Redefining War: Drones as the Ultimate Equalizer on the Modern Battlefield

July 31st in Sherpur, Kabul an affluent district in the Afghan capital. A three-story home amidst several villas belonging to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahir, residing with many senior Taliban officials and commanders, Sherpur was known for its opulent residences.

Al-Zawahir liked to stand on his balcony and watch the city. As he stood this fateful morning, an order to fire was given miles away; a few moments later, a R9X Hellfire missile launched from a drone would hit him almost directly.

Behold the Age of Drone Warfare. Now, while this case does not represent either the first or last use of a drone in war, it does give us some insight into how the US has used and developed drones over the last 20 years.

It shows the precision and the unforgiving nature of which we deal with our enemies; but the United States uses drones in a very acute manner. Surveillance, high priority targets, perhaps bolting a missile and launch platform for kinetic engagements where you don’t wanna risk human life.

The battlefield is changing quickly, let us explore how, why, and most importantly what we are (and not) doing to combat these threats. Let's first start by exploring what types of drone systems are being utilized and their general capabilities.

A British MQ-9A Reaper operating over Afghanistan in 2009

Most people have seen this guy shown above, the MQ-9 Predator Drone.

America's eye in the sky. It’s been shown in TV and Movies, on the news, perhaps you’ve even seen seen them flying overhead. The MQ-9 is an unmanned, multi-role vehicle manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, with many variants.

The US Customs and border protection utilizes a few MQ-9s to monitor and assist in border security activities. The one shown above was in service for the British and flew in Afghanistan on both fire missions and surveillance.

They can be kitted out for dropping missiles and bombs, or to serve as an "eye in the sky" on rescue missions. The MQ-9 does have its downsides, while being able to carry two hellfire missiles makes you incredibly dangerous to any foe you may encounter, you trade off size and visibility for the extra firepower.

These drones have been shot down before, due to their size and visibility they are vulnerable to many surface to air defense systems like MANPADS.

Now, let’s take a look at something smaller. Perhaps even something you’ve flown before. Quad-copters.

These are the drones you have bought your kid (or yourself, sick) for Christmas or seen flying around online getting great camera footage. These cheap commercial drones have had another, much more sinister use.

You may have heard about their popularity in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war (or seen on Reddit firsthand). “Off the shelf” drone outfitted with hand grenades, incendiary grenades, modified mortars, and more flying over to a trench and dropping the munition of the day on the enemy. It’s one use for these small drones that grabs attention and quite frankly, if I were in that situation these things would terrify me.

Tiny drones, hard to see without clouds and smoke, let alone in the midst of a battle, fighting an enemy, while this tiny quad of death is creeping overhead waiting for you to peek your head out. Absolute fuel for nightmares.

These drones have many purposes on the modern battlefield from the above mentioned grenade drops, to taking out enemy armor both tanks and personnel carriers alike. They can serve as surveillance for a force moving forward on the battlefield, identifying enemies before friendly soldiers are moved into harm's way. They can correct artillery fire, delivering devastating munitions of all types against enemy fortifications, vehicles, and soldiers.

As the war has progressed the use of these drones has only grown. They have proved themselves a very capable and useful tool on the modern battlefield.

Nowadays you may see a FPV drone, very similar to a quadcopter but are usually used in “suicide” attacks, with a mortar strapped to it. This FPV drone will fly off to find a vehicle usually and crash into it with sometimes devastating results.

These drones also have their weaknesses in that they can fairly easily be jammed, especially in small numbers and even destroyed by many current air defense systems.

The last type of drone discussed here are naval drones, also very much in use by the Ukrainians in their war with Russia. Naval drones come in all shapes and sizes and can operate on or under the sea.

In the case of the Ukrainian naval drones we see, they are essentially small speed boats packed full of explosives and given a remote control operating system. The main idea is to be small and travel fast towards your target. Most common targets we see in these examples would be a ship or a bridge.

These drones again are cheap, having more issues than other drones, although just as much potential for destruction. If they are spotted they are easier to take out with small arms fire as well as the remote control system having a bad connection across vast areas of water. This disruption in signal leaves much to be desired in terms latency and accuracy.

There are many other naval drones out there though, from mega-submarines to drug smugglers, the use is only limited by the imagination, much like all of drone warfare these days.

Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System or better known as Poseidon is a fully autonomous nuclear-powered unmanned underwater vehicle armed with both conventional and nuclear payloads.

Russia is building this full sized submarine drone and is reporting that it will supposedly have the capability to operate independently all over the world while remaining completely covert.

They plan to build 30 of them, and if they do, it will truly be something spectacular. Alas it's Russia, so I'm not expecting the ship will actually function as planned, or come in the numbers they were hoping, but that's a discussion for a different day.

This is a great step up in submarine technology yet, only the future knows how that story plays out. In my opinion, would never step foot in a submarine. FUCK that. So I say, take as many men out of them as you can; let's just not put nukes into the hands of drones just yet.

Drones come in all forms like the handheld Black Hornet shown above, a mini drone that can traverse hallways and narrow spaces. Inversely, they can be huge like the RQ-4 Global Hawk shown below. Another American drone that's an absolute unit. This big boy is utilized for high altitude surveillance.

So, what exactly is the threat posed by these various drones to a traditional army?
In my mind the main ways in which drones disrupt regular militaries are the strategic impact of drones on the battlefield, the versatility and adaptability these platforms possess, and the associated costs of using drones.

