Noahpinion | Noah Smith
The Ukraine War, following the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, has decisively demonstrated that drone warfare renders traditional militaries obsolete, with Ukraine inflicting casualty rates as high as 5 to 1 on Russian forces, largely due to drones. Ukraine's daily FPV drone usage escalated from thousands to approximately 60,000 in the past year. Yaroslav Azhnyuk, CEO of The Fourth Law, highlights drones' supreme cost-effectiveness; a $500 FPV drone can destroy a $5 million Rheinmetall tank and is three orders of magnitude more versatile than a $4,000 artillery shell. AI now enables autonomous drone operation, requiring only smartphone input to identify and engage targets. Traditional defenses like electronic warfare, shotguns, and even $3 million anti-drone lasers struggle against drone swarms. NATO's Hedgehog 2025 exercise in Estonia revealed its forces' unpreparedness, with a Ukrainian team mock-destroying 17 armored vehicles and two battalions in half a day. The U.S. military, focused on expensive platforms, risks a "rude surprise" against a drone-centric adversary, while China's "peerless industrial base" could rapidly scale drone production.
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