Public sentiment surrounding the U.S. defense strategy shift towards drone warfare is mixed but predominantly negative. Many express skepticism regarding the effectiveness and ethics of drone use, particularly when stacked against advancements in foreign technologies, especially from China. Debates center on ethical implications, perceptions of U.S. hypocrisy, and fears of escalating violence and dehumanization in conflict. Conversely, there is a notable contingent expressing support for the strategy, largely inspired by Ukraine's innovative drone tactics, which are seen as a dynamic evolution in military engagement.

U.S. Government

Defense Secretary Hegseth

Ukraine

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I'd say we already have, we have a fair number of drones, ourselves. But bear in mind, we are in the Western Hemisphere, most of our adversaries are not, which means we need items that are able to travel longer distances.

MadGobot

We’ve been re-evaluating and revamping our approach to warfare in light of what’s going on in Ukraine. (Investing and adding more in ADA units and equipment, testing new ideas around how to deal with drones, etc.) we’ve been doing this since before Ukraine, it’s just before Ukraine was invaded there wasn’t a source of a *lot* of real world experience and lessons learned to draw from.

Strict_Gas_1141

No. We should always be adapting to the real word, of course, but I personally think that adaptation is going to mean better tracking of random "stuff" that is traveling through the air and water. Which will probably require a lot MORE infrastructure, not less.

Things like missile defense systems didn't seem feasible at one point, but look where we are today. It's a big challenge, to be sure, but I think we will rise to the occasion.

notbusy

We need to figure out when we are willing to fight, which causes are worth American blood?

randomhaus64

Drones are something we need to consider but we can’t push too far to abandoning the things that create our military advantage. Like yeah drones can take out high value assets but our carriers and amphibious assault ships give us unprecedented ability to project our power, along with our bombers. We need to be aware of the threat and focus on countermeasures our else the thing that makes us a superpower will be irrelevant. 

No_Coconut2805

[deleted]

Completely? No. Drones and sUAS are certainly a problem, and create a contested airspace in ways that we are not used to and cannot really counter in the ways that we do other contested airspaces. I suspect there will be many ways that we eventually address this problem. Dedicated drone/counter-drone operators mighr be the solution at the squad or platoon level. The humble shotgun might become a useful defensive weapon for some small drones, while something like a directed jamming device could take out others that are larger than what a shotgun could handle.

awksomepenguin

willfiredog

I'm with you. If this war has taught us anything, it's that finding a way to counter cheap drones should be priority number one for the US military and for law enforcement (terrorism possibilities).

absolutely.


tanks are useless boat anchors in the modern era and manned jet fighters are not far behind




we will not survive as a nation if our enemies develop area denial autonomous drone constellations before we do. they are as disruptive to war as the atomic bomb was and not having them when other people do will have a similar consequence
 

Burner7102

No. We've had drones in our arsenal for years. We should better incorporate small FOV drones into our tactics.

Gaxxz

A proper response to this question is something that takes place over weeks with a whole room of very well informed collaborators along with supporting opinions from prominent contractors and their competitors. Comprehensive military strategy incorporates factors ranging from who our allies and adversaries are, what our foreign and domestic interests are, what we perceive as long term threats we want to prevent coming to fruition, what tactics are acceptable in accomplishing our goals, what the best suited equipment is for those tactics, and a whole host of other things that haven't occurred to me to consider.

The answer to your question may be yes, or it might be to go on the offensive and degrade our enemies capability to even muster a credible fighting force. Or it might be to pit them against a different entity. Or any of a hundred other tactics I don't know about. Who knows? Speculating with any level of confidence in stuff this high level with strangers over the internet is delusional.

Rough_Class8945

I mean it depends

Drones are a change but America has had drones for 25 years. 

I think more than drones is that the us needs to move away from large technical platforms (aircraft carriers for example) and start to learnt that massive amounts of cheap drones missiles can overwhelm these very advanced systems.

