What Does Millions of Drones in the Ukraine War Mean for the Future of War?

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Millions of drones are being used in the Russian and Ukraine war. How is this changing the fighting? What will be the counter-measures?

There are also millions of artillery shells being used. However, drones and artillery shells are expended every day. It is tens of thousands of each that are being used each day.

14 thoughts on “What Does Millions of Drones in the Ukraine War Mean for the Future of War?”

  2. The funny thing is that the revolution in war was not made by super cool American corporations, but almost by the soldiers themselves on the battlefield. If they did this, there would be 10 years of work, 100 billion investments and a drone at a price of 20 thousand dollars per unit.
    At the same time, super cool American corporations still cannot train a neuron to install it into a memristor chip and start supplying these weapons to Ukrainians. It may not be accurate, but it is capable of navigation without satellites and detection of people and military equipment. And most importantly it’s cheap. You don’t need a super smart one, and you need 10 million drones, at least 1/5 of which could fly 10 km and kill a soldier’s tank.

  3. Drones may represent what we call a new “arbiter” in war. But (IMO) their emotional impact is likely to be much less then technological innovations of the past. Simply put, how many of us know what a “drone” is? You may not know the details, but you know the concept. When the first “tanks” we’re seen in WW1, They we’re farm tractors covered in armor. And for a short time, they terrified the enemy who faced them. The enemy rather quickly realized how “limited” they were. Unless well deployed, by skilled commanders… But “that” came after WW1…

    But drones have the the potential to be more, interesting. We have the potential to make drones the size of insects. What a nightmare that would be for your enemy, or you if they got loose under the wrong terms… Today, drones are thought of as model airplanes that can blow stuff up. (And their very good at doing that) I think it’s safe to say, most of us will not see what’s coming. The best way to predict the future? IMO, invent it.

  4. China is the manufacturing superpower, so they will dominate the drone battlefields of the future.

  6. It was clear drones were going to change warfare fundamentally over 10 years ago. They enable soldierless attacks in a cheap almost unlimited way. Without the sacrifice of soldiers, the only limit is hardware, munitions (more on that in a moment), personnel to fly but not die, the drones, and of course, as we’re seeing with the Israel-Gaza war, the willingness of coalition partners to inflict casualties on civilian populations, who are increasingly taking the place of soldiers dying in battle.
    The thing that will take drones to the next level will be low-powered lasers still capable of destroying tanks, vehicles, even planes, as well as personnel. Some power will be saved by not having to lift expensive and heavy munitions, especially multiple bombs and missiles, but the energy storage has to improve by orders of magnitude, while lasers have to get more efficient too.
    Semi-autonomy will enable 1000s of drones to act in a swarm, but if they are jammed or reprogrammed to attack their senders, that could be catastrophic, so this will be a major effort from the target forces to achieve. Let the drone wars begin. Actually, drones will become like nuclear weapons, so lethal they will be used more as a threat than in battle, but we are not there yet.

    • Forget lasers on drones, unless you’re using them for extremely low energy applications like blinding. (A war crime, I believe.) By the time you got the energy storage density up high enough to make them practical on drones, you’d be exceeding the energy density of high explosives. And the best application for that sort of energy storage would be increased range and loiter time, anyway.

      Energy delivered as kinetic energy is just more efficient at producing damage than EM radiation.

      I think the next advance will be counter-weapon drones. Precision flying down the barrels of tanks and artillery, so that they blow up when fired. Maybe dropping shrapnel bombs from the air to explode just above the ground, like an inverted Bouncing Betty.

      With enough precision, of course, drones equipped with small caliber guns could be very effective in an anti-personnel role. They’d be difficult opponents to target.

  7. If Ukraine cant fire back, because Putin’s friend trump tells republicans to block the ammunition shipments,… Not good. If trump wins, he will just do what Putin wants. Stop all the shipments from Us and pull from Nato, so Russia could get more power over Europe.

    • The FPS drones shall be looked upon as ammunition. They are actually much cheaper than dumb 155 shells.

      The battlefield tactics are currently reverted to something like ww1 trench warfare.
      Vehicles can’t move as they are instantly destroyed. If it isn’t drones, there are millions of mines.
      People can´t show themselves because the sky is covered with surveillance drones not visible on radar. Hiding in trenches and dug-outs seems to be the way to live a bit longer.

      Now, the first sightings of semi-autonomous drones are in. EW counters are much less effective, which means kinetic or direct energy counter measures must be deployed. Or some cost effective anti-drone drone that can take out enemy drones at a high rate without getting destroyed.

      • The moment I saw some random Russian soldier get killed by a RC drone on X, despite of trying to hide behind a car, I knew the world was changing. And not in a nice way.

        Urban and conventional warfare just got a lot nastier.

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