Hey there! New year, new developments with lots of links to fascinating reading, and a great audiobook offer!
If you are like me, news like this worries you:
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/01/inside-russias-plan-to-build-autonomous-drone-swarms
From the article: "Russia is investing heavily to the idea of AI-powered swarms of drones that can overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses. And if the US and its partners do not take action soon, Moscow may well have this capability in the field within the next few years."
So what are the US and its partners doing while Russia applies its battlefield learnings about drone warfare, with tactical and technical changes to its drone systems almost monthly?
Too little, too slowly, too late.
NATO forces are stuck in a cold war cadence of issuing 'requests for proposals' about drone capabilities, running multi-year testing programs that are often cancelled without a winner because they progress so slowly the world has changed since they started (https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/why-the-air-force-paused-ngad-and-whats-next/), and ignoring off the shelf capabilities that could be purchased today so troops can be trained in new warfare tactics while they are still current.
This kind of bureaucratic double-speak from NATO procurement officials is typical (I'll translate it for you in the next paragraph): The (US Army) evaluated the four drone offerings over a year with operational units, culminating in a spring rodeo at Fort Benning. The Army awarded a supplier an 8m dollar contract in August 2022 to provide the (drone) as an interim capability for a single brigade. Now, the Army plans to field (the drone) to the first unit equipped in 2026.
Translation: So we started looking at a few drones in 2020, and will finally deploy something (probably outdated) to one unit, after dicking around for six years. And that 2026 date? That's probably bogus.
Battlefield urgency is the mother of innovation. By the time the US Army finally fields this kit, Russia will have made a dozen iterations of its comparable system and be generations ahead.
Drones are the new machine gun
A hard hitting review of this state of affairs which compares NATO approach to drones to British and French failure to adopt the machine gun, is here:
"Before World War I, a British military magazine wondered, “When will the professional military class realize machine guns had become a permanent presence in battle? What will they do about it?” Today, we ask the same about the U.S. military and small drones."
(I also remember a quote from a WW1 Belgian mounted horse cavalry colonel after he was shown a demonstration of a German machine gun: "I see no issue here. Our horsemen will simply jump over them and attack from behind.")
New force structures are needed
Ukraine's best equipped battalions all have dedicated drone squadrons of 100 plus troops running recon, anti-tank and anti-personnel missions that have largely replaced long range precision fire support and traditional anti-armor tactics. Squad level drone use has become the norm, with defenders using UAVs for everything from tracking enemy troop movements, and identifying camouflaged positions to dropping anti-personnel mines directly in their path, or downing enemy drones. Uncrewed ground vehicles deliver ammunition and probe minefields. Vehicle and troop columns are deploying with portable jammers for drone protection and the latest Ukrainian heavy drones are now running on optical fiber cable rather than with radio control, to circumvent jamming.
For a great summary of the current situation on the ground in Ukraine, this episode of War on the Rocks will get you up to date:
The Israeli Defense Force has similar capabilities: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2282656-israel-used-worlds-first-ai-guided-combat-drone-swarm-in-gaza-attacks/
NATO units have few, if any, of these tactical level capabilities in field and are years away from having them. If NATO went to war with Russia tomorrow the sky over the front would be swarming with Russian drones (by conservative estimates they produced 1.6 million drones in 2024 and bought hundreds of thousands more from Iran), telling Russia exactly where NATO troops were, attacking logistics in the rear, taking out Leopard after Leopard with loitering UAVs, dropping ordnance on defensive positions and sewing minefields.
The Royal Navy is probably one of the most advanced in NATO in drone use, but how long do you think its fleet of a few, very conventional, last-generation drones would last in a hot war against a peer adversary?
Don't panic yet
Thankfully Ukraine has blunted Russia's ability to wage large scale offensives like this, because NATO forces currently have no answer to Russian drone superiority.
What would warfare in a drone-dense environment look like?
https://www.audiobooks.com/promotions/promotedBook/777104/swarm
I tried to address this in SWARM, book 3 of the Aggressor series. (You can grab the audiobook now at 60pc off. Book V FULCRUM is coming on audio March 25!)