Don't need a total overhaul but maybe a recalibration

marketMAWNster

I feel like people often see a new kind of attack and assume that it's going to totally dominate warfare. This isn't always a sensible idea - aircraft for particular are very delicate and vulnerable to very small drone carried munitions. 


What I do think is that the US absolutely needs to have an effective counter-drone program, which we currently don't. 

The US needs to do what it’s voters want. That is more proxy war and less war-fighting. The US voters hate casualties and the media make war fighting for the US military too sensitive. Basically the whole arsenal of democracy thing.

forgottenkahz

&gt;How will this affect potential future conflicts?

Honestly, it’s extremely crazy. The U.S. and China are likely devoting tons of resources into anti-drone tech given the success Ukraine has had, but they’ll also likely be able to field significantly more complex drone operations, which may spark a bit of a drone race.

Imagine the operation from today except there were thousands or tens of thousands of drones.

Edit: The concept of base security is also going to shift pretty significantly. Imagine if every truck driving in the vicinity of a U.S. airbase in Afghanistan had the capability to unload a dozen FPV drones at any moment and cripple billions worth of airframes.

BombshellExpose

RE: prompt #1, prior to the Ukraine context, Azerbaijan made significant use of Turkish and Israeli drones to destroy much of Armenia's conventional forces and reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh.  

I think it's reasonable (if not obvious) to say that, like many other military systems, drones are particularly effective in conflicts where the opponent lacks the capability to deal with the effectively. Armenia appears to have struggled to shoot down Azerbaijan's drones, and certainly couldn't destroy them in quantity, and so lost personnel and heavy armor and artillery systems to them.  For Azerbaijan, drones had the additional benefit of preserving more expensive, manned assets, such as main battle tanks or fighter jets, in engagements where they would have been deployed in larger numbers and potentially consequentially taken heavier loses otherwise.  That gets to what makes drones uniquely effective- even if they have worse overall capabilities on paper than certain manned alternatives, so long as they're less expensive (including factoring in expenses in losing personnel with crewed vehicles), and are still able to fulfil at least their minimum intended functions in combat, they're economically and materially advantageous to deploy.

ZardozInTheSkies

Naval drones in the Black Sea lead to a nation with no blue sea navy to completely force a nation with an actual navy to keep them in port. How this translates to larger naval conflicts has yet to be determined.

sleepyrivertroll

The Polish author Stanislaw Lem is one of *the* classic sci-fi writers for those who grew up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. (His work most well-known in the West is probably *Solaris*.)

Anyway, in the 1970s he wrote "Weapon Systems of the 21st Century". It's a "review" of a fictional historical book written in the future (i.e. a framing device around an essay describing Lem's ideas about future warfare). It revolved about two tendencies that existed at the time and could be extrapolated into the future: "dehumanization", i.e. the gradual automation of weapon systems, reducing the number of human operators, and "miniaturization": the general trend of automated systems to become smaller and smaller. The logical conclusion was that future combat would employ swarms of small autonomous weapons, "synsects" (synthetic insects). They would be specialized against specific targets and they would not require a sophisticated, human-level AI - insted, they'd have something more similar to instincts, enough to find their targets. Synsects would render obsolete most conventional armaments (e.g. tanks), as well as traditional human soldiers, as neither would have effective defenses against sufficiently large swarms. Inbound swarms could disperse to avoid detection and converge only when reaching the target. Even nukes would not be very effective due to dispersion and "burrowing" behavior. Just as real insects, synsects would be subject to "evolutionary pressure" when it comes thing like friend-or-foe detection, and this would cause them to borrow evolutionary strategies from nature, such as mimicry.

It's easy to see an echo of Lem's ideas in modern drone swarms. But he also drew conclusions about how that would affect warfare on a higher level. Such weapons could make attribution of attacks to a specific actor (country) pretty hard, opening the possibility of plausible deniability and clandestine warfare involving man-made disasters. The boundary between "war" and "peace" could become as indistinct as to be non-existent.

