DRONES & WARAre Drones Revolutionizing Warfare? They Do Not, Skeptics Argue

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine launched a conventional war on a scale not seen in Europe since the Second World War. Some aspects of the war appear anachronistic, but other aspects of the war in Ukraine offer a glimpse at how future battlefields may look.

In a new study from the Center for a New American Security, Stacie Pettyjohn writes that one of the most notable differences between Ukraine and past wars is the extensive use of drones or uncrewed systems by both parties, earning this conflict the moniker of the “first full-scale drone war.”

Pettyjohn writes that in the early days of the war, high-flying Ukrainian TB2 drones dropped guided bombs on advancing Russian forces, arresting their march toward Kyiv. In recent months, Russian ZALA surveillance drones and Lancet-3 loitering munitions have worked together to find and destroy Ukrainian howitzers.

Military drones have played an important role, but over the front lines commercial off-the-shelf drones are omnipresent. Ground forces at all echelons use small commercial quadcopters to monitor their environs and to direct artillery fire. Over time, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have also employed different types of kamikaze drones—those that crash into their target—for strategic attacks against cities and deep targets.

The prevalence of drones in Ukraine and other recent conflicts has led some observers to conclude that drones are revolutionizing warfare. Other analysts argue that drones are incremental improvements to existing technologies. According to this latter view, drones perform the same roles and missions as traditional weapons systems, but remove the human from the platform. Critics of the drones-as-revolution view also point out that drones are not superweapons but remain vulnerable to electronic warfare (EW) and air defenses, while defensive measures such as dispersion and concealment dilute drones’ lethality. The skeptics thus contend that drones are not fundamentally shifting the character of war.

Here is the Executive Summary of Pettyjohn’s study:

Executive Summary

This report concludes that drones have transformed the battlefield in the war in Ukraine, but in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary fashion.¹ While tactical innovation abounds and drones offer some new capabilities, their impact falls short of the truly disruptive change that constitutes a so-called revolution in military affairs. For the most part, Russian and Ukrainian drones remain piloted by humans, are not broadly networked together, and are small, which means their effects tend to be localized.