Air Weapons: Decisive Drone Innovations

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December 22, 2024: Military leaders, when faced with peacetime decisions on how to fight the next war. It’s common to seek answers in the last war they or others fought. For many nations, that is the Ukraine War and the Russian failure to win against its smaller opponent.

Russia is one of the few militarily aggressive nations. That’s because many Russians yearn for a revival of the Russian Empire. This was ultimately the Russian reason for invading Ukraine in 2022. President Vladimir Putin believed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a tragedy that must be remedied. Putin also claimed portions of Poland as one of its future targets for absorption into Greater Russia, otherwise known as the Russian empire. Belarus, the Baltic States and some former Soviet territories in Central Asia are also on the acquisition list. None of these targets were willing to cooperate. Poland, as the largest and wealthiest East European NATO member, led the way by rearming to confront any future threat. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Poland increased the size of its military and obtained large quantities of modern weapons. Poland was one of the latest nations to join NATO, in 2009. Because of the Ukraine War, long-time neutrals Sweden and Finland joined NATO.

NATO nations near or bordering Russia believe that if Russia is allowed to keep any Ukrainian territory, the Russians will attack them eventually as part of an effort to reconstitute the Greater Russia that the tsars and later communists created and maintained until 1991. Russian leader Vladimir Putin believes the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a tragic event that must be rectified. Many Russians agree with that but are less willing to pay the economic and military price that Ukraine demonstrated would result if Russia tried.

Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan are nervous because they are, after Ukraine, according to Vladimir Putin, on the list of former Soviet territories that must be absorbed into Greater Russia. That would be difficult because these three states have growing economic ties with China and diplomatic ties with India and the West.

Greater Russia was not just about rebuilding the tsarist or communist empires because Russia does not want the expense of ruling Central Asian states, but rather more lucrative territories Russian once ruled. This includes portions of Poland, all of the Baltic States and Finland, and parts of Alaska. There are some serious legal and practical problems with these claims. The United States has a larger military and nuclear weapons which might come into play if Russia made a serious effort to take Alaska, which Russia sold to the United States for $7.2 million in 1867. That’s $130 million in 2023 dollars. Alaska proved to be worth trillions as Russia never discovered the huge quantities of natural resources in Alaska.

Russia has since learned the value of natural resources. Russia is one of the largest oil producers in the world, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States. The problem is that the 14 new nations that were formerly part of the Soviet Union want nothing to do with joining a revived Soviet state. There are some serious legal problems with rebuilding the Soviet Union. Russia and nearly all nations in the world are members of the United Nations. Article 51 of the UN charter demands that members refrain from the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Russia says this does not apply because Ukraine is a breakaway part of Russia and Russian troops are seeking to liberate Ukraine from NATO oppression. Ukraine is a UN member and protests Russian claims as well as the UN tolerating the Russian use of its Security Council veto to block any serious UN opposition to the Russian aggression.

The World Court has indicted Putin as a war criminal for misdeeds in Ukraine, some involving kidnapping children. Invading Ukraine has wrecked the Russian economy because of Western economic sanctions and the high cost of the war. It's reached the point where their railroad system is collapsing and Russia faces economic collapse and even famine in 2025.

Putin puts on a brave front and insists he has solutions to all these problems. The only positive thing to come out of the Ukraine war was the emergence of drone warfare. Implementing lessons learned from the Ukraine war, especially the widespread use of drones, if forcing military leaders worldwide to rethink how their forces are organized, armed and trained. For example a few thousand dollars’ worth of drones can and have destroyed $4.5 million M1 tanks. The U.S. has over 5,000 M1s available for use.

The Americans are not trying to develop and build cheap air-defense drones, which are already being used in Ukraine. The United States could buy them from Ukraine or build them under license in the United States. There are some other issues. In wartime drone designs evolve rapidly. Stockpiling thousands of drones produced in 2024 and 2025 would create a problem when using them a year or more after 2025. The enemy may have built more advanced drones in anticipation of offing them in a surprise attack. The American stockpiled drones would then be less useful because they are older designs. This is especially true with anti-drone drones, a recent development that is still evolving rapidly.

Meanwhile American defense manufacturers resist converting to drone production. There is less profit in cheap drones compared to multi-million dollar aircraft, tanks and air defense systems. It would take a wartime situation to force the defense firms to adapt to producing a lot of cheap drones.

Meanwhile American attempts to adopt the new drone tactics and technology developed, and still developing, in Ukraine have encountered problems. First, the U.S. is not at war and the military bureaucracy has a peacetime attitude towards any new technology. This includes the use of drones in Ukraine and the flood of practical experience and solutions passed by Ukraine. Current U.S. Army drones, when used in Ukraine, often encounter problems the Ukrainian drones don’t. In a wartime situation, Ukrainians have been quick to make changes until they get the results they need.

The American military may want to implement the lessons of drone use in Ukraine, but American defense contractors and manufacturers feel compelled to modify and improve what the Ukrainians have done while they adapt Ukrainian drone tech to something new which United States forces can use and Congress will pay for. This process tends to lower the effectiveness of what the Ukrainians have created, while delaying the product and enriching the contractors and manufacturers. The lesser effectiveness is usually revealed the first time American troops use the U.S. version of Ukrainian drone tech. Something is lost in the tech translation. This is nothing new. It’s been happening for over a century.

Adapting and adopting Ukrainian drone technology means there will be new drone modifications and upgrades for as long as the fighting in Ukraine lasts. These changes come quickly in wartime, and always have. In Ukraine, drone designs can be changed in less than a week. This is usually because the Russians have gained an edge with one of their recent tweaks.