Of course, the end point of the "evoltuion of unlife" would be weaponized nanobots, but Lem didn't go that far, at least not in that essay.

(Lem also put similar ideas in some of his more traditional, narrative-based fiction: most notably in *The Invincible*, and to a lesser degree in *Eden* and *Fiasco*.)

Goatf00t

There will probably be hundred of predator-like drones loitering around the pacific in a war with China, acting as sensors to spot planes or boats, carrying shorter ranged air to air missiles to be utilized as a form of cheap mobile AA, and carrying hellfires or similar ordinance to deal with autonomous kamikaze boats

America may use automated supply drones similar to narco subs as a way to make supply chains less targetable 

Loyal wingman programs are in the works in the US (likely in China). Those will likely be available by then as long as Trump doesn't fuck it up

Autonomous drone boats will probably be a thing, including both fully and partially submerged ones. These could be a mix of kamikaze ones, disposable ones used to extend the range of ordinance without making new weapons or risking manned vessels, and reusable ones meant to be the same as manned vessels.

Sh1nyPr4wn

ELI5: What exactly stops armies from taking their M61 Vulcans, ZSU-23-4 Shilkas and 88mm Flak guns out of storage (or adopting their modern versions) to cost-effectively deal with low-flying quad-copters?

EconomistsHATE

Before anything i want to clarify that i'm just a soft military nerd that researches about the field when im not hyperfocusing on other topics,so what i'll say below are just hypothesis that can be dead wrong. But anyways here's what i think:



"1. Are there other ongoing conflicts besides the war in Ukraine where drones are highly effective? What sort of conflicts are drones uniquely good for?" 

I saw some videos of hamas using FPV drones to bomb IDF holds but that was mostly on the beginning of the war,Sudan and late-war Syria also saw a lot of them. They're also widespread on the current Myanmar conflict and are giving a pretty headache to the junta. 



"2. How will this affect potential future conflicts? For example, could drone warfare play a pivotal role in a conflict between China and the US?" 

That's really hard to tell. Traditional kamikaze drones like Kargu will definitely play a key role on attacking vital vehicles like ships and anti-air batteries,but i'm not sure if normal remote controlled drones will be used on this scenario because they largely depend on a quasi-static frontline and lack of air supremacy from both sides. What i see them being used for is non-tripulated medium-range reconnaissance. 



"3. What are the prerequisites for a military to successfully incorporate drone warfare into their doctrine?" 

basically train some of their troops to use these drones wich could take only a few hours if the objective is to master their maneuvering skills.

Bankrupt_Banana

I am going to be honest, I think the term "drone" has outlived its usefulness. It describes too broad an array of aircraft to be useful and oftentimes seems to lead to public confusion, such as proclamations that manned fighters are obsolete because of quadcopters, or something.

I'll !ping MATERIEL here because nobody else has yet.

Jacobs4525

America is fucked. 

China and the USA might be neck and neck when it comes to drone tech, but China absolutely laps us when it comes to production and industrial capacity.

Playful-Push8305

&gt; Are there other ongoing conflicts besides the war in Ukraine where drones are highly effective

PDF in Myanmar, Sudan, Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas. Not sure i'd call them highly effective but they are obviously in use

Combat drones weren't invented three years ago though - Predator and its successors have a bit of a history

&gt; How will this affect potential future conflicts? For example, could drone warfare play a pivotal role in a conflict between China and the US?

Yes, and US does not have a upper hand IMO, see below

&gt; What are the prerequisites for a military to successfully incorporate drone warfare into their doctrine? 

Capacity to produce them en masse and cheaply

savuporo

I think drones will provide the next leg up for two trends in warfare: the increasing democratization of firepower and the increasing lethality of firepower.

