In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, last fall, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk went to war with the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation stealth fighter, suggesting that drones were the future, not manned fighters.
Drones have already been shown to be force multipliers in the ongoing war in Ukraine, where the small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have been used to destroy tanks and strike forward positions. Countering drones has proven more challenging than expected, with various ad hoc solutions being introduced, including nets and mesh screens. Meanwhile, lasers, signal jammers, and other directed-energy weapons are being tested.
The United States Navy has also seen the threat from UAS firsthand as the Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen carried out drone and missile strikes on its warships in the Middle East.
Russia Caught in the Spider Web
On Sunday, Ukraine operatives launched one of the most daring strikes, codenamed Spider Web, against Russia in its more than three-year-long war, employing first-person-view (FPV) drones to hit four remote air bases, including one in Siberia, thousands of miles from Ukraine. According to reports, as many as a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, including its Tupolev Tu-95 (NATO reporting name Bear), Tu-22M3 (NATO reporting name Blackfire) and Tu-160 (NATO reporting name Blackjack) bombers, were seriously damaged or destroyed.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) reportedly snuck the drones into Russia in mobile homes and carried out the carefully coordinated strikes from locations close to the facilities. It coincided with a drone attack on the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet headquarters at Severomorsk, northeast of Murmansk.
The attack, which took more than a year and a half to plan and coordinate, has already been compared to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and like it, will be studied for years or decades to come.
“[It] was a really good example of just how quickly technology is changing the battlefield. We’ve seen this over the last couple of years that everybody talks about [Program Objective Memorandum] cycles and everybody talks about program of record. I think that’s just old thinking,” said Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, on Monday during the Exchange, an AI conference hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project.
A Wake Up Call
Though drones had been successfully employed on the battlefield, Sunday’s strike against the Russian bombers served to highlight how small teams engaging in asymmetric warfare were able to cause so much damage. The estimated cost of the bombers was as high as $7 billion, and none of the aircraft are currently being produced, potentially crippling the Kremlin’s strategic capabilities.
Moreover, the drones used against those aircraft, which mostly dated back to the Cold War era, didn’t exist in large numbers even a decade ago.
In that regard, perhaps Elon Musk isn’t wrong to suggest that drones are part of the future, or at least a significant part of it. That also isn’t to say that the F-35, or even Boeing’s F-47, the centerpiece system of systems of the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. However, as George noted on Monday, technology is rapidly changing, and the Pentagon can’t rely on projects that take years or decades to develop and then build.
He called for reducing the timeline to develop the weapons of tomorrow. That may include looking to the off-the-shelf option, much as Ukraine did with the FPV drones.
“What we got to do is make sure that we’re aligned and that’s what we’re trying to do, changing the processes up here to make sure that we’re getting them the equipment, the war-winning capabilities that they know they need,” George added. “We’re going to have to be more agile. Drones are going to constantly change. We’re going to be trying to play the cat-and-mouse game with counter-UAS, so we’re going to have to work through that to make sure that we’re buying systems. We’re going to need a lot more agility in how we buy things.”
Drone Wars
Ukraine’s success also comes from the fact that it employed drones as a force multiplier, and continues to use them as a proverbial sling against the Goliath that is the Russian military.
“Ukraine is on pace to buy, build, and use roughly four million drones in just this year. We are literally orders of magnitude behind that. Women lie, men lie, but the numbers don’t lie,” explained Peter Warren Singer, Strategist and Senior Fellow at New America and co-author of the newly released “The Future of Deception in War” report.
Singer also told ClearanceJobs that Musk isn’t wrong to suggest drones may be the future, but it’s not a full picture of sound defense policy.
“Musk’s statements are good for riling up people on Twitter, but not fruitful for actual defense planning,” Singer added. “Of course, both are valuable now and for the future timeline, responsible organizations have to plan for.”
