OK, thanks. I’m halfway through the interview so far and am not convinced. He doesn’t really address my cruxes, e.g. he doesn’t provide (1) or (2) above as far as I can tell, or anything close. To be clear, I agree that anti-drone defenses should be heavily prioritized and mass-produced, and that after some number of years they will ‘catch up’ to today’s drone technology and be a reasonably effective counter to it. I describe what this world looks like in this post btw. But on the current margin, both small drones and defenses against such seem woefully under-invested-in by Western militaries. Like, several orders of magnitude less spending than would be optimal. It’s embarrassing that Ukraine is producing millions of drones a year, and the USA is producing… thousands? Tens of thousands?
That said, I do also think that the main war the US needs to gear up for is a war over Taiwan, and that war to me seems like one that will mostly take place in the sky and seas surrounding the island, and hence won’t see much role for small drones, or ground forces in general.
This soldier spent 2 years fighting for Ukraine, including 6 months recently as an operator of FPV drones, and he is also skeptical that drones will revolutionize military affairs during the next few years. I don’t recall anything about his arguments, but my recollection is he does provide some argumentation in this interview.
Also, I would say drones have already revolutionized military affairs. 70-90% casualties caused by drones? Despite the war being a static war of attrition with large amounts of artillery on both sides, the kind of situation that historically would have led to artillery being the star of the show? (As indeed it was in the first year or two of the war)
Just imagine if you could teleport the UAF of today back into summer ’22. They’d absolutely wipe the floor with the Russians. Likewise Russia would have achieved their original maximalist objectives if they began the war with the force they have today.
I agree that multirotor helicopter drones have fundamentally transformed the war in Ukraine.
I am willing to believe 70-90% Russian casualties as being caused by these weapons, but the fraction of Ukrainian casualties will be significantly lower even though Russia has been innovating furiously with drones because Russia is less constrained in supply of artillery shells. “While estimates vary, a common figure cited is a 5-to-1 or even higher ratio of shells fired by Russian forces compared to Ukrainian forces in some areas” (Google Gemini which has a knowledge cutoff date of Jan 2025).
Relevant to your original question (many levels of indentation ago) particularly the part about Israel’s vulnerability, is still think the crux is that countermeasures will probably reduce very significantly the effectiveness of this class of drones over the next 3 years at least in areas protected by well-funded militaries that are not in a state of civil war. The tech does not seem to have as much potential to stay very important as for example the fuzed artillery shell, which has remained very important for over 100 years because it is relatively difficult to develop countermeasures for it.
Aside from the sound issue already discussed, weapons makers will probably be unable to make the class of weapon we are discussing much faster than they already are (namely 50 to 120 km per hour) and if they do manage to increase the speed significantly, that will probably make the sound problem worse. In contrast, according to Gemini, during the terminal portion of its trajectory, a large artillery shell travels at 1080 to 2160 kilometers per hour.
Correct, the video someone elsethread shared had a guy saying 90%ish of the Russian casualties were drones but only a slight majority of Ukrainian casualties were from drones. Still supports my overall point though—Russia has a very artillery-heavy force, no one can claim that they didn’t invest enough in artillery, and yet still they are getting more kills with their hastily-assembled drone force.
I agree drones aren’t going to get much faster or quieter. I think their range and EW-resistance will continue to improve (e.g. due to AI) but other than that they’ll stay pretty similar to today. Oh, the price might go down too once they are produced at even greater scale.
They won’t rely on dodging autoturrets to hit targets; they’ll rely on overwhelming. Suppose you have a perfect autoturret that never misses, but N drones are flying at it simultaneously. What is the smallest N such that at least one drone will get through? I’d be interested to see an analysis that takes into account typical drone speeds, turret rotation/targeting times, and typical distance the drones can creep up before being fired upon (depends on terrain).
When you imagine a force overwhelming a position using very many drones, are you imagining one human per drone or are you imagining most of the drones (or more precisely, most of the drone flying time in “drone hours”) being flown by AI?
I would imagine that by the time a drone doesn’t need a human operator for most of the time it is in combat, lots of other things about war will have changed, e.g., whether an infantry soldier is obsolete.
Could be AI, human pilots, or a combination of both, the basic math doesn’t change. (Even if every drone needs a human pilot, it would totally be feasible to concentrate hundreds or thousands of fiber optic drones on a position.)
The time when drones don’t need human operators for most of the time in combat may be sooner than you think. Consider how Waymos operate autonomously but can call in a human operator to take over if they get stuck. I imagine something similar could happen for drones, where e.g. a group of N drones fly in a flock/swarm from point A to point B fully autonomously, and when they are approaching the target a human operator looking through their cameras paints the targets (yes, that’s a soldier, yes, that’s a tank, yes, you are clear to engage) and the AI does the rest.