The revolution in politics from a more feudal-like society of decentralized state power to a more modern society of centralized state power was significantly on the back of state cannon foundries and magazines obsoleting the kind of fortification which could be credibly built by regional rulers to give them the wherewithall to resist the state army. Resisting a state with modern equipment by using obsolete and widely available equipment got harder and harder over time, probably peaking around the turn of the 21st century where the gap between "most powerful army" and "random freedom fighters" was probably at its largest.

These days militarily useful drones are cheap and widely available and able to fulfill a great deal of the roles previously reserved for cutting edge modern armies when it comes to surveillance and precision firepower. Modern armies will need to scramble to develop countermeasures so they can remain on top of motivated but under-resourced adversaries.

Additionally, things like FPV drones are very dangerous because of their ability to apply firepower with a similar responsiveness and accuracy to direct fire weapons combined with the attack profile and safety of indirect fire weapons. And reconnaissance and fire control via drone greatly increases the lethality of other weapons, too. Military tactics and operations will probably reward not only having the latest drone and counter-drone tech, which is obvious, but more than ever they will reward army quality. 

The very qualities that make the modern battlefield survivable and conventional military attacks and defenses possible (cover and concealment, dispersion and use of small units, suppression of the enemy, combined arms integration, and the use of deep positions and massed reserves at decisive points) also make modern warfare extremely skill intensive. Increasing the efficacy of firepower more than ever through drone surveillance and attacks will put even more burden on these skills since the margin for error will also be lower than ever. Perhaps some of this will be mitigated by the improved command and control offered by drone surveillance systems or kept in check by whatever anti-drone systems are developed.

Reddit4Play

Crazy to think that a conflict between the PLA and US probably won't see either forces troops or ships directly engaging with each other.

BenIsLowInfo

&gt;How will this affect potential future conflicts? For example, could drone warfare play a pivotal role in a conflict between China and the US?

Ukraine is the future conflict. We first witnessed full-blown conventional war with extremely effective use of UAS during the Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. Militaries around the world basically went "Holy fucking shit, this changes the game. I can only imagine this at scale." The War in Ukraine is what militaries were talking about as the potential future conflict and it's far worse than anybody's imagination.

OkEntertainment1313

Well, the Haitian """government""" is using drones with granades, just like the great Ukranian army does, to bomb gangues in down five blocks away from the region in Port Prince they control. 

The gangsters in Rio de Janeiro "Israel Complex" favela are trialing drones with granades, but I'm not aware they used them against the police or other gangues just yet.

--

Drone warfare is less bad because the small DJI drones people like to use can't handle satellite internet like Starlink. This means that you need soldiers around to operate them. And even if you eventually can use AI, as I am sure the great Ukranian air force is testing, you'll still need some ground base nearby.

This means that the nature of frontlines become such that each army is hidden near the Frontline and operating cheap drones.

Expensive drones just aren't economical. Yes, the Revolutionary Guard can send Drones to Israel, but they are gigantic and expensive, and the U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force are able to intercept them.

Bottomline: it's less scary than most think.

financeguy1729

1. Drones at the least the quad drones gaining fame in Ukraine are best in situations where a military is lacking in conventional fires. Put simply you'd almost always want to use artillery or air strikes instead if you have the option. In more advanced militaries such as the USA or China those might have advantage in raids on island instillations where there is a high risk to conventional aircraft and a lack of time to unload and set up heavier equipment.

Larger drones like Predators have the capacity to be used as a capable put disposable anti-air or fire support platforms, as they have the mass to carry heavier weapons but are cheaper and replaceable than fighter jets and pilots. 

Naval drones are likely to prove useless against larger fleets with proper escorts, screens, and electronic warfare capabilities but could prove valuable for harassing shipping and scouting, even if they can be easily destroyed by escort craft they raise the cost of having cargo ships and transports at sea.

2. I'm doubtful drone warfare would prove decisive in a Sino American conflict, such a war would largely be fought in air and at sea, modern warships are hard targets and cheap drones are too easy to destroy, hyper sonic missiles are a much larger concern for Aircraft carriers than drones are and all but the most advanced drones are completely outclassed by modern fighter jets.

