DRONESThe Drone Age Demands a New Theory of Military Protection
Military protection has never existed simply to keep soldiers alive or platforms intact. Its enduring purpose has always been to preserve freedom of action: the ability of a force to maneuver, fight and impose its will despite enemy action. The changing character of war suggests that assumption, not the purpose of protection itself, should be re-examined.
Military protection has never existed simply to keep soldiers alive or platforms intact. Its enduring purpose has always been to preserve freedom of action: the ability of a force to maneuver, fight and impose its will despite enemy action. Rather than being ends themselves, armor, fortifications, missile defenses, electronic warfare and deception have preserved combat power by preserving the force’s freedom to act.
For more than a century, that logic has shaped military force design. Infantry received body armor because it allowed them to fight through contact. Tanks gained thicker armor and active protection systems so they could maneuver under fire. Warships carried layered missile defenses so they could operate inside contested waters. Combat aircraft employed increasingly sophisticated electronic warfare to survive in contested airspace. The underlying assumption was straightforward: improving the survivability of individual platforms was the best way to preserve freedom of action, sustain maneuver and therefore maintain combat power.
The changing character of war suggests that assumption, not the purpose of protection itself, should be re-examined.
From Ukraine to the Red Sea, autonomous systems have become ubiquitous across the battlespace. Drones now conduct reconnaissance, strike, logistics, deception and electronic warfare at every level of conflict. At the same time, an entire ecosystem of counter-drone capabilities has emerged, including electronic attack, directed-energy weapons, kinetic interceptors and increasingly autonomous drone-on-drone combat. The battlefield is becoming saturated not simply with autonomous systems but with autonomous systems hunting one another in an increasingly rapid cycle of adaptation.
Most commentary has focused on how drones are changing offensive warfare. That’s important, but it overlooks a more fundamental question. If autonomous systems are becoming increasingly numerous, increasingly expendable and increasingly vulnerable to autonomous countermeasures, is maximizing the survivability of individual platforms still the best way to preserve freedom of action? Or are there now alternative means of achieving the same objective?
Combat power isn’t simply the number of platforms a military possesses. It’s the sustained ability to generate military effects over the course of a campaign. Freedom of action is the condition that allows commanders to employ that combat power through maneuver, creating positional and decision advantage over an adversary. Historically, protecting people and platforms has been the most effective way to preserve that freedom because both are expensive, scarce and slow to replace.
