Drones – and artificial intelligence – have reshaped the modern battlefield and are about to do so again. Nowhere is that more evident than in Ukraine. Invaded by Russia in 2022, outmanned and outgunned by one of the world’s strongest militaries, Kyiv quickly proved that drones – in the air, on the ground, and at sea – could hold off a Russian victory that many expected within weeks, if not days.
Cheaper and easier to build than manned vehicles, and in some cases more effective, drones are a military planner’s dream – and greatly reduce the risk of a pilot or operator being killed in action.
Much like the Kalashnikov rifle in the previous century, mass adoption of drones became an asymmetric weapon of choice for forces facing long odds in global warfare, such as the Hamas militant group in Gaza; anti-junta rebels in Myanmar’s civil war; and the militaries of poorer nations, including many in Africa.
But the Goliaths have caught up, while – according to one report – drug cartels the world over are innovating, improving and adapting drones to fight the narco-wars of the future. “We were flying hundreds of drones over North Vietnam during the war,” said Russ Lee, a curator in the aeronautics department at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. During that Southeast Asian conflict in 1960s and early ‘70s, US forces began using drones for many of the same missions we see today – reconnaissance or carrying munitions, or for use as decoys and psy-ops platforms, according to the Imperial War Museum.
The US began widespread use of drones during Operation Desert Storm, the response to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The Tomahawk land-attack missile – a cruise missile but also an unmanned aerial vehicle as it can change course and target in-flight – saw its first combat in 1991. But drones came to the forefront of warfare relatively recently, some analysts say, with the 2020 conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh a major turning point.
Back then, Azerbaijani forces repurposed agricultural biplanes into decoy drones. Then when Armenian air defenses revealed themselves to take out the decoys, air combat drones (UCAVs) and artillery eliminated the Armenian anti-aircraft sites, eventually giving Baku control of the skies.
“The use of UCAVs after the 2020 conflict point to a new established trend amongst UCAV users, especially nations which do not have large resources to invest in military technology,” UK Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant Chris Whelan wrote in a 2023 paper on the conflict. They’ve blasted Russian tanks to burning hulks, sunk ships from Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet, and emerged from clandestinely placed containers to destroy Russian strategic bombers on the ground. They’ve hunted down individual Russian soldiers in fields, in trenches and inside buildings by flying through open windows.
They’ve even become the last-gasp hope of troops on their own side, as was the case for a wounded Ukrainian soldier who was able to cycle away from the front after a drone air-dropped him an electric bike.
Source: Here