How would hypersonic and cruise missiles perform?
What impact would drones have on the battlefield?
How important is artillery in modern warfare?
How relevant are tanks?
And what about electronic warfare?
All these questions have been answered by this war.
Today let’s review what we’ve learned so far. The future of war is looking more science-fiction by the day.
The soldier, with a GoPro camera strapped to his helmet, hides in an abandoned building. He’s breathing heavily.
Suddenly, the loud whir of a drone appears. The soldier whispers a prayer and takes cover.
BOOM! The drone explodes nearby. Screaming from a wounded soldier erupts.
I’ve seen this situation play out dozens of times. For both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.
It’s a terrifying scenario. Sometimes I’ll see a video where a group of soldiers is being attacked by dozens of these killer drones at a time. The whine of a drone’s electric engine has become an ominous sound on the front lines.
These new weapons systems are cheap. A $300 civilian drone combined with a $50 RPG warhead can take out a $4 million tank. This is asymmetric warfare perfected. Tanks will likely maintain a role going forward, but it will be substantially diminished.
Each side uses tens of thousands of these drones per month. They’re so common that 12 gauge shotguns have become essential kit for soldiers on the front-lines. It turns out that birdshot is among the most effective counters. See this video for an example of how effective shotguns can be.
But electronic warfare is also becoming a key defense against drones. The Russian anti-gun drone below works by scrambling a drone’s signal, causing it to crash.
Re-purposed civilian drones have already changed warfare forever. At first they were primarily a scouting tool, but now they’ve become a deadly weapon.
The abundance of weaponized drones on the battlefield has made advancing extremely difficult. A small hidden group armed with a few dozen drones can hold back hundreds of vehicles from advancing.
Of course, there are also dozens of new models of military-grade drones being released every year. There are now mass-produced killer drones of all types being churned out by the tens of thousands. We covered some of the more important modelsback in July.
No comments:
Post a Comment