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You needed airplanes, and antiaircraft weapons were so much cheaper. With drones the calculation is the other way around. It completely changes the face of war,

You needed airplanes, and antiaircraft weapons were so much cheaper. With drones the calculation is the other way around. It completely changes the face of war, offensive warfare is now possible again. Ernst Jünger said something similar when he witnessed the first tanks in World War 1.

johntiger1 7y ago
You can't just have an AA gun on every street corner; air power is so powerful precisely because of its mobility and strategic reach
nostrademons 7y ago
Seems like drones preference the attacker over the defender on a tactical scale (because they're cheap and numerous) but preference local warfare over global warfare on a strategic scale (because to get that cheapness you need to sacrifice range & performance). They favor insurgent groups over power projection. Supply lines for offensive warfare also get more challenging with drones, because you have this great weapon that doesn't require any people on the front lines to use, but it still requires a great deal of manpower on the back line to service and maintain. I'd say the analogous technology is really the musket. On the battlefield it gave an advantage over knights, cavalry, and swordsmen, but it also gave that advantage to unskilled groups of militia rather than organized fiefdoms that could field large numbers of mounted knights and the support staff needed for them. The result was the Renaissance and birth of nationalism, as local, commercial organizations gained power over the feudal empires that had governed them.
- loeg 7y ago
  > Seems like drones preference … local warfare over global warfare on a strategic scale (because to get that cheapness you need to sacrifice range & performance) It seems relatively straightforward to deliver drones via any kind of existing global scale transit available today (on the one end, C130s, or on the other end, ICBMs?). A predator drone (not the latest tech) weighs ~5000 lbs and the MIRV Mark 5 SLBMs can launch 8x ~800 lb "W88" warheads, for a combined payload weight of around 6400 lbs. (I'm not super familiar with any of this and might be missing something; just skimmed wikipedia to see if I could make the ICBM math work out.)
devoply 7y ago
> offensive warfare is now possible again You mean defensive. Where American firepower at the hands of Saudis completely fucking up your country can be finally challenged with a response that might make them reconsider war. Where it was just a beat down like America is using to doing. Who knows maybe this thing spirals out of control and destroys all of Saudi Arabia, when you are dealing with these sorts of political realities you reconsider things like destroying the entire country of Yemen because you don't like the politics of its majority or its rebel government.
paganel 7y ago
> It completely changes the face of war These changes are always really, really interesting. One of my favorite moments similar to this is the Battle of Nicopolis [1] between the Ottomans led by Bayezid I and a Crusader force which included many Western cavalry forces. The much more mobile and easy-moving Ottomans were no match for the Western (especially French) forces who were accustomed with using their heavy armor during battle: > The French knights thus continued up the hill, though accounts state that more than half were on foot by this point, either because they had been unhorsed by the lines of sharpened stakes or had dismounted to pull up stakes. Struggling in their heavy armor, they reached the plateau on the top of the slope, where they had expected to find fleeing Turkish forces, but instead found themselves facing a fresh corps of sipahis, whom Bayezid had kept in reserve. As the sipahis surged forward in the counterattack sounding trumpets, banging kettle drums and yelling "God is great!", the desperation of their situation was readily apparent to the French and some knights broke and fled back down the slope. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis
- aodin 7y ago
  Over 660 years before the Battle of Nicopolis, the French under Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Tours[1] using phalanxes of heavy infantry against lightly armored Arabian calvary. The difference being that the French forces purposefully took a defensive position on top of several hills instead of initiating an attack up them. The battles are an interesting echo through history. Perhaps the lesson is simply "hold the high ground". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours
  - paganel 7y ago
    > Perhaps the lesson is simply "hold the high ground". One could think so, but then about 150 years later the Hungarian chivalry (and pretty much the Hungarian kingdom itself) was annihilated by the same Ottomans at the battle of Mohacs, where there was no "high ground" involved. From the wiki page [1]: > Hungary built up an expensive but obsolete army, structured similarly to that of King Francis I at the Battle of Pavia and mostly reliant on old fashioned heavily armoured knights on armoured horses (gendarme knights). By that time the Ottomans had already started making heavy use of artillery (which is also one of the main reasons they had taken Constantinople back in 1453): > The Ottoman army was a more modern force built around artillery and the elite, musket-armed Janissaries. The remainder consisted of feudal Timarli cavalry and conscripted levies from Rumelia and the Balkans [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs
bgorman 7y ago
You don't need an airplane, you simply need a cruise missiles.