3. Depends on the drone and the capability to manufacture them, for cheap drones I imagine most militaries will implement some cheap drones as a scouts at the small unit level, naval drones will manly see use among militaries that don't have the ability to build a capable surface fleet, more advanced aerial drones I don't think will ever replace fixed wing aircrafts but could replace things like attack helicopters by being more maneuverable and disposable.

MyrinVonBryhana

1: Middle east. Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas are using lots of drones (and rockets, missiles, etc) to attack Israel and shipping containers.

2:

The evolution we are seeing in Ukraine isn't that novel from any Military Experts perspective IMO. The US has been researching drone warfare since the early 2000s with [CCA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned-Unmanned_Teaming). F35 was built on it. It will play a pivotal roll. The US Air force is probably ready to send a scary amount of drone hate into the air at once, just hasn't really revealed it. These drones are not hobby drones, they move fast, are large, and can be controlled by a single F35.

China has also been working on [stuff for a while](https://www.newsweek.com/china-military-drone-carrier-mothership-future-warfare-2074494). IDK much about it though.

3: Factories to make the drones, as most are single use, so you will need a lot of them, and training for people to fly them. Thats pretty much it. They seem extremely useful in many scenarios. 

The more interesting thing about drone warfare IMO is the countermeasures. First drones in Ukraine where remote controlled, then anti drone guns started to take them out, so they started doing the TOW missile strat of having fiber optic cable for the drones. Now there are fully or partially autonomous drones.

The next step is to produce an air defense against drones that is as cheap, or cheaper than the drones themselves. US has been working on [LaWS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SEQ-3_Laser_Weapon_System), a cousin of CWIS, which is now replaced with [HELIOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Energy_Laser_with_Integrated_Optical-dazzler_and_Surveillance). Which is now apart of Aegis, and I believe has been used against Houthi attacks.

Israel has their own system, [Iron Beam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam), as a part of Iron Dome. This system has been tested/used in Israel since Oct 7. Recently, [it has been seen in action](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-reveals-it-used-laser-system-to-intercept-dozens-of-hezbollah-drones-last-year/), and costs $5 per interception.

I think drone warfare will be a big deal for a while, until defenses like Iron beam become the standard. It will then be cheaper to defend against the drones than to produce them. So you will need armor for the drones, and the drones get heavier. So then you use more conventional air defense against them.

vulkur

The next step is walking metallic humanoid drones. You know where this is going.

Lame_Johnny

I think this article tempers expectations pretty well: https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3558975-stop-saying-war-has-changed/

To sum up: Ukraine is a pretty unique situation, that's the main reason we're seeing Drone utilization.

QueenBae2

One lesson might be that the Drone centric warfare in Ukraine is the product of neither side having air superiority, not a completely new paradigm in war.

AndyTheSane

Mostly a high level article but the biggest takeaway is the successful combat validation of the F-35, and more specifically the success of the Adir variant, to which the US allowed significant data access to. So much for Elon calling the F-35 obsolete 

&gt; In their cockpits, they were immersed in visual displays, both projections inside their helmet visors and, directly in front of them, a large touch-screen monitor. The images integrated the steady flow of data from the airplane’s multiple sensors, giving a complete, moving, spherical, 360-degree picture of the airplane’s surroundings. Pilots can “see” an enemy fighter or ground-to-air missile battery well before they are in visual or targeting range, and they are also alerted immediately if their jet has been “painted” by enemy radar

Putting $400k helmets to good use I assume.

ABlackEngineer

Mark Bowden: “It’s doubtful that the state-of-the-art stealth technology cloaking American B-2 bombers as they attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities on the night of June 21 was even necessary. Iran’s airspace, by then, was like a red carpet. With two heavy blows—one last October and one in mid-June—Israel had already destroyed Iran’s air defenses and taken control of its skies.

