Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Don't Have a Future as Offensive Weapons in Armed Conflicts
One of the more irritating feature of living in an era where all major technological progress has stagnated, for past two decades, is that most people in the West are desperate to believe in anything promoted as the “next big thing”. That is why so many want to believe in dumb ideas such as the inevitable mass adoption of electric cars, magical and safe mRNA vaccines and “Artificial Intelligence”. This almost total disconnect from physical reality and the extreme willingness to believe in your own bullshit is an interesting feature common to all western societies- which are in a steep and likely irreversible decline on multiple fronts. All of which brings us the issue of UAVs (drones) in warfare, more specifically - the enthusiastic daydreams about how these things (which come in a range of sizes and capabilities) will revolutionize warfare. However, as I will show you in the remainder of this post, their real impact on warfare has been far smaller and almost exclusively restricted to one domain- which was always obvious to anyone who a functioning brain.
Before we go on to why UAVs aka drones have no real future as offensive weapons in armed conflicts, let us talk about the one role at which they seem to excel and have consistently demonstrated their utility. Based on careful retrospective analysis of all conflicts between nations where drones were used, it is clear that they are quite good as platforms for reconnaissance, because they are inexpensive, do not endanger pilot lives and have good endurance. This is especially true for real-time reconnaissance, where the data provided by them improves targeting by artillery, missiles or airstrikes. Even small and inexpensive drones such as the Orlan-10, can improve the accuracy of artillery and missile strikes and reduce the wastage of ammunition caused by hitting targets no longer at their original location and by actively directing missiles or artillery warheads. To summarize, drones (of almost sizes) are good reconnaissance platforms due to their low cost, relative lack of risk to operator and endurance.
In previous eras such reconnaissance was performed by a variety of manned aircraft from the light STOL capable ones (artillery spotting), helicopters (artillery spotting and field reconnaissance) to high-flying specialized aircraft for covering large swathes of land. Having said this, let us now move on whether armed drones have any future as offensive weapons in real armed conflicts between nations. The last part is very consequential as the overwhelming majority of use for armed drones in past has been in conflicts between nation states and guerilla forces or innocent civilians without the means to defend themselves. As you will see, this frequently ignored fact has made armed drones appear to be more effective than they would be otherwise. But reality is a bitch and things start getting interesting when armed drones try to attack nations with effective air defense systems. The very short version is that such conditions make the offensive use of drones inconsequential.
The longer version is as follows.. It turns out that all drones (armed/ unarmed) are still governed by all the physical constraints of heavier-than-air aircraft. Removing a pilot and other related equipment from an aircraft does not significantly improve most capabilities of the resultant machine. This lack of noticeably improved performance becomes especially obvious with increasing size. In other words, improvement in flight endurance is more significant for smaller airframes (size range of Cessna 172 or Diamond DA20) than larger ones (Northrop T-38 or Aero L-39) and almost gone for full sized combat aircraft such as F-15s, F-16s, Mig-29s and Su-30 family. Also, drones with long flight endurance times tend to have high aspect ratio wings (like gliders) and hence display poor maneuverability. They also don’t carry anywhere close to the number of countermeasures found in manned aircrafts. In other words, large and expensive drones are easy targets for SAM systems, as has been demonstrated by Iran on more than one occasion. To summarize, a larger drone (which can carry significant payload) is always much more vulnerable than a manned aircraft of similar size.
Some of you might say- what about “stealth”? Well.. for starters, no aircraft is truly stealthy. At best, you can reduce body radar signatures to low values at frequencies commonly used by most radars. This fact becomes important since an airframe which is stealthy in one frequency band is easy to track by radars using another frequency band. There are also other means of tracking aircraft. This is why, American “stealth” aircraft such as the F-22 and B-2 don’t dare enter well-defended airspace of competent adversary nations for more than a few minutes. If stealth worked as well as NPCs believe, we would have American combat aircraft flying without a care over Russia. As things stand, they don’t dare to pull that shit over countries such as Iran, let alone Russia, and that is all you need about how effective “stealth technology” is under real life conditions. It should be reiterated that drones do not carry anywhere near the amount of physical and electronic countermeasures seen on similar-sized manned aircraft, because that would affect their endurance and drones are seen as disposable.
Which brings us to medium-sized and small drones. Let us tackle medium-sized ones, such the Bayraktar, first. While the size, cost and weapon carrying capability of such drones might look good on paper (if you have never read combat aviation history), the reality is dismal. While their slow speed might initially cause problems for some SAM systems, this can be readily fixed. Moreover, even early cold-war era systems such as various versions of Bofors 40 mm autocannon and ZSU-23-4 Shilka are more than capable of dealing with such threats, in addition to being fairly inexpensive and easy to operate. Hence such drones are close to useless against any semi-competent nation who can develop and modify their own SAM and AAA systems. Sure.. you can always get a few lucky strikes, here and there, but they have basically no effect on the overall course of wars. Small drones, such as loitering munitions aka “suicide drones”, are even more useless since they can be taken down by even a squad automatic weapons in addition to carrying a small explosive charge not much larger than a hand grenade. Light mortars and RPGs, with drone reconnaissance inputs, provide far better value for money and are more likely to cause battlefield casualties than these toys.
What do you think? Comments?