- 50 vehicles breaking through the line
- total of 250 drones to neutralize
- 30km range (60km/h with 20 minute flight time)
- which is ~1400 sq km (half circle of radius 30km)
- for 1 drone per 5 or 6 sq km required density
If you just hand out drones to squads and transport teams, there’s a non-trivial chance you’ll have that many in the relevant area. My understanding is that we’re only missing the tactics or automated swarming.
Also, I’m assuming wireless drones; only being able to use fiber drones would significantly change the math (with their more limited range).
My sense is that the existing defense contractors are old, slow and expensive (and conditioned to take huge sums from the government for developing future tech.)
In fairness, I'm not at all knowledgable about the industry. Just my impression of things. But it is hard to not be happy to see new entrants to any important market.
I can also assure you that Ukraine using fiber topic, semi and fully autonomous drones with great effectiveness against the invaders.
There are thousands of videos of this in Kursk alone.
Ukraine are able to set up "shielded corridors" to protect critical supply roads from fiber optic drone attack behind the front lines in the donbass but in kursk they were exposed and defenseless.
Autonomous drones are an inevitability. Enormous force multiplication is available with autonomy. We're talking about a few people, or perhaps one person, defeating battalions.
The truth is autonomous weapons have been in use for a long time now. Mark 60 CAPTOR anti-submarine mines (circa 1979) autonomously identified enemies and launched a torpedo to destroy submarines.
A drone video intercepted by the russians was released showing this in action: https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/how_ukrainian_fpv_...
They bring up Ukraine and Russia but that war is ongoing so merely battle wins.
There are plenty of gps denial areas the military uses for training from small to over multiple states worth of area.
“The Archer sells for about $2,000 each, making it one of the most affordable models. But Neros produces only about 1,500 Archers per month in a factory where 15 workers assemble them by hand.”
And Neros is only limited by their market size. If someone needs 150,000 a month, there are known ways to speed up assembly.
I see them mainly used (eg Ukraine war) to annoy the other party with many military insignificant attacks on civilians. Very sad but not something that actually wins wars.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraines-...
It looks like they just introduced another stalemate.
I didn't know the role on the battlefield was this big though.
FPV drones with a hand grenade strapped to them will finish off any stragglers. Bigger version (with more explosives) also apparently quite effective against armored vehicles like IFVs and tanks, and can be used to deploy new minefields without having to risk soldiers out in the open.
So perhaps they are not (yet) key to winning a war, but they are certainly already key to not losing. There's a very good reason Ukraine is ramping up drone production to several million per year. Convert that to drones deployed per day and use your imagination to come up with uses for 30000 kamikaze drones per day.
At that point it seems like it's basically a very slow moving missile, except it's steerable by a human operator.
I was under the impression that the value of these weapons was mostly in their simple construction from readily available parts (cheap ammunition and grenades instead of expensive purpose made javelins). Doesn't that kind of go away if you start to "innovate" with them?
If Lockheed Martin starts selling the drones at $30k a pop, I don't understand why they'd be better than a missile.
The fiber optic FPV drone was an innovation and it's extremely cheap to build?
I don't think it's only been about cost, it's been about devastating effectiveness, they just happen to be much much cheaper than basically anything they destroy.
Necessity is the mother of invention, Ukraine is developing these things and innovating for actual survival, we're not talking about engaging lockhead martin on a 20 billion dollar budget.
I suppose my concern is that missiles and bombs probably aren't any more expensive to produce than these drones are. There's just a huge markup for military equipment. We are trying to solve a problem of capitalism (or the military industrial complex i suppose) through technology, and that rarely works. It usually just creates a new layer of incumbents that want another 20 billion.
Well a Javelin costs[1] around $200k, so if the alternative is just $30k then that seems like a great deal just there.
But a drone offers different capabilities. In particular they can hunt to some degree and you can launch one without immediately giving up your position. That means it's much safer for the operators.
Against distant but more stationary targets, one can take more time to navigate them close to critical weak spots, so you potentially need much less explosives to get the job done. Just look at what Ukraine did against those bombers[2] in Russia. Less explosives means you can make a smaller drone which is less detectable, harder to counter and easier to carry.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/29/how-this-us-made-176000-anti...
Different mission profiles.
Don’t compare apples to oranges.
