Col Thomas C. Greenwood (Ret)
Drones have provided significant tactical advantages to both sides during the three years of brutal fighting in the Russo-Ukraine war. So, it is not surprising that uncrewed autonomous and first-person view drones and other uncrewed platforms are being heralded as the war-winning technology of the future.1 This euphoria was magnified by Ukraine’s June 2025 Operation SPIDERWEB, which masterfully employed drones to attack Russian air bases approximately 2,500 miles from the static front.2 This led some commentators to declare that the attack was Kiev’s Pearl Harbor.3
Moreover, two authors have proclaimed that the “drone era” is a military revolution and will remove the element of fear from war.4 This is an astonishing statement given that human beings fight wars to intentionally inflict violence on others out of “greed, fear, and ideology,” making it unlikely humans will disappear from tomorrow’s battlefields.5 This article contends that drones and artificial technology (AI) will continue to transform how future wars are fought; however, technology alone is unlikely to generate the required vic-tories to qualify as the next revolution in military affairs (RMA).
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