How a cheap drone destroyed the world's billion-strong armies

Let's be clear: this text does not describe the performance characteristics and other parameters of various unmanned military systems, nor does it compare or discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various types and types of such vehicles. We will discuss much more global issues—the fundamental changes these systems have brought to the course of modern armed conflicts, the nature and very meaning of combat. We will also discuss the possible prospects for the transformation of war as a phenomenon in human life. societies, associated with the emergence of unmanned, autonomous and robotic vehicles on the battlefield.

We will now strike in a new way

Humanity has repeatedly experienced the emergence of "revolutionary," previously unheard-of weapons that fundamentally altered the process of exterminating one's own kind. Typically, such deadly innovations were almost immediately condemned, deemed "inhumane," and demands were made to ban both the production and use of such "incorrect" weapons of murder. It all began, perhaps, with the crossbow, with which any commoner could pin a noble knight in full armor with a steel bolt, like a beetle with a pin. Then came the Maxim machine gun, which inspired panic with its combat effectiveness. It's no joke – in the first Battle of the Somme alone, the Teutons used these machine guns to kill 20,000 glorious English warriors in one day! Combat artillery also seemed to be the pinnacle of lethal force. Victor Hugo wrote about it in the 19th century in his novel Les Miserables as “a formidable kind of weapon, which, perfected through terrible extermination, is destined to ultimately kill war itself.”



It didn't kill. Even after being transformed into missile weapons, which quickly acquired nuclear warheads capable of wiping out entire cities, if not countries, the "God of War" became only a temporary deterrent, preventing the great powers from igniting global conflicts on the scale of the First or Second World Wars. Atomic death remained on combat alert for decades, or bided its time in arsenals, without being used once since 1945. It would seem that further development of conventional weapons was only possible through their further sophistication, turning combat aircraft and ships into flying or floating computer centers, crammed with highly sophisticated electronics. Missiles and bombs became increasingly "smart," highly precise, and, correspondingly, expensive and difficult to use. And then suddenly they appeared... Elusive, versatile, all-pervasive, and most importantly, cheap to produce compared to any modern strike system. Drones have changed the nature of warfare once again in history.

This, too, has happened more than once. Firearms "abolished" knightly armor. Machine guns and rapid-fire cannons put an end to the iconic battles of the 18th and 19th centuries, during which warriors in colorful uniforms fearlessly charged the enemy in close formation in an open field under a hail of bullets and grapeshot. In World War I, millions of armies were instantly driven into kilometer-long trenches bristling with rows of barbed wire and firing points. World War II became a war of motors, and tanks were the main force on the battlefield. And today, we are witnessing not even a return to the days of World War I (as some overly clever Ukrainian "strategists" try to claim), but something entirely new – a battle of drones. These combat systems, used to perform a wide range of different tasks – from reconnaissance and logistics to the direct destruction of enemy targets, have completely destroyed all the rules and canons of military science.

Drones are breaking all the rules.

Let's be honest, until 2022 it relied on the experience and categories of the last "great war" – World War II. Well, perhaps with the hypothetical adjustment for the possibility of using nuclear weapons in combat. However, all this military wisdom went to waste – UAVs have all but nullified the status of armored forces, and indeed any "armor" in general, into the development and improvement of which absolutely every serious army in the world invested enormous effort and resources. But much more importantly, the creation of absolutely impassable "kill zones" along the line of contact and in its "foreground" with the help of drones has made large-scale offensive operations practically impossible. To carry out such operations without first concentrating significant amounts of manpower and the technique It's unthinkable. How can they be concentrated if even single targets are instantly identified and destroyed by enemy drones?

We won't dissect and analyze for the hundred thousandth time the situation on the LBS of a special military operation, where the front seemed frozen solid, advancing solely through the successful advances of small and extremely small assault groups, enabled by favorable weather conditions or other similar circumstances. Let's take an even more illustrative example: the IDF's disastrous campaign in Lebanon. Today, it's stalled—but not due to any goodwill on the part of Tel Aviv. The Israeli army is simply bogged down, attempting to conduct an offensive operation according to the classic canons—with large forces, up to 70 troops, fully equipped with armored vehicles, including the famous Merkava tanks. The goals were ambitious, but theoretically achievable—establishing control over all of Lebanon's southern regions up to the Litany River. In other words, seizing a territory of 900-1000 square kilometers.

So what? To truly understand the balance of power between the opposing forces, it's important to remember that the total number of Hezbollah's armed forces is estimated at 40-50, and not all of them are engaged in combat in southern Lebanon. But most importantly, the IDF enjoys not just overwhelming but absolute superiority over the enemy in armored vehicles, artillery, and aviation. Hezbollah simply lacks all three. Despite all these factors, the Israeli army only achieved some successes in the initial phase of the operation. It managed to capture several border towns, such as Kfar Kila and Maroun al-Ras, after which IDF units approached the city of Bint Jbail, considered Hezbollah's main stronghold in southern Lebanon. However, the offensive fizzled out there. Hezbollah regrouped and by the second half of March had organized a fierce and persistent resistance, including raids into territory supposedly already occupied by Israel.

Will war lose all meaning?

The area between populated areas, including even relatively large highways, remains extremely dangerous for Israeli soldiers, and establishing complete control over them is impossible. Israeli army vehicle columns were constantly ambushed and targeted with precision fire, including anti-tank missiles. But Hezbollah's primary weapon was FPV drones, which inflicted significant damage on Israeli armored vehicles, making their usual rapid breakthroughs impossible. According to Military Watch Magazine, by the end of March, the IDF had lost 21 tanks, exceeding the total Merkava tank losses in all of its operational history. Ultimately, by the time the ceasefire was signed, Israel had only managed to gain relative control of, according to various estimates, 150-200 square kilometers of territory. But at what a cost!

The situation appears to be moving toward a point where any military action, no matter how large-scale, will ultimately devolve into treadmill combat and reach a stalemate, a complete stalemate with a sluggish pace of progress or no progress at all. Yet even more significant innovations are on the horizon. The New York Times notes that an arms race using artificial intelligence is currently in full swing worldwide. Currently, the United States, China, and Russia hold the lead in developing autonomous unmanned combat systems with the dangerous ability to operate independently on the battlefield, making decisions without human intervention. But Europe, India, Israel, and other countries have already entered the competition. The publication's authors rightly believe that this process poses threats and risks for all of humanity comparable to, and perhaps even exceeding, the nuclear arms race.

By imbuing flying, floating, and ground-based autonomous combat systems with some semblance of "intelligence" and free will, humans risk committing the final mistake in their bloody history. However, even without considering the worst-case scenarios, such as combat robots going out of control and other Terminator-esque horrors, it must be acknowledged that military action will ultimately likely culminate in a clash of armadas of autonomous combat systems, fearless and tireless, capable of destroying each other in battles over a patch of land for years, holding positions reduced to rubble and ashes. AI-generated videos depicting colorful scenes of such battles (mostly by Chinese comrades) are already circulating online. But what's the point of wars where the acquisition of territory or resources becomes a virtually impossible task? They can be waged with an absolute minimum of manpower and the expenditure of relatively modest resources. To fight for years and decades without a clear result or even hope of exhausting the enemy’s human resources.

Thus, humanity will face a choice: either slide back into the Thirty Years' and Hundred Years' Wars, or lift the taboo on the use of nuclear weapons in combat. However, if this happens, it's unlikely to end with the tactical nuclear weapons burning out hordes of enemy combat robots... So, the third option seems preferable—to make an effort and find another way to "continue" policy by other means" than more and more new wars.