Drones are an inseparable part of modern warfare. They’re practical and useful in many scenarios, and prevent the loss of life of your pilots. They are used by everyone, from the United States Air Force to extremists in the middle-east. They can be expensive, like the MQ-1C Gray Eagle, which costs US$21.5m[1] each. Or they can be cheap, like a modified civilian camera drone that can drop small projectiles or grenades, which can cost up to US$ 1,000.
The idea to use UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicles) to deliver payloads started in July of 1849 when Austria used incendiary balloons to attack Venice (Due to wind almost all balloons missed their target). Then during the First World War, the British experimented with radio-controlled monoplanes with small warheads as an air defense against the german bomb zeppelins. Finally, in the mid-1940s with the german V1 flying bomb (first cruise missile), which used an analog guidance system to target London at the end of the Second World War.
More recently, drones started to be used more widely as not only warhead delivery systems, but also strategic bombers and reconnaissance aircrafts. Since the start of the “War on Terror”, the United States and its allies, conducted thousands of strategic missile strikes launched from UAVs. They are also used as recon aircraft providing overwatch for the soldiers on the ground. These UAVs are controlled not from the battlefield but in an airbase of the country that the drone comes from.
Now, drones are also being used in a kind of guerilla-type warfare. What I mean by that, is they’re mostly modified civilian drones, that can deliver payloads fast and provide recon, and are controlled from the battlefield. They are used by everyone. The best example is the brave Ukrainian soldiers, who modify drones like the “DJI Mavic 3 drone adapted to drop two air delivered improvised munitions – here based on American M430A1 HEDP 40x53mm grenades.”[3] to later use them as strategic bombers. The modified civilian drones are especially effective because they’re cheap, fast, and small (so it’s hard to shoot them down).
In conclusion, Drones / UAVs are a vital part of modern warfare. They provide important information and fire support for the troops on the ground. They are useful and effective, and I can’t see them not being used in any future conflict.
Sources:
![[2] U.S Army. “MQ-1C Warrior (2005-08-11).” Wikimedia, 10 Aug. 2005, upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/MQ-1C_Warrior_%282005-08-11%29.jpg.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MQ-1C_Warrior_(2005-08-11).jpg){kind=link}
It is both fascinating and frightening. Since such a drone with attached grenades is difficult to shoot down, what if one strays away from its target or is deliberately sent towards a city centre? Nowadays, the hacking industry is continuously growing. I believe it’s just a matter of time before one of the battle drones is taken over by people with evil intentions, and we’ll face an unpredictable threat.
Nowadays we can observe the shift in the priorities of armies: if earlier it was quantity that was so crucial in the warfare, today quality takes over quantity. There is constant modernization of armies, and implementations of new technologies there. Now a physically strong, hardy army man is not as important as an engineer that will create a new type of drone invisible for radars, with a high precision and a big potential of destruction. In a few decades we might even see humans being replaced with robots in armies.
Precision and automation are two key factors we will need in future wars. I think you made it clear that drones have both of these characteristics.
It’s drones that are one of the key features of modern military conflicts and the war in Ukraine. They are easy to use and hard to trace and can therefore be very dangerous in the hands of criminal or terrorist organisations, who do not have to put their people at risk for nefarious purposes. Although they do not cause the most death and destruction, they are very precise. The thing that scares me most are drones used autonomously with AI, which allow them to identify and destroy targets without human command which creates a future army of killer robots.