“President Donald Trump claimed that the air strikes he ordered ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which they probably didn’t. The air strikes have certainly set those ambitions back. But the accomplishment was not America’s. It was Israel’s.

“Leaving aside questions about the wisdom and efficacy of the Israeli and American attacks on Iran, this much is clear: The Israelis achieved complete air supremacy days before the B-2s took off. How did they do it? What does it say about Iran’s fate, or about air war in the 21st century? During the past several days, I posed these questions to some former top military officers, most of them only recently retired.”

Read more: [https://theatln.tc/g9iP41FK](https://theatln.tc/g9iP41FK) 

theatlantic

Fun fact: Mark Bowden is the guy who wrote Black Hawk Down. One of my favorite journalists when it comes to military matters.

Heiminator

Not trying to oversimplify things but the main lesson is don't be a paper tiger

If you're a group like Hezbollah, Hamas or a state like Iran and you know you've got limited ways to fight back then don't start a war even if it's supposed to be a proxy one against rivals such as Israel or the US.
If you don't have the right tools, logistics and economy to support it, DON'T start a conflict with a country that clearly has all of that and in massive capacity.

Electronic_Main_2254

US domination of the air over Iraq shows the faikute of Russia. Air dominance allows ground forces tonmove with less fear

ZLUCremisi

Surely the most obvious lessons here are:

1. Have the full backing of a superpower

2. Make sure your enemy doesn't

Jared_Usbourne

AbuDagon

PATRIOT doesn't turn off if you get too close would be part of the answer.

So the division in US doctrine has been for some years:

SHORAD: This is basically bear mace for planes.  It's also where most anti-UAS actions happen given the kind of cost tradeoffs (or cheap drones realistically are engaged by cheap defenses at shorter range).  This is also most anti-helicopter actions.

*Edit for more context:* SHORAD is also often the systems intended to operate on the frontline accompanying maneuver forces.  This places some hard fast limits on how big the weapons system can be because it needs to be a unitary weapons system, sensors, control, operators, and munitions on one vehicle that can rapidly employ all of them.  Sometimes this is "unitary" as a soldier with a MANPADS but it's what most people think of when they think of air defense on the battlefield (2S6, Gepard, Roland, M163, Stinger, Strela etc).  A newer but less common variant is the dedicated anti-artillery/missile/drone platform like Phalanx/Centurion where the system itself isn't actually well suited to the battlefield but is designed around a certain close range threat type.

SHORAD is where most of the US reinvestment into air defense is going because the threat posed by UAS or stand off precision munitions is a big problem right now (historically it was more of the last line of defense vs the one SU-22 that squeaked through or a surprise Mi-24 vs being "the" line of defense against a droneswarm) 

HIMAD: High to Medium Air Defense: The US has generally had larger but field mobile air defense systems for this role (HAWK, PATRIOT) to deal with manned fixed wing threats from the ground (or aircraft like systems), while relying on advanced air superiority fighters directed by AWACS to carry a lot of the weight here.  HIMAD's primary domain is large high performance targets and isn't as pressing of a threat for the US given the air superiority dynamic for most threats (not an absolute thing, just 95% of the battles the US land forces could expect to fight have all but assured air superiority).

ABM: Anti-Ballistic Missile: as described, this is PATRIOT and THAADs place.

The issue you run into with the medium type systems as a concept is they tend to be less useful for SHORAD applications (heavier systems, less well suited to battlefield operations), while also often at risk of becoming obsolete due to increasing weapons stand-off.  If you just keep your "high" systems capable of carrying on medium engagements...like there's tradeoffs (like you might be able to make a unitary system vs needing TELs and separate radars because you're working with smaller missiles) but if need to pick where you place your emphasis, having a "high" system that can do "medium" has been the better tradeoff than having distinct high/medium platforms, especially when backed by F-22s/F-15s etc,

pnzsaurkrautwerfer

You're assuming because of an arbitrary label that there isn't crossover between the two. What Russia calls medium range the US might only call short because their longest-range can reach further, as an example. 

Between Stinger, Patriot and THAAD pretty much all engagement ranges are covered between a few hundred meters (Stinger) to about 120 miles or so (THAAD). I can't find a minimum engagement range for Patriot in open source (it's classified) but you're likely looking at a fairly short minimum engagement range for a target like a plane. Bear in mind exact figures depend wildly on the type of munition being fired, and the type of target being engaged - fast jets and ballistic missile interception are very different beasts. 

The US puts a lot more faith in it's technology to be able to detect incoming targets from further away, and also builds air assets themselves into it's anti-air doctrine, gaining air supremacy is critical in NATO/US doctrine. Russia as an example does not, they assume in any engagement the peer opponent will have air superiority which is why they put a huge amount more energy into ground-based anti-air systems.

Mihikle

The US has been heavily depricating short range air defense for a long time to protect its air arm, which is perfectly capable of fighting missiles as well as a patriot but with better kinematics (cheaper missiles).

Fratricide is the biggest concern with missile defense. The US has 3,400 fighters alone and a good proportion of them will be over any troops’ communication zone and as we recently saw near Yemen any missile defense setup is a colossal threat to unaware aircraft.

Patriot is more than capable of serving at all ranges and has a specialization in ballistic intercepts as does THAAD because that’s a capability gap in fighters.

Clone95

As has been said, we mostly used the FIM-92 "Stinger" for engagements in that range but honestly, we rarely had one or anyone trained on one, because at that point anything we would use on it, on a battlefield, would already be dead. 

If you're an ODA there's tops 12 of you, you're deep in territory and you just don't have the capacity to carry or care for something that has to be that accurate. You need batteries, you need time for the IR seeker to lock on, MANPADS usually are a crewed weapon, and again at that point, we've probably already killed everything in the AO we could use it against.

StellarJayZ

To add to all the great answers already here, the US has multiple times tried to do a "medium" air defense option, notably with modified AIM-9 (MIM-72 Chapparal, which granted had some fairly short legs but longer than gun systems) and AIM-120s from ground systems. In fact the only US medium range land SAM system *is* AIM-120, there is a NASAM ring around Washington, D.C. it is the only one the US has, but the Army also tried to do SLAAMRAAM(Surface Launched AAMRAM) but it was cut for budget reasons to put that money towards a different air defense program. The Navy obviously has plenty of medium range options in the form kf ESSM. which are derived from AIM-7 Sparrow(ESSM is Evilved Sea Sparrow Missile) missiles quadpacked into VLS tubes. More missiles than Standard missiles and longer range than RIM-116 RAM short range/point defense missiles.

ArguingPizza

While patriot is technically “long ranged” it won’t enforce a no fly zone. Air Defense in the joint force is inherently reactive. So patriot can equal the range of an old AIM-54, but won’t engage outside maybe 50km. The real issue with patriot isn’t the fact that it’s long range and leaves a gap at the medium range, it’s that it’s a strategic asset. It isn’t capable of defending the manoeuvre force from stand-off threats because it can’t keep up with them. There’s also the price factor. The main threat is large and small drones nowadays, so a high-volume, cheap medium air defense option is the real gap, and this is being fixed by IFPC. The IFPC is a family of programs choosing between hellfires, sidewinders, and Tamir interceptors for this role.

ToXiC_Games

It does: patriot. Just cause Patriot can engage out to 180km (open source) with some of its missle types doesn't mean it can't engage down to 5-10km. Below that is the territory of SHORAD

A will also note that US airdefense doctrine differentiates more so in terms of altitude rather than range; hence why you have both THAAD and Patriot. The idea here is combined arms: if they want to fly high, THAAD smacks them. Medium altitude? Patriot rocks their world. They think they can skirt along the deck to avoid the two? They get smacked by a stinger/SHORAD protecting the target or one they just happened to pass en route. Oh yeah, and this is even if the F-22s and F-15s flying air superiority missions even let an aggressor get within the MEZ or the JEZ.