While Ukraine has been in the forefront of developing and upgrading drone technology, the Russians have kept up. In war time you either keep up or become an inept underdog that falls farther and farther behind. The Russians have kept most of the time and, when they fail to keep up, suffer heavy losses.

The peacetime American military has no such wartime feedback loop. If someone in the defense procurement establishment says the current American drone tech is good, it is considered officially adequate. Sending U.S. drone adaptations to Ukraine for testing takes place, but often over the objections of some U.S. manufacturers. When tested in combat, some of the U.S. drones fail to deliver. When the Ukraine war ends, there will be no way to adequately test American drones. There may be other wars where American troops are involved and able to test the new drones. But it won’t be in the intensely competitive atmosphere the Ukrainians and Russians created.

Ukraine has been writing the book on drone technology since 2022, with Russia contributing edits in real time. When that atmosphere is not present, the speed of developing new tech or maintaining current drones slows down a lot. This process is at work now as the U.S. Army orders drones based on Ukrainian designs. The American military procurement bureaucracy is infamously slow in adopting and manufacturing new weapons. This is especially true if a weapon was not invented by an American weapons manufacturer. It is feared that the Ukrainian drone revolution will be equally slow in actually reaching Americans soldiers and marines. Many military and Defense Department civilians are aware of this problem and see the drone development and procurement program as an opportunity to show that the United States can do it right and quickly. It is said that the Ukrainians suggested that the Americans have a toy company manufacture their drones because they are more efficient than the usual defense firms. Also, the toy companies have spare capacity for months before they have to start making toys for the holidays. Early in the war Ukraine relied on civilians in home workshops to design and build drones. Now that Ukraine is building millions of drones a year, most are built in underground factories. Drone manufacturing is a prime target for Russian drones and ballistic missiles.

In early 2024 Ukraine created a new branch of their military, the USF/Unmanned Systems Force. This is in addition to the Ukrainian Air Force that consists of manned aircraft. The USF does not control the drones which Ukrainian forces use regularly but instead contributes to developing new drone models and organizes mass production for those new models that are successful. The U.S. military took note of this but acting on it takes a lot longer for a peacetime military.

Drones were an unexpected development that had a huge impact on how battles in Ukraine's current war are fought. Drones were successful because they were cheap, easily modified, and expendable. Modifications and upgrades could be implemented quickly and inexpensively Both Russian and Ukrainian forces were soon using cheap quadcopter drones controlled by soldiers a few kilometers distant using FPV/First Person Viewing goggles to see what the day/night video camera on the drone can see. Adding night vision is available when needed, at a higher cost per drone. These drones cost a few hundred dollars each with the most complex models going for about a thousand dollars. Most of these drones carry half a kilogram of explosives, so it can instantly turn the drone into a flying bomb that can fly into a target and detonate. Some drones carry more explosives depending on what is needed to deal with a target.

These drones are awesome and debilitating weapons when used in large numbers. If a target isn’t moving or requires more explosive power that the drones can supply, one of the drone operators can call in artillery, rocket, or missile fire, or even an airstrike. Larger, fixed wing drones are used for long range, often over a thousand kilometers, operations against targets deep inside Russia.

A major limitation to the expansion of drone operations is the need for trained drone operators. These operators need over a hundred hours of training before they are able to operate these drones at peak effectiveness. As operators spend more hours operating drones in combat, the number of new lessons learned and applied increases. Fortunately, adults or kids who play video games a lot are already trained. Ukrainian drone operators tend to use commercial game controllers. This is why when Ukraine recruits new drone operators, they favor those with video game experience.

The small drones are difficult to shoot down until they get close to the ground and the shooter is close enough, as in less than a few hundred meters, away to successfully target a drone with a bullet or two and bring it down. Troops are rarely in position to do this, so most of these drones are able to complete their mission, whether it is a one-way attack or reconnaissance and surveillance. The recon missions are usually survivable and enable the drone to be reused. All these drones are constantly performing surveillance, which means that both sides commit enough drones to maintain constant surveillance over a portion of the front line, to a depth, into enemy territory, of at least a few kilometers. Longer range drones can track Russian operations hundreds of kilometers behind the front lines.

This massive use of FPV-armed drones has revolutionized warfare in Ukraine and both sides are producing as many as they can. Russia initially produced its own drones now after briefly using imported Iranian Shahed-136 drones that cost over $100,000 each. Ukraine demonstrated that you could design and build drones with similar capabilities at less than a tenth of that. The Iranian drone was more complex than it needed to be, and even the Russians soon realized this and turned from the Shahed-136 for more capable drones they copied from Ukrainian designs or their own.

Military leaders in other nations have noted this and are scrambling to equip their own forces with the most effective drones. Not having enough of these to match the number the enemy has in a portion of the front means you are at a serious disadvantage in that area. These drones are still evolving in terms of design and use and are becoming more effective and essential.

One countermeasure that can work for a while is electronic jamming of the drones’ control signal. Drone guidance systems are constantly modified or upgraded to cope with this. Most drones have flight control software that sends drones with jammed control signals back to where they took off to land for reuse. The jammers on the ground can be attacked by drones programmed to home in on the jamming signal. Countermeasures can be overcome and the side that can do this more quickly and completely has an advantage. That advantage is usually temporary because both sides are putting a lot of effort into keeping their combat drones effective on the battlefield.

 

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