Very interesting! But I’m not convinced. Some speculation to follow:
In a more dynamic war of maneuver, won’t finding/locating your enemy be even more of an issue than it is today? If there are columns of friendly and enemy forces driving every which way in a hurried confusion, trying to exploit breakthroughs or counterattack, having “drone superiority” so that you can see where they are and they can’t see where you are seems super important. OK, so that’s an argument that air superiority drones will be crucial, but what about bomber drones vs. drone-corrected artillery? Currently bomber drones have something like 20km range compared to 40km range for artillery. Since they are quadcopters though I think that they’ll quickly be supplanted by longer-ranged variants, e.g. fixed-wing drones. (Zipline’s medical supply drones currently have 160km range) So I think there will be a type of future platform that’s basically a pickup truck with a rail for launching fixed-wing bomber drones capable of taking out a tank. This truck will be to a self-propelled artillery piece what a carrier is to a battleship: Before the battleship/artillery gets in range, it’ll be detected and obliterated by a concentrated airstrike launched from the carrier/truck. As a bonus the truck can also carry and launch air superiority drones too. Like the Pacific in WW2, most major battles will take place beyond artillery range, between flights of drones launched by groups of carriers/trucks. Oh, and yeah another advantage of the drone carriers vs. the artillery is that they are much, much cheaper & also can potentially take cover more easily (e.g. if your column of trucks is spotted, your men can get out and take the drones into the basements of nearby houses and continue to fight from there, whereas you can’t hide your artillery in a basement.)
Also: The ultra static nature of the Russo-Ukrainian war is generally thought to be because of drones. The reason it’s been a stalemate is that drones currently favor the defender, because they make it easy to spot and attack enemy concentrations well before they even reach the front lines. The attacker can’t do traditional attack tactics anymore. (i.e. accumulate forces in secret behind your lines, across from a weak spot in enemy line, then charge and break through, then exploit, hoping to encircle pockets of enemy forces. Recent successful example: Kharkiv offensive.) There are many, many examples of columns of vehicles being obliterated by drone-corrected artillery, drones, land mines, and drone-laid land mines, before even reaching the front lines. So current offensive tactics have shifted to a sort of piecemeal thing where you send in a constant trickle of troops, often on foot, to gradually erode the enemy line primarily not by doing any shooting themselves but by forcing the enemy to kill them and thereby reveal their positions and get hit by artillery and drones. And this sort of thing is inherently extremely slow and defender-advantaging.
Very interesting! But I’m not convinced. Some speculation to follow:
In a more dynamic war of maneuver, won’t finding/locating your enemy be even more of an issue than it is today? If there are columns of friendly and enemy forces driving every which way in a hurried confusion, trying to exploit breakthroughs or counterattack, having “drone superiority” so that you can see where they are and they can’t see where you are seems super important. OK, so that’s an argument that air superiority drones will be crucial, but what about bomber drones vs. drone-corrected artillery? Currently bomber drones have something like 20km range compared to 40km range for artillery. Since they are quadcopters though I think that they’ll quickly be supplanted by longer-ranged variants, e.g. fixed-wing drones. (Zipline’s medical supply drones currently have 160km range) So I think there will be a type of future platform that’s basically a pickup truck with a rail for launching fixed-wing bomber drones capable of taking out a tank. This truck will be to a self-propelled artillery piece what a carrier is to a battleship: Before the battleship/artillery gets in range, it’ll be detected and obliterated by a concentrated airstrike launched from the carrier/truck. As a bonus the truck can also carry and launch air superiority drones too. Like the Pacific in WW2, most major battles will take place beyond artillery range, between flights of drones launched by groups of carriers/trucks. Oh, and yeah another advantage of the drone carriers vs. the artillery is that they are much, much cheaper & also can potentially take cover more easily (e.g. if your column of trucks is spotted, your men can get out and take the drones into the basements of nearby houses and continue to fight from there, whereas you can’t hide your artillery in a basement.)
Also: The ultra static nature of the Russo-Ukrainian war is generally thought to be because of drones. The reason it’s been a stalemate is that drones currently favor the defender, because they make it easy to spot and attack enemy concentrations well before they even reach the front lines. The attacker can’t do traditional attack tactics anymore. (i.e. accumulate forces in secret behind your lines, across from a weak spot in enemy line, then charge and break through, then exploit, hoping to encircle pockets of enemy forces. Recent successful example: Kharkiv offensive.) There are many, many examples of columns of vehicles being obliterated by drone-corrected artillery, drones, land mines, and drone-laid land mines, before even reaching the front lines. So current offensive tactics have shifted to a sort of piecemeal thing where you send in a constant trickle of troops, often on foot, to gradually erode the enemy line primarily not by doing any shooting themselves but by forcing the enemy to kill them and thereby reveal their positions and get hit by artillery and drones. And this sort of thing is inherently extremely slow and defender-advantaging.
https://youtu.be/tgkP0W7OvMc?si=hoa0l2mu5B6aRbpy
Perhaps of interest, 16:33 the guy mentions the development of a new type of drone resistant “turtle” tank