Jeff Schogol
More than a year before the Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attack, Britain’s Royal Navy gave the world a preview of the future of warfare when carrier-based torpedo-bombers launched a surprise attack on the Italian navy, damaging and destroying several vessels. Now, Ukraine and Israel have both shown that small drones launched from behind enemy lines have the potential to devastate an adversary’s most valuable weapons systems.
The Pentagon recently announced a series of new initiatives that are meant to catapult the U.S. military into the forefront of small drone warfare. But the Defense Department, to put it mildly, has a very long way to go. Currently, the U.S. military is nowhere near Ukraine’s ability to mass produce and use small drones, but the comparison is a bit unfair, a former defense official told Task & Purpose. Both Ukraine and Israel face an existential threat, the official said, adding that “Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of being killed. You pick any tool that is handy, and you use it. And if it doesn’t work, you throw it away and don’t worry about how much it cost.”
Recent changes announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about how the U.S. military acquires and fields small drones could be a step forward in how the American defense industry produces drones at the scale that Ukraine is. n a July 10 memo, Hegseth called for every squad to have “low-cost, expendable drones” by the end of 2026, with priority going to equipping combat units in the Indo-Pacific region. In a major change, Hegseh wrote that small drones “resemble munitions more than high-end airplanes,” so they should be categorized as consumables.
No comments:
Post a Comment