With all the dumb headlines and conspiracy theories surrounding Taylor Swift, you could be forgiven for missing a far more important headline: that the Ukrainians sank the Russian corvette Ivanovets using unmanned surface vessels.
The Ukrainians continue to use cheap drones to hit Russian troops on land and now attack vessels at sea. When you lack the money and infrastructure to build high end tanks, aircraft and ships, and you have to counter such units, cheap drones are going to be the best selection.
Right now we’re seeing wave attacks of guided drones, which require a human in the loop. This will last until electronic weapons become good enough that having a command link to guide the drones becomes too big of a risk. At that point we’re going to start seeing autonomous drones launched on one-way missions that will strike targets without ever calling back to home.
This isn’t to say that drones make ships, aircraft and troops obsolete. Drones can’t occupy land (at least, not until Skynet has its way) and they can’t run airports and seaports. Drones will act as a way of denying the use of these facilities, sea lanes or land. The opposing side will have to develop cheap ways of responding, because its not economically feasible to use a million dollar missile to shoot down a $10K drone every time you are attacked. The United States would do well to develop these methods now before we have to develop them in a hurry in the Red Sea.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
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