<story><title>To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/military-robots/to-protect-against-weaponized-drones-we-must-understand-their-key-strengths</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>The article has a good intro, and then never goes on to discuss the &amp;quot;key strengths&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s just clickbait. They&amp;#x27;re also late to the party on this. The US professional military has been discussing this for over a decade.&lt;p&gt;There have already been more than a half dozen articles on drones in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College&amp;#x27;s journal. &amp;quot;The coercive logic of militant drone use&amp;quot; [1] is worth reading. This covers how non-state groups have used drones, what worked and what didn&amp;#x27;t. The US Army is unused to fighting under a hostile sky, and now, a few times, they&amp;#x27;ve had to. &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;In 2017, then commander of US Special Operations Command General Raymond A. Thomas noted, “[the] most daunting problem [of 2016] was an adaptive
enemy who, for a time, enjoyed tactical superiority in the airspace under
our conventional air superiority in the form of commercially available
drones and fuel-expedient (?) weapons systems, and our only available
response was small arms fire.”&lt;/i&gt; They also mention a drone disabling an Israeli naval vessel in 2006.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s been a lot more military use of drones than is generally realized. Much of it is for recon. Commercial hobbyist drones are more than good enough for finding out what the enemy is up to, and most drone use by militant groups is for that.&lt;p&gