Compass Points - Drone Cult
How many drones are enough?
Compass Points - Drone Cult
How many drones are enough?
February 20, 2024
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How many drones are enough?
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In his powerful article, "Cult of the drone: At the two-year mark, UAVs have changed the face of war in Ukraine – but not outcomes" Professor Paul Lushenko reveals that in Ukraine, both sides are using enormous numbers of drones.
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Ukraine’s “army of drones” consists of cheaper and easily weaponized drones, such as the Chinese-manufactured DJI. Ukraine has also operated Turkish-manufactured TB-2 Bayraktar drones – the “Toyota Corolla” of drones. U.K.-based defense and security think tank Royal United Services Institute estimated that Ukraine loses 10,000 drones monthly and within a year will have more drones than soldiers, implying it will acquire over 2 million drones.
-- Paul Lushenko
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What is Russia doing in the race for more drones?
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Russia has responded by importing Iranian-manufactured Shahed-136 attack drones. It has also expanded the domestic production of drones, such as the Orion-10, used for surveillance, and the Lancet, used for attacks. Russia intends by 2025 to manufacture at least 6,000 drones modeled after the Shahed-136 at a new factory that spans 14 football fields, or nearly a mile. This is on top of the 100,000 low-tier drones that Russia procures monthly.
-- Paul Lushenko
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Meanwhile in the US one of the DOD's most high profile programs is Replicator which seeks to create swarms of drones for US forces. A recent article in USNI News discusses the latest Replicator solicitation, "Pentagon Puts Out Call for Swarming Attack Drones That Could Blunt a Taiwan Invasion."
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The U.S. military has taken the next step in building thousands of lethal sea-borne attack drones that could be key to deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. On Monday, the Defense Innovation Unit put out a solicitation for companies to submit pitches for small unmanned surface vehicles that could tie into the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, a defense official confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday.
DIU’s PRIME – Production-Ready, Inexpensive, Maritime Expeditionary – will buy drones in bulk to respond to a Navy operational need for small autonomous attack craft capable of “intercepting” enemy vessels at high speeds.
. . .The Navy has been quietly experimenting in the Pacific with a lethal drone concept called “hellscape” that would disrupt an amphibious invasion of Taiwan with a combination of loitering munitions and lethal attack drones. The lethal and autonomous mass would throw off a synchronized invasion, sow confusion and chaos in the strait and buy time for the U.S. and Taiwan to bring more forces, USNI News reported last year. The program was inspired in part by the low-cost lethal surface drones developed by Ukraine and built with off-the-shelf components, USNI News understands.
-- USNI News
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Drones are useful and powerful. Drones are particularly useful at the tactical level. But drones, no matter how numerous or capable, have their limits.
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Professor Lushenko concludes:
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The lesson from Ukraine is that while drones have some value at the tactical and operational levels of war, they are strategically inconsequential. They are not a magic bullet, offering a game-changing capability to decide the fate of nations.
Instead, countries must rely on time-tested combined arms maneuver, wherein they integrate personnel and weapons systems at a particular time and place to achieve a particular goal against an adversary. When these effects are aggregated over the course of a war, they expose vulnerabilities that militaries exploit, and often with the assistance of allies and partners.
-- Paul Lushenko
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How may drones are enough?
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Enough for what?
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To win at the strategic level, no number of drones is enough.
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If the idea is that drones in greater and greater numbers and capabilities can eventually provide strategic results, that will never happen. Drones are powerful. US forces need more drones. The US Marine Corps needs more drones.
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But as Professor Lushenko has concluded, drones are powerful at the tactical level, and sometimes useful at the operational level, but at the strategic level, they are "strategically inconsequential."
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As powerful as drones are, for strategic results, "countries must rely on time-tested combined arms maneuver."
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Compass Points salutes Paul Lushenko for his powerful article and salutes all those who are not only helping the Marine Corps acquire more drones, but also helping the Marine Corps build the upgraded and enhanced, combined arms, Marine MAGTF.
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The Conversation - 02/16/2024
Cult of the drone: At the two-year mark, UAVs have changed the face of war in Ukraine – but not outcomes
By Paul Lushenko - Asst Prof and Dir of Special Operations, US Army War College
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USNI News - 01/30/2024
Pentagon Puts Out Call for Swarming Attack Drones That Could Blunt a Taiwan Invasion
By Sam LaGrone and Aaron-Matthew Lariosa
While I don’t agree on many of the points, it’s good to share dialogue and understand perspectives to better inform future capabilities and how we integrate them - much like what I've shared here before.
-The lesson to learn here is about the martial use of robotics in all domains. A capabilities centric approach to integration enables a family of robotic systems to enhance the combined arms effect of every formation. Attempting to link a platform to a level of war misses the value proposition and portends a rigid approach to integrating.
*Actions are strategic, not platforms*
-The reason we’re seeing aerial robotics proliferate in this conflict is because neither side has achieved air dominance. The obverse of that is in the below thread ⬇️
Why nations with mature air forces are playing catch up to employ aerial robotics: https://lnkd.in/eyFXj47t
-The biggest threat in not integrating small aerial systems in the method you fight is you also lack methods and capabilities to contend with those threats. Where our doctrine is predicated on levels of air dominance and sea control, threat actors are quickly figuring out methods to disrupt operations and present staggering cost offsets to contend with the asymmetric capabilities (ie. Red Sea).
For me, robotics integration to enhance effectiveness of formations operating in all domains is additive. Unfortunately, our nation made an independent Air Force in the ugliest way imaginable. The independent drone service for Ukr is being born of innovation by necessity and relatively free of the cultural biases and road blocks we have today. There’s a reason Marines don’t want to break the MAGTF up -responsive organic air.
Today aerial robotics can be organic to ground formations -giving commanders better options while saving the sorties of crewed platform to tasks of greater operational relevance. I don’t see a downside here.
Look forward to feedback and thanks again for sharing.
LtCol T.L. Hord
Gen. Zinni^s ^One Trick Pony^ article applies to the tactical, operational and strategic irrelevance of FD 2030. It doesn^t take much reading beyond ^The Last Stand of Fox Company^ to understand that the strategic relevance of the MLR strung out on inner island rings doesn^t exist, and to further understand the MLR tactical and operational relevance, when facing Chinese PLAN hoards of people and things, also does not exist in a Taiwan invasion scenario.
What does exist tactically, operationally and strategically is the ARG/MEU that can become the MEB or MEF. These MAGTF levels will need to incorporate drone employment, as well as the means to counter them. But just as the longbow did not end ground combat, the arrival of the swarming drone threat will not end the need for a combined arms force to be trained and equipped to close with and destroy an enemy.
The capability of a MAGTF combined arms force trained and equipped to close wiith and destroy an enemy, has tactical, operational and strategic relevance. It is not a One Trick Pony.