Also missiles are normally tens of thousands to millions of dollars each, depending on size, launch method, etc. ATACMs is around 1.5mil. A Patriot missile vehicle is around $4 million just for the launcher. A Griffin missile is $127,000.
Many of these drones in Ukraine are sub $1,000.
The followup then is, won't the contractor producing these drones simply elect to take a similar markup for their product?
ATACMs and others are large missiles with complex guidance systems. Sometimes maybe an optical guidance module.
FPV drones and basic quadcopter are low cost, man operated, and all of the previous counter threats are for the missiles etc mentioned above. Nothing this slow, or this small.
Most suicide drones are far less complex (but that is increasing), much smaller, with human and sometimes image recognition and INS guidance. Sometimes fiber optic tethered (where possible) to counter the electronic warfare counter measures.
Many of these drone systems are also open source. A lot of COTS or 3d-printed components (use-once).
It's just different types and scales of systems solving completely different types of problems, with completely different logistics requirements.
What this really comes down to is that fpv drones are a low cost, low risk, delivery method for certain classes of munitions. Give the size and low cost, it's like going from fighting humans to fighting swarms of stinging insects. No one really has solid defenses for this type of threat yet. Also including small to medium quadcopter platforms for ISR.
Propose a business plan to meet the ATACM's capabilities for far less. The Pentagon will be at your door with flowers in a matter of minutes. Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are trivial niceties, when national defense is on the line.
Edit: what you don't see, and are assuming doesn't happen, is the vicious competition that goes on before a military contract is sealed. Grift and overspending happen, because: humans, but weapons are made by the lowest bidder who meets the advertised goals of the program, every time.
The problem is that mainstream western news sources are not covering the daily reality of front-line fighting in Ukraine - where drones have become a whole new dimension of high-lethality micro-scale air power.
As for attacking civilians being the goal:
[1] - "At least two people were killed, including a 22-year-old police officer who was named by authorities as Maria Dziumaha, and more than a dozen were wounded in the attacks, according to authorities..."
That is after more than 400 drones were used in the attack.
[1] - https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/europe/russia-air-assault-ukr...
Yes, Russia is also using them to terrorise civilians but they clearly have huge battlefield implications and any military not immediately addressing this issue is going g to go into their next conflict at a massive disadvantage
Read the article.
For example, a recent article shared on HN highlighted that the cheap drones become useless once there is any signal jamming going on. Russia can't jam too aggressively as their own comms are not good enough to be useful in such an environment. But what about NATO? Would they just jam the EM spectrum to oblivion and render all these drones useless?
Not a great point of comparison, but Israel v Gaza seems to use next to no drones (certainly not the small cheap variety), and the little that is known of Israel v Iran also focused on big expensive manned and unmanned aircraft. Plus massive, enormous, eye-wateringly-expensive bombs. Not converted Mavic drones. To the extent that Iran used drones, reportedly they gave no tactical benefit, as they were all shot down long before they reached Israel.
Autonomous drones, likewise, have their own issues. Mostly they can't be equally dirt cheap, as they need to have all the electronics that make regular weaponry expensive.
Russia makes use of fibre optic cable with some drones:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/03/08/russia...
Ukraine has developed countermeasures:
https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukraine-discloses-new-meth...
BTW is all this bio-degradable? What about clean-up after a war?
Assuming Ukraine survives, they will have decades of work ahead of them cleaning up all the mines and other live munitions buried across half the country. A bunch of strands of metal and fiber won't make any difference.
There is also a need in adaptability. Delivering parts that meets a specific demand at a specific time is where 3D printing and diy drones shine and it's important in Ukraine frontline.
There is also a system in the way Ukraine is doing war that favorise diy drone. Basically, each units have a budget and you get more if your unit kill Russian soldiers/equipment. This in return give you access to more advanced drones.
I think today the drones are quite well equipped and the diy versions are less present.
Israel is geographically a very small country with a rather unique situation, and has spent eye-watering amounts of money on its arms industry with significant help of the US and Europe. In addition, their defence was very good but not fool-proof. I'm not sure how many landed off-hand, but there was some serious damage. Other defences will likely be less effective.
I'm not so sure an effective missile/drone defence would work for most other countries: too much area to protect, too expensive for the advantage it gives. Protecting key cities/locations could perhaps be effective, but entire countries? Probably not.