The war in Ukraine shows how conflicts between drones and riflemen go; the war in Iran shows how conflicts between the informed and the uninformed go.
I don’t think these conflict show what you think they show.
In the former case, drones and riflemen fight together on both sides, with both sides capable of innovating and copying innovations. If anything, the conflict shows that thanks to drones, infantry grunts are as important as ever and expensive armor (although not obsolete and still necessary) is relatively less important than a generation ago.
In the latter case, the “uninformed” demonstrated that they can saturate air defenses of their neighbors with cheap drone technology and even occasionally shoot down ~100M jets with SAMs built with COTS chips (and even occasionally model turbojets). If they retain the HEU and their (illegal) toll booth in the strait after the war, the world will see them as victors regardless of the damage and casualties they suffered.
I believe that in a decade or two the main conclusion historians will derive from thee two wars that nothing but nukes (not expensive weapons, not cheap ones, not small armies, not large ones, and certainly not foreign security guarantees) can defend a country’s sovereignty if it’s in a geopolitical flashpoint, and even if you don’t, a flashpoint might appear from nowhere in a decade on a border with an autocratic state.
Coupled with the constant diminishing of the technological bar to nuclear proliferation due to progress, this seems to imply that the current nonproliferation paradigm is going to eventually break down and future generations will live in a much less safe world with much more numerous nuclear-armed states and much heightened risk of an accidental nuclear war.
I don’t think these conflict show what you think they show.
In the former case, drones and riflemen fight together on both sides, with both sides capable of innovating and copying innovations. If anything, the conflict shows that thanks to drones, infantry grunts are as important as ever and expensive armor (although not obsolete and still necessary) is relatively less important than a generation ago.
In the latter case, the “uninformed” demonstrated that they can saturate air defenses of their neighbors with cheap drone technology and even occasionally shoot down ~100M jets with SAMs built with COTS chips (and even occasionally model turbojets). If they retain the HEU and their (illegal) toll booth in the strait after the war, the world will see them as victors regardless of the damage and casualties they suffered.
I believe that in a decade or two the main conclusion historians will derive from thee two wars that nothing but nukes (not expensive weapons, not cheap ones, not small armies, not large ones, and certainly not foreign security guarantees) can defend a country’s sovereignty if it’s in a geopolitical flashpoint, and even if you don’t, a flashpoint might appear from nowhere in a decade on a border with an autocratic state.
Coupled with the constant diminishing of the technological bar to nuclear proliferation due to progress, this seems to imply that the current nonproliferation paradigm is going to eventually break down and future generations will live in a much less safe world with much more numerous nuclear-armed states and much heightened risk of an accidental nuclear war.