johntiger1 7y ago

You can't just have an AA gun on every street corner; air power is so powerful precisely because of its mobility and strategic reach

nostrademons 7y ago

Seems like drones preference the attacker over the defender on a tactical scale (because they're cheap and numerous) but preference local warfare over global warfare on a strategic scale (because to get that cheapness you need to sacrifice range & performance). They favor insurgent groups over power projection. Supply lines for offensive warfare also get more challenging with drones, because you have this great weapon that doesn't require any people on the front lines to use, but it still requires a great deal of manpower on the back line to service and maintain. I'd say the analogous technology is really the musket. On the battlefield it gave an advantage over knights, cavalry, and swordsmen, but it also gave that advantage to unskilled groups of militia rather than organized fiefdoms that could field large numbers of mounted knights and the support staff needed for them. The result was the Renaissance and birth of nationalism, as local, commercial organizations gained power over the feudal empires that had governed them.

loeg 7y ago
> Seems like drones preference … local warfare over global warfare on a strategic scale (because to get that cheapness you need to sacrifice range & performance) It seems relatively straightforward to deliver drones via any kind of existing global scale transit available today (on the one end, C130s, or on the other end, ICBMs?). A predator drone (not the latest tech) weighs ~5000 lbs and the MIRV Mark 5 SLBMs can launch 8x ~800 lb "W88" warheads, for a combined payload weight of around 6400 lbs. (I'm not super familiar with any of this and might be missing something; just skimmed wikipedia to see if I could make the ICBM math work out.)

devoply 7y ago

> offensive warfare is now possible again You mean defensive. Where American firepower at the hands of Saudis completely fucking up your country can be finally challenged with a response that might make them reconsider war. Where it was just a beat down like America is using to doing. Who knows maybe this thing spirals out of control and destroys all of Saudi Arabia, when you are dealing with these sorts of political realities you reconsider things like destroying the entire country of Yemen because you don't like the politics of its majority or its rebel government.

paganel 7y ago

> It completely changes the face of war These changes are always really, really interesting. One of my favorite moments similar to this is the Battle of Nicopolis [1] between the Ottomans led by Bayezid I and a Crusader force which included many Western cavalry forces. The much more mobile and easy-moving Ottomans were no match for the Western (especially French) forces who were accustomed with using their heavy armor during battle: > The French knights thus continued up the hill, though accounts state that more than half were on foot by this point, either because they had been unhorsed by the lines of sharpened stakes or had dismounted to pull up stakes. Struggling in their heavy armor, they reached the plateau on the top of the slope, where they had expected to find fleeing Turkish forces, but instead found themselves facing a fresh corps of sipahis, whom Bayezid had kept in reserve. As the sipahis surged forward in the counterattack sounding trumpets, banging kettle drums and yelling "God is great!", the desperation of their situation was readily apparent to the French and some knights broke and fled back down the slope. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis

aodin 7y ago
Over 660 years before the Battle of Nicopolis, the French under Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Tours[1] using phalanxes of heavy infantry against lightly armored Arabian calvary. The difference being that the French forces purposefully took a defensive position on top of several hills instead of initiating an attack up them. The battles are an interesting echo through history. Perhaps the lesson is simply "hold the high ground". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours
- paganel 7y ago
  > Perhaps the lesson is simply "hold the high ground". One could think so, but then about 150 years later the Hungarian chivalry (and pretty much the Hungarian kingdom itself) was annihilated by the same Ottomans at the battle of Mohacs, where there was no "high ground" involved. From the wiki page [1]: > Hungary built up an expensive but obsolete army, structured similarly to that of King Francis I at the Battle of Pavia and mostly reliant on old fashioned heavily armoured knights on armoured horses (gendarme knights). By that time the Ottomans had already started making heavy use of artillery (which is also one of the main reasons they had taken Constantinople back in 1453): > The Ottoman army was a more modern force built around artillery and the elite, musket-armed Janissaries. The remainder consisted of feudal Timarli cavalry and conscripted levies from Rumelia and the Balkans [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs

bgorman 7y ago

You don't need an airplane, you simply need a cruise missiles.