IIRC even more autonomy than that is already being trialed, I think I heard about a prototype that goes into some sort of ‘autonomous seek and destroy mode’ where it just roams around completely disconnected from its human operators and attacks any targets it recognizes.
I agree that lots of other things about war will change due to AI, but the importance of drones, I think, is not going to go down thanks to AI.
the importance of drones, I think, is not going to go down thanks to AI.
I agree. What I tried to say though was that my guess is that for drones to stay as effective as they currently are for 5 years would require AI capable enough that it would transform so many aspects of society that for us in 2025 to try to project out that far becomes futile.
Thanks. I skimmed the transcript and didn’t see any mention of drones, though I was only skimming so perhaps I missed it. I’m lazy right now and not particularly motivated to dig deeper but if anyone has a timestamp I’d be grateful.
The host definitely says that the guest (the soldier) was a drone operator or worked on a team the purpose of which is to operate drones during the first 3 minutes: I re-listened to that much before I wrote my description. The word “drone” was definitely used.
But on the current margin, both small drones and defenses against such seem woefully under-invested-in by Western militaries. Like, several orders of magnitude less spending than would be optimal. It’s embarrassing that Ukraine is producing millions of drones a year, and the USA is producing… thousands? Tens of thousands?
I would expect advanced drone programs of the US military are heavily classified. What makes you believe that the numbers you have access to show the true investment the US military is making in it?
Idk, but I have talked to some people in the USAF and the stories I hear are discouraging. Also I hear that the cool US drone startups sent their stuff to Ukraine and were humbled, the FPV kamikaze designs that actually worked best at scale were mostly homebrew by volunteers. Also, in general, I have come to strongly suspect that classified US military R&D programs are wasteful boondoggles just like the nonclassified ones; the tech is probably pretty great in some sense but (a) takes several times longer to develop than SpaceX would take if they ever became a weapons manufacturer and (b) costs orders of magnitude more. Like, Boeing is responsible for some military R&D and also for the atrocious Starliner system. Why should we think they are doing a much better job for the military than they are for NASA?
Your original comment suggested that part of the problem is underinvestment by the US military. Underinvestment is a different problem than defense contractors like Boeing being slow and expensive.
Apart from that, the old defense contractors aren’t the only ones. Anduril seems to work both on drone defense and building drones. Palantir seems to do something drone related as well (but it’s less clear to me what they are doing exactly).
It might be that the key problem isn’t in spending more money but in reducing the bureaucracy and the criteria that the drones need to hit.
Both problems are severe. Not enough money is being spent on drone procurement, and what money is being spent is being spent inefficiently. I make no claim about which is worse.
OK, thanks. I’m halfway through the interview so far and am not convinced. He doesn’t really address my cruxes, e.g. he doesn’t provide (1) or (2) above as far as I can tell, or anything close. To be clear, I agree that anti-drone defenses should be heavily prioritized and mass-produced, and that after some number of years they will ‘catch up’ to today’s drone technology and be a reasonably effective counter to it. I describe what this world looks like in this post btw. But on the current margin, both small drones and defenses against such seem woefully under-invested-in by Western militaries. Like, several orders of magnitude less spending than would be optimal. It’s embarrassing that Ukraine is producing millions of drones a year, and the USA is producing… thousands? Tens of thousands?
That said, I do also think that the main war the US needs to gear up for is a war over Taiwan, and that war to me seems like one that will mostly take place in the sky and seas surrounding the island, and hence won’t see much role for small drones, or ground forces in general.
This soldier spent 2 years fighting for Ukraine, including 6 months recently as an operator of FPV drones, and he is also skeptical that drones will revolutionize military affairs during the next few years. I don’t recall anything about his arguments, but my recollection is he does provide some argumentation in this interview.
Also, I would say drones have already revolutionized military affairs. 70-90% casualties caused by drones? Despite the war being a static war of attrition with large amounts of artillery on both sides, the kind of situation that historically would have led to artillery being the star of the show? (As indeed it was in the first year or two of the war)
Just imagine if you could teleport the UAF of today back into summer ’22. They’d absolutely wipe the floor with the Russians. Likewise Russia would have achieved their original maximalist objectives if they began the war with the force they have today.
I agree that multirotor helicopter drones have fundamentally transformed the war in Ukraine.
I am willing to believe 70-90% Russian casualties as being caused by these weapons, but the fraction of Ukrainian casualties will be significantly lower even though Russia has been innovating furiously with drones because Russia is less constrained in supply of artillery shells. “While estimates vary, a common figure cited is a 5-to-1 or even higher ratio of shells fired by Russian forces compared to Ukrainian forces in some areas” (Google Gemini which has a knowledge cutoff date of Jan 2025).
