3 ms·
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 wa
by 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.)