Soggy-Coat4920

I would have to look up the exact details again but as I recall the army faced a couple of bad programs and ended up cutting those entirely.  After that with the end of the Cold War they never reinvested hard into air defense since there has been an expectation of operating under complete air superiority from the USAF.  There is an expected level of capability for air defense they maintain that is viewed as sufficient.

CapableCollar

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Ok_Affect_1571:

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ss: following the conflict in Ukraine, the U.S. military has stated a massive shift towards drone combat. This includes drones for surveillance and attack. They are also focusing on other sectors such as 3D printing. This has the potential for military to create tools and parts in remote areas.

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 Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1kcevdj/us_army_plan_to_equip_every_division_with_drones/mq20lz2/

FuturologyBot

Squad, every Squad needs multiple drones at about the same rate they currently assign 40mm grenades. 

Anyone that says otherwise (unless it is for more, even better hardened to EW drones, is wrong)

Echo017

In 10 years the navy capital ship will be less an aircraft carrier and more a water based drone factory, able to rapidly deploy modular drone systems fitted out for any role you could want.

YsoL8

ss: following the conflict in Ukraine, the U.S. military has stated a massive shift towards drone combat. This includes drones for surveillance and attack. They are also focusing on other sectors such as 3D printing. This has the potential for military to create tools and parts in remote areas.

Ok_Affect_1571

Drones have been proven to be an integral part of modern warfare. Any country that does not incorporate drones into their doctrine is doomed to fail

40ouncesandamule

Why does this article refer to the Ukraine conflict in past tense?

Norwest

Peter Thiel and his cronies are salivating at this. That anduril company is going to be first in line for these contracts, mark my words.

jsta19

At what cost - if we don't sort the tariff situation out quickly this is going to be an extremely expensive initiative.

PNWoutdoors

Fuck if you think about it a drone will probably be able to sink a ship down

RedditCensorss

Prior to 2025, US generals spent a lot of time talking with Ukrainian commanders about targeting and this move would mirror the Ukraine deployment a bit though the Ukrainians have it down to brigades and squads: (this shows the brigade allotment in the middle).

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/DRONES/dwpkeyjwkpm/

anonyfool

Going i find out this is impossible without China supplying the parts

eskjcSFW

Are we going to need to come up with a word for the original military drones that are actually whole-ass unmanned airplanes? I feel like we’re using one word for two completely different things.

StarWarsPlusDrWho

The first move of every conflict involving modern opposing forces will be to EMP bomb.

hivemind_disruptor

I would not be shocked if it becomes part of the standard fire team load out and the combat doctrine actually get an update after several generations of being the same.

They have more or less replaced the Assistant heavy gunner (AG)  already  because of lighter weight SAWs and AMRs  so that will be a dual rule AG and Drone operator or just straight out add an tactical unit to every fireteam.  especially if they get those IFF visors up and running.

doglywolf

From my experience this is already true.  They need whole units of drone operators.  It will be the next front lines.

TriumphantDisaster

Will the new name of the first ship to carry the drones be the "USS Beehive"?

Jnorean

Just in time for me to age out of active duty age so they can draft me as a drone pilot.

drdildamesh

Each day we get closer to a real life hunter swarm from black ops 2, when we reach that point shits gonna get real.

Bignuka

Every division?  If this is not already the case, they are way behind.

PurpleBourbon

[General Zevo's Plans](https://youtu.be/sHRbX3gDba8?si=gV5UswUXhRWpn9UX&amp;t=46), feat LL Cool J

synect

The U.S. is shifting its defense strategy to prioritize low-cost drones, reflecting changes in military technology and warfare.

US Defense Strategy Shift to Drones

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