Wars of the future will be awash with drones. The Pentagon is trying to keep up.
From the battlefields of Ukraine to the seas around the Middle East, U.S. commanders are getting a glimpse into what wars of the future will look like, and they say one thing is clear: The horizon line will be teeming with drones.
Ukrainian soldiers remotely controlling quadcopters are now engaging in midair dogfights, searching for blind spots to knock out the rudders of uncrewed Russian crafts rigged with bombs.
Kyiv earlier this year was forced to sideline U.S. Abrams tanks, because too many were being destroyed by drones, The Associated Press reported in April. (This was after many months of lobbying Washington to finally get 31 of them, worth some $10 million each.)
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onConflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East highlight the growing role of inexpensive drones in battle and are pushing the U.S. Department of Defense to rethink its war-fighting strategy.
At the same time, Department of Defense officials express frustration that the Navy must use pricey missiles to shoot down far more affordable Iranian-made drones launched by Houthi rebels into the Red Sea.聽For the first time, the rebels earlier this month also used a remote-controlled ocean drone to force the crew of a Greek-owned vessel to abandon ship.
Unmanned vehicles, as they鈥檙e known in Pentagon parlance, are quickly becoming the 鈥減oor man鈥檚 cruise missile鈥� 鈥� cheap and plentiful compared with the very fancy hardware they鈥檙e destroying, says Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.聽
鈥淨uantity now has a quality of its own 鈥� and our adversaries understand this,鈥� he says.聽
When the chief of the French army last week remarked that the dominance of drones is but 鈥渁 snapshot in time,鈥� some analysts compared it to early 20th-century commanders who 鈥渁s only accessories to the man and the horse,鈥� as a 1926 Times of London piece put it.聽
Today鈥檚 drone developments are forcing the Pentagon to tear up many of the plans it once had for fighting wars and to get creative in developing new technologies, including directed-energy weapons like lasers.
鈥淭here鈥檚 really good and necessary experimentation happening,鈥� says Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security think tank.聽
At the same time, the Pentagon is asking itself some tough questions about the exquisite weapons on which it has long relied to execute U.S. military strategy 鈥� and that can be decades in development.
Whether these questions are tough enough, analysts add, remains to be seen.
U.S. soldiers fighting future wars 鈥渁re going to be pummeled by the saturation of the drones on the battlefield,鈥� says retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and now professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.聽鈥淲e have nothing like that ourselves 鈥� no offensive mass drone capability 鈥� and very limited ability to protect against it.鈥澛�
For the Pentagon, moving quickly to change this is the challenge and, historically, he adds, 鈥渢he opposite of everything it鈥檚 designed to do.鈥澛�
鈥淟earning from the battlefield鈥�
The proliferation of inexpensive drones on the battlefield is not a brand-new development.
When the United States was helping Iraq fight off Islamic State (ISIS) forces massed in Mosul in 2016, the 鈥測ear鈥檚 most daunting problem was an adaptive enemy who, for a time, enjoyed tactical superiority ... in the form of commercially available drones,鈥� Gen. Raymond Thomas, then head of U.S. Special Operations Command, said in 2017.
Around that time, another U.S. four-star general, David Perkins, complained to an Army conference audience that an ally had shot down a cheap off-the-shelf drone with a $3.4 million Patriot missile.聽
鈥淣ow that worked 鈥� they got it,鈥� he said. The problem is, 鈥淚f I鈥檓 the enemy, I鈥檓 thinking, 鈥楬ey I鈥檓 just going to get on eBay and buy as many of these $300 quadcopters as I can and expend all the Patriot missiles out there.鈥欌�澛�
Recalling that same time period, Undersecretary of the Army Gabe Camarillo last month acknowledged, 鈥淚t was really challenging to figure out how to actually defeat these small drones that were dropping bombs.鈥澛�
It was the beginning of a wake-up call for the Pentagon, and one driven home in January, when three U.S. service members, deployed to an outpost in Jordan as part of a campaign against ISIS, were killed in an attack by cheap exploding drones developed by Iran.聽
The following month, the Army announced that it was canceling a crewed scout helicopter 鈥� the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, once a top priority for the service 鈥� in favor of investing more in uncrewed aircraft.聽
Analysts pointed to this moment as an important shift in thinking. 鈥淲e are learning from the battlefield,鈥� Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said in announcing the cancellation, 鈥渆specially in Ukraine.鈥�
Experimenting with new weapons聽
Today, the Middle East 鈥渉as become a sandbox of experimentation,鈥� Dr. Pettyjohn says, as money once slated for the multibillion-dollar helicopter is being diverted into developing small attack drones and better counterdrone technologies.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been successful in getting some prototypes out, and I think we鈥檙e beginning to learn a lot from those,鈥� Undersecretary Camarillo said during a discussion last month.
This includes directed-energy weapons like lasers and microwave blasts, the latter of which are roughly 150,000 times more powerful than their namesake household appliance.
The Army is testing out directed-energy weapons in the field as it combats drones in the Middle East, Gen. Michael 鈥淓rik鈥� Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, told lawmakers in March.
But as Houthi rebels in Yemen step up drone strikes on ships in the Red Sea, he stressed that he鈥檇 like to see similar technology on U.S. vessels as well.聽
鈥淚 would love to have the Navy produce more directed energy that can shoot down a drone, so I don鈥檛 have to use an expensive missile,鈥� General Kurilla said.聽Instead of millions, the price tag for directed energy is, he noted, 鈥渁 dollar or two a round.鈥�
With these critiques in mind, Pentagon officials in August announced the Replicator Initiative.聽Conjuring up images of the Starship Enterprise, the program鈥檚 goal, they say, will be creating legions of inexpensive, small drones to be used essentially as 鈥渁ttritable autonomous systems,鈥� to be reused at most a few times.聽
This will not only fill a gap in America鈥檚 defenses, they add, but also create an incentive for American startups to challenge China鈥檚 current domination of the drone market.聽
鈥淣ow if you鈥檙e a cynic 鈥� or just a realist 鈥� you鈥檙e thinking, 鈥楥鈥檓on, Deputy! This is the Pentagon you鈥檙e talking about! You鈥檙e too slow!鈥欌�� Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said during the initiative鈥檚 rollout.
She sympathized with the critique, but this time, she assured her audience, 鈥淲e are not taking our foot off the gas.鈥澛�
