Drone warfare developments - it's a scary future

 

Many of my readers doubtless took note of a report earlier this month about a US-Ukrainian military exercise earlier this year.

Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.

The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.

. . .

... by repeating the training scenario throughout the two-week exercise, US Army troops got better at figuring out how to disperse and hide from the drones while using countermeasures such as electronic warfare.

The US military is not alone in learning such lessons from battle-hardened Ukrainian drone operators.

Ukrainian drone teams also participated in a Swedish-led military exercise for NATO, called Aurora 26, that was also held in May. A mock mechanized assault by NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles allowed Ukrainian drones to take out dozens of the attacking armored vehicles, which eventually forced planners to reset the war game, The Kyiv Independent reported.

There's more at the link.

While trying to find out more, I came across this 45-minute video article from Deutsche Welle.  Itfeatures both a drone operator's perspective (a British soldier fighting for Ukraine) and drone casualties speaking of it from their point of view.  It also goes into how the technology is developing, and how China already has a commanding lead in the field.  As wars become more widespread, what will this mean for soldiers?  I recommend the report very highly if you aren't up to date with recent developments.

The technological advances referred to in the video report are already making headlines.  Earlier this month, we learned that US AI technology is now "enhancing" conventional Ukrainian drones.

In mid-July, the Ukrainian military began receiving Shrike drones made by the Ukrainian company SkyFall equipped with AI-powered autonomy hardware and software developed by the US company Auterion. The companies plan to deliver 50,000 drones equipped with Auterion’s Skynode S strike kits in the coming months.

That allows human operators to manually fly the Shrike first-person view (FPV) drones into a battlefield area, designate a target up to half a mile away, and then “flip the switch to turn it into fire-and-forget terminal guidance mode,” Lorenz Meier, co-founder and CEO of Auterion, told Ars.

The operator can abort a strike or choose a different target as long as they have a radio signal connection with the drone, Meier explained. But the drone can still automatically track and fly into targets without any human guidance, even if it loses its connection with the operator due to buildings or terrain blocking the signal or because of enemy jamming on the same radio frequencies.

To home in on targets, Auterion’s software relies solely on the visual information available from the Shrike drone’s main onboard camera. That means the Shrike drones can track and strike moving targets without any reliance on GPS—a crucial advantage on modern battlefields, where GPS jamming has also become common.

Again, more at the link.

When I think back on my own days in uniform, I can only be devoutly grateful that we didn't have to face such devices on African battlefields almost half a century ago.  I think my odds of surviving such combat would have been a whole lot lower if they'd been around!

The scary thing, to my mind, is that all this technology has already devolved to individual user level, in manufacturing as much as in operation.  A private person can buy just about all the drone propulsion and guidance technology used in military battlefield drones, and assemble his own versions.  A warhead isn't difficult to devise, given a little chemical knowledge and/or access to stolen military or commercial explosives.  What might happen if a well-organized terrorist outfit such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, or their various and sundry offshoots, were able to get hold of drone "swarming" technology and launch fifty or a hundred explosive drones against a major target?  I'm thinking sports stadiums, or government buildings, or even key targets such as the President when he's traveling by vehicle.  What if some of the drones could try to obstruct the takeoff or landing of the Presidential aircraft?  What if they did the same to a normal commercial flight, potentially causing hundreds of casualties and disrupting the entire air transport network for who knows how long?

I fear we haven't even begun to witness how dangerous such technology might be in the wrong hands.

Peter