On point #1, what we’re seeing in Ukraine is that drones are tactically a defense-dominant weapon—that is, they make it much harder to seize territory. If there’s a way to use them in successful, high-mobility offensive operations, no one has found it.
Curious if you have a theory/model for why this might be. The standard answer is “Drones sensor-suffuse the battlefield, making it impossible to mass forces and approach the front lines without being spotted early, giving defender many opportunities to hit you with artillery and drones.” But I’m not satisfied with this answer.
I think it’s also that drones can’t hold ground. If drones could do all the jobs of infantry and armor, they wouldn’t be offense-dominant or defense-dominant, but ground drones are not mature enough to dig a trench or engage in a firefight.
The fact that drones can’t hold ground is relevant if you are thinking of them as a replacement for troops, but if instead you think of them as a weapon for troops—a weapon with very long range, very high lethality, that also doubles as excellent scouting… then I don’t see why this would favor the defender?
...Someone elsethread pointed out that the attacker has to move whilst the defender doesn’t, which means that if ranges are long and visibility is high, that’s worse for the attacker probably (assuming they can’t shoot and/or defend as effectively while on the move as they can while not on the move, which is plausible.) This seems like a good answer to me.
Also, drones kinda sorta can hold ground, increasingly as they get better. There are ground drones now, and also quadcopters have developed a tactic of landing on the ground to conserve battery and conceal / take cover. Also quadcopters can fly inside buildings...
My loose model is that increases in lethality tend, all else equal, to favor defenders. Increases in operational mobility tend to favor attackers.
At some point in any attack, you need to cover some ground where you are exposed to enemy fire from defenders with the advantage of a prepared position. The more lethal their weapons, the harder that is and that’s true even if your weapons are also more lethal because they have the advantage of a prepared position. As currently used, drones boost lethality and they’re also uniquely good against armor which has been the offensive weapon of choice on the modern, high-intensity conventional battlefield for attackers. I guess that’s fairly close to the “standard answer” you’re giving above.
The second bit is that drones offer no operational mobility (as currently deployed). To advance an offensive over any substantial distance, you need to move not just weapons systems but also people, platforms, and logistics forward. That is, suppose you’ve either killed your enemies or forced their retreat from some given area, you need to consolidate control over it and be able to either prepare your own defenses against counterattack or establish a forward staging point for the next attack. Mechanized or armored units do that pretty naturally; you’re bringing people and supplies with you as you go and you can immediately use them for the next steps. Drones don’t. If you’ve overrun a position with drones, there is no obvious next step save for finding a way to move people and vehicles forward, who then become vulnerable to enemy drones.
Another piece of it—quite dependent on the present state of technology—is that jamming is effective enough that most drones are limited to the range of however far they can trail a fiber optic cable which is only a few miles. That rules out deep penetration with drones, again making it hard to follow up on any successes.
I think all those points are probably correct and most of the answer.
Another contributing factor is in the single-use nature of kamikazee style drones. I have this strong intuition from boardgames and computer games that kamikazees are defensive. A battle ending in ‘Everything on both sides is dead’ is a kind of succrsful defense
As a toy example, lets say that a force of 100 tanks can defeat an enemy force of 10 tanks with only one lost. (So 99 remain). This allows a focussed army to snowball, maintaining momentum.
But, if 100 drones take 10 casualties to destroy an enemy force of 10 drones. Then any offensive peters out as the larger army errodes down.
I suppose put another way, the power of an army is at best linear in ammo, probably sub-linear. But its often going to be super-linear (approaching quadraric) in units. Drones are more like ammo, they get expended. The attacker likes super-linear, it allows a snowball effect, it gives them something to counter the natural ways defenders are advantaged.
Curious if you have a theory/model for why this might be. The standard answer is “Drones sensor-suffuse the battlefield, making it impossible to mass forces and approach the front lines without being spotted early, giving defender many opportunities to hit you with artillery and drones.” But I’m not satisfied with this answer.
I think it’s also that drones can’t hold ground. If drones could do all the jobs of infantry and armor, they wouldn’t be offense-dominant or defense-dominant, but ground drones are not mature enough to dig a trench or engage in a firefight.
The fact that drones can’t hold ground is relevant if you are thinking of them as a replacement for troops, but if instead you think of them as a weapon for troops—a weapon with very long range, very high lethality, that also doubles as excellent scouting… then I don’t see why this would favor the defender?
...Someone elsethread pointed out that the attacker has to move whilst the defender doesn’t, which means that if ranges are long and visibility is high, that’s worse for the attacker probably (assuming they can’t shoot and/or defend as effectively while on the move as they can while not on the move, which is plausible.) This seems like a good answer to me.
Also, drones kinda sorta can hold ground, increasingly as they get better. There are ground drones now, and also quadcopters have developed a tactic of landing on the ground to conserve battery and conceal / take cover. Also quadcopters can fly inside buildings...
My loose model is that increases in lethality tend, all else equal, to favor defenders. Increases in operational mobility tend to favor attackers.
At some point in any attack, you need to cover some ground where you are exposed to enemy fire from defenders with the advantage of a prepared position. The more lethal their weapons, the harder that is and that’s true even if your weapons are also more lethal because they have the advantage of a prepared position. As currently used, drones boost lethality and they’re also uniquely good against armor which has been the offensive weapon of choice on the modern, high-intensity conventional battlefield for attackers. I guess that’s fairly close to the “standard answer” you’re giving above.
The second bit is that drones offer no operational mobility (as currently deployed). To advance an offensive over any substantial distance, you need to move not just weapons systems but also people, platforms, and logistics forward. That is, suppose you’ve either killed your enemies or forced their retreat from some given area, you need to consolidate control over it and be able to either prepare your own defenses against counterattack or establish a forward staging point for the next attack. Mechanized or armored units do that pretty naturally; you’re bringing people and supplies with you as you go and you can immediately use them for the next steps. Drones don’t. If you’ve overrun a position with drones, there is no obvious next step save for finding a way to move people and vehicles forward, who then become vulnerable to enemy drones.
Another piece of it—quite dependent on the present state of technology—is that jamming is effective enough that most drones are limited to the range of however far they can trail a fiber optic cable which is only a few miles. That rules out deep penetration with drones, again making it hard to follow up on any successes.
I think all those points are probably correct and most of the answer.
Another contributing factor is in the single-use nature of kamikazee style drones. I have this strong intuition from boardgames and computer games that kamikazees are defensive. A battle ending in ‘Everything on both sides is dead’ is a kind of succrsful defense
As a toy example, lets say that a force of 100 tanks can defeat an enemy force of 10 tanks with only one lost. (So 99 remain). This allows a focussed army to snowball, maintaining momentum.
But, if 100 drones take 10 casualties to destroy an enemy force of 10 drones. Then any offensive peters out as the larger army errodes down.
I suppose put another way, the power of an army is at best linear in ammo, probably sub-linear. But its often going to be super-linear (approaching quadraric) in units. Drones are more like ammo, they get expended. The attacker likes super-linear, it allows a snowball effect, it gives them something to counter the natural ways defenders are advantaged.