Versatile and Adaptable. We have already talked about how the Ukrainians have been adapting and changing commercial drones to fit their needs, but what does that look actually look like? The main development has been in the quad-copter sect, where payloads keep increasing and batteries keep getting better. The use of these stronger batteries and improved rotors that generate more lift, along with tweaks and improvements to the user interface including rudimentary targeting systems, and weapon release triggers have resulted in a truly multi functional platform, tuned for many tasks.

This can be extremely disruptive to any military force. Troop movements and encampments, storage facilities, command posts and supply lines can all easily be stopped, and observed from the air. The use of a small surveillance drone by your enemy will log all your movements and locations in a single passing flight. This can be done by the unit level command for frontline units and all the way up the chain of command to coordinate and plan attacks.
Drones play an incredible part in harassing infantry and armor. Kitted out with whatever payload happens to work best for that job, or that you have lying around they can be deployed rapidly and put into action. Whether it's a few tanks rolling your way or a group of infantry trying to push your trenches, drones have proved a most versatile and adaptable tool on the modern battlefield.

Cost.
Cost of the drones versus cost to your enemy. FPV and quadcopter drones are usually very cheap ranging from about a hundred to a thousand or so dollars; this varies depending on optics and battery life, but the cost is relatively low, especially when governments are footing the bill. A $200 drone with four hand grenades on it can kill a handful of soldiers, what price can you put on human life? How much is the value of seeing tank movements of your enemy? It's hard and somewhat impossible to weigh the actual cost of information and human lives against hardware so let's compare material costs.


A Main Battle Tank will cost upwards of 3 million dollars, if a military can strap a artillery shell to a FPV drone for under five-thousand dollars, that's a trade only a fool would pass up.

Now, not all drones are cheap, the Black Hornet will run you about $200,000 whereas a MQ-9 reaper will cost you about $30 million. But if you can afford the good stuff, you buy cheap, which explains why we see smaller nations employing these cheaper alternatives. With the increase of drone usage in war, and the increase in conflicts worldwide, we see now that even newer drones are beginning to fall in prices.

Ukrainian naval drones cost about $250,000 whereas Houthi naval drones made by Iran have an estimated cost of only $2,000 USD. The larger Shahed-136 , a loitering munition that can devastate vehicles, people and buildings, is estimated at $20,000, and is seeing great use by Russia in Ukraine.

In short, the prices are all over the place but it seems like they are getting cheaper and more effective as time goes on and we can expect that trend to continue with their increased use.

Strategic use of these systems.
Drone warfare in the modern world saw its start thanks to the CIA, after the war on terror, when an expensive MQ-9 drone was utilized to assassinate a terrorist leader. Around the same time small cheap quad-copters began being used by small terrorist forces for reconnaissance and smaller attacks as we described previously. Two vastly different uses for drones would shape the way drones would develop over the years.

The cheap cost effective drones utilized by guerrilla and resistance forces simply mimic world powers on a smaller scale. Now you don't need 30 million to get a reliable birds eye view of the battlefield. Who needs expensive missiles when a DGI Mavic and some dynamite will do the same job?

The strategy of drone use varies greatly on who's utilizing them and who they are fighting. When new technology is introduced into a space we often see diverse uses when new groups of people are exposed to them. Harassing of supply lines by suicide drones will make any army struggle, just as stopping those lines in conventional means would.

Only now, anyone can do it. $200,000 in drones and explosives will cut off access to areas for months in the right hands. Assassinations no longer require a human, or the same proximity to do it.

You can do it the American way, and spend a quarter million and hit some guy on his balcony, or do it the cheap way and fly a Walmart drone with a grenade strapped to it to take out the enemy command.

The asymmetry that drones provide our enemies is the greatest threat to a modern military. The thing is, you don’t have to pick one or the other.

What if you decided you wanted a military that could have unmanned stealth drones flying in your enemies airspace and have the $500 grenade droppers harassing your enemies entrenchments?

Well, then you’d be China.

China has placed itself at the front of drone technology and now fields drones that rival American MQ-9’s in the form of the Chinese CH-4, a near copy of the Reaper and seemingly every bit as dangerous.

They have high altitude reconnaissance UAVs and they are trying to make swarm drones. The latter of which has yet to be fielded for any country.

China leads the world in commercial drones as well. All those commercial drones that Ukraine has been modifying have mostly come out of China. They have the knowledge and they are rapidly integrating drone technology with the help of AI into their military.

China itself spends a large portion of its military budget on the acquisitions, training and use of drones with their soldiers.

So what is America doing to answer this rising threat? We see everyone from small terrorist groups all the way up to our nearest peer adversary integrating drones into war. Now, we do possess some of the worlds best drone systems but we are missing a lot and while we are working to fill those gaps, we are a bit late to the party.

Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aerial Systems (Joint C-sUAS) University was created to address some of these issues.

Here soldiers from all branches of the US military come to train and familiarize themselves with drone systems. How to combat them, how to use them, and how they themselves should operate in a battlefield that is flush with drones.

One of the tools used is a weapon optics system that allows for operators to shoot down incoming drones. This system is mounted to the traditional M4 and acts as a “smart sight” that allows the shooter to automatically find the right point of aim on the threat.

As well as using traditional systems, the Joint C-sUAS University also trains soldiers on new, and classified anti-drone weapons systems.

While this is nice, it's nowhere near the level of readiness the US needs to maintain superiority on the modern drone battlefield.

“The pace of the need is outgrowing capacity right now” Lt. Col. Moseph Sauda, Joint C-sUAS University Director.

What’s needed is a drastic change in the understanding of how our next war will be fought. Predicting the future will always be impossible but the United States needs to find a solution to drone warfare quickly.

Our enemies are not waiting idlily by, and finding counters to these threats is paramount for the security of the United States Armed Forces.