Relevant to your original question (many levels of indentation ago) particularly the part about Israel’s vulnerability, is still think the crux is that countermeasures will probably reduce very significantly the effectiveness of this class of drones over the next 3 years at least in areas protected by well-funded militaries that are not in a state of civil war. The tech does not seem to have as much potential to stay very important as for example the fuzed artillery shell, which has remained very important for over 100 years because it is relatively difficult to develop countermeasures for it.
Aside from the sound issue already discussed, weapons makers will probably be unable to make the class of weapon we are discussing much faster than they already are (namely 50 to 120 km per hour) and if they do manage to increase the speed significantly, that will probably make the sound problem worse. In contrast, according to Gemini, during the terminal portion of its trajectory, a large artillery shell travels at 1080 to 2160 kilometers per hour.
Correct, the video someone elsethread shared had a guy saying 90%ish of the Russian casualties were drones but only a slight majority of Ukrainian casualties were from drones. Still supports my overall point though—Russia has a very artillery-heavy force, no one can claim that they didn’t invest enough in artillery, and yet still they are getting more kills with their hastily-assembled drone force.
I agree drones aren’t going to get much faster or quieter. I think their range and EW-resistance will continue to improve (e.g. due to AI) but other than that they’ll stay pretty similar to today. Oh, the price might go down too once they are produced at even greater scale.
They won’t rely on dodging autoturrets to hit targets; they’ll rely on overwhelming. Suppose you have a perfect autoturret that never misses, but N drones are flying at it simultaneously. What is the smallest N such that at least one drone will get through? I’d be interested to see an analysis that takes into account typical drone speeds, turret rotation/targeting times, and typical distance the drones can creep up before being fired upon (depends on terrain).
When you imagine a force overwhelming a position using very many drones, are you imagining one human per drone or are you imagining most of the drones (or more precisely, most of the drone flying time in “drone hours”) being flown by AI?
I would imagine that by the time a drone doesn’t need a human operator for most of the time it is in combat, lots of other things about war will have changed, e.g., whether an infantry soldier is obsolete.
Could be AI, human pilots, or a combination of both, the basic math doesn’t change. (Even if every drone needs a human pilot, it would totally be feasible to concentrate hundreds or thousands of fiber optic drones on a position.)
The time when drones don’t need human operators for most of the time in combat may be sooner than you think. Consider how Waymos operate autonomously but can call in a human operator to take over if they get stuck. I imagine something similar could happen for drones, where e.g. a group of N drones fly in a flock/swarm from point A to point B fully autonomously, and when they are approaching the target a human operator looking through their cameras paints the targets (yes, that’s a soldier, yes, that’s a tank, yes, you are clear to engage) and the AI does the rest.
IIRC even more autonomy than that is already being trialed, I think I heard about a prototype that goes into some sort of ‘autonomous seek and destroy mode’ where it just roams around completely disconnected from its human operators and attacks any targets it recognizes.
I agree that lots of other things about war will change due to AI, but the importance of drones, I think, is not going to go down thanks to AI.
I agree. What I tried to say though was that my guess is that for drones to stay as effective as they currently are for 5 years would require AI capable enough that it would transform so many aspects of society that for us in 2025 to try to project out that far becomes futile.
Thanks. I skimmed the transcript and didn’t see any mention of drones, though I was only skimming so perhaps I missed it. I’m lazy right now and not particularly motivated to dig deeper but if anyone has a timestamp I’d be grateful.
The host definitely says that the guest (the soldier) was a drone operator or worked on a team the purpose of which is to operate drones during the first 3 minutes: I re-listened to that much before I wrote my description. The word “drone” was definitely used.
I would expect advanced drone programs of the US military are heavily classified. What makes you believe that the numbers you have access to show the true investment the US military is making in it?
Idk, but I have talked to some people in the USAF and the stories I hear are discouraging. Also I hear that the cool US drone startups sent their stuff to Ukraine and were humbled, the FPV kamikaze designs that actually worked best at scale were mostly homebrew by volunteers. Also, in general, I have come to strongly suspect that classified US military R&D programs are wasteful boondoggles just like the nonclassified ones; the tech is probably pretty great in some sense but (a) takes several times longer to develop than SpaceX would take if they ever became a weapons manufacturer and (b) costs orders of magnitude more. Like, Boeing is responsible for some military R&D and also for the atrocious Starliner system. Why should we think they are doing a much better job for the military than they are for NASA?
Your original comment suggested that part of the problem is underinvestment by the US military. Underinvestment is a different problem than defense contractors like Boeing being slow and expensive.
Apart from that, the old defense contractors aren’t the only ones. Anduril seems to work both on drone defense and building drones. Palantir seems to do something drone related as well (but it’s less clear to me what they are doing exactly).
It might be that the key problem isn’t in spending more money but in reducing the bureaucracy and the criteria that the drones need to hit.
Both problems are severe. Not enough money is being spent on drone procurement, and what money is being spent is being spent inefficiently. I make no claim about which is worse.