Key Points and That One Word: Drones – The Ukraine war has ushered in a “Drone Revolution,” with drones now reportedly causing 70-80% of frontline casualties, fundamentally changing modern warfare.
-Ukrainian forces leverage cheap, disposable drones (costing $500-$2,000) for highly cost-effective strikes against expensive Russian assets like tanks, and are achieving strategic reach with long-range drone attacks deep into Russia.
-This operational reality contrasts sharply with some US defense industry offerings of very expensive drones for similar attritional roles.
-For the US military to adapt to this new era, it must embrace the development of mission-specific, cost-effective, and potentially expendable unmanned systems.
Is the US Military Ready for the Drone Revolution?
The Ukraine War has created what is justifiably being called a “Drone Revolution.”
The presence of these unmanned flying machines has completely changed the conduct of modern warfare. On the front lines, up to 70 percent of casualties are now caused not by artillery, airstrikes, mortar attacks, snipers, or landmines.
They are, by the testimony of more than one field commander, instead caused by drones. Others in the field now estimate that if those killed and wounded are calculated in the aggregate, the actual figure is closer to 80 percent.
As a specialist for the Atlantic Council who spoke to me said, “Bullets and shells are not what are killing people on the battlefield—drones are now killing them.”
Taking a longer-term and somewhat abstract perspective, the sudden and unexpected dominant nature of drones on the battlefield is not an unheard-of development.
The history of warfare is replete with examples of humankind’s ability to create new technologies or innovations in warfare faster than human designers are capable of devising adequate counter-innovations and/or the ability to adapt to them.
Unanticipated Dimension—Design For Combat
But what is unusual about how the drone war in Ukraine has evolved are two trends that one perhaps could not have expected.
Details come from a long-time colleague in Ukraine who works in the Ukraine defense industrial sector designing drones. He has also been shuttling tirelessly back and forth between his company’s main design office and the front lines.
Sometimes, he is there to observe the equipment his company produces in action to evaluate its effectiveness. Sometimes, he is shuttling personnel and/or vehicles to the front. Sometimes, he has come out to retrieve wounded. Sometimes, he is engaged in all three at the same time. This gives him a unique perspective that most of the drone designers in the world lack.
For purposes of not identifying him by name or – more importantly – not identifying his company and making it a target for the next Russian attack on his city, I will call him Valery.
He and I talk regularly, and just earlier this week, we spoke after he had attended a defense technology exhibition outside of Ukraine. What he sees as an unexpected development is how American firms do not understand the battlefield, which is to say, as he describes it, “is how you tailor a product to the mission, but at the same time make it a product that is at a cost that reflects the profile of that mission.”
Specifically, he laments the fact that “as you Americans once would say in a previous generation, these drones we use here are ‘no deposit—no return bottles.’ That, of course, means that most of them are never coming back to base. It is a one-way trip, and the cost of the drone needs to reflect that.”
“This is why the products you find on the front line are in the range of US $500-2000 per unit,” he continued. “This is extremely good ‘value for money’ because $10,000 worth of drones can destroy a Russian tank sometimes more effectively an at longer ranges than you can using a $170,000 Javelin anti-tank missile. Since the Russian tank costs more than one million Euros, this is a very good exchange ratio.”
“So, what do I see at this most recent expo I have been to when I speak to the American companies?” he said, exhibiting no small amount of frustration. “They say, ‘come look at our drone. This would be great on the front line. Look at all the fabulous missions it can perform. And it only costs a quarter of a million dollars.’”
“Are they crazy? Spending US $250,000 for a drone that you might be able to use for one day before it’s blown to bits. American industry needs to go back and re-think how they would fight in this kind of a war.”
Longer and Longer Ranges for Drones
The other aspect of the drone war that he and others observe is the increasing range at which Ukrainian drones are hitting Russian targets.
Striking this deep into Russia is a mission that would in the past have been associated with long-range, multi-million-dollar cruise missiles or bomber aircraft.
In the past week alone, reported the Kyiv Post, the number of Ukrainian drones launched into Russian airspace has reached the highest levels of the war. In 72 hours, the Ukraine military launched close to 1,000 drones at targets across western Russia against cities like Oryol, Kursk, Moscow, Vladimir, Kostroma, Yaroslav, Kaluga, Tambov, Ivanovo, Nizhny Novgorod, Tula, Lipetsk, and Voronezh.
“This is the drone war in a nutshell,” said Igor. “Drones continuing to do more and in some cases costing less than the price of the average laptop to build. If you are sending a drone a thousand miles or just half a mile, it does not matter,” he said. “It should still cost a fraction of the target it is destroying and not the other way around. Until the US military cracks that code, they are going to be behind Ukraine’s industry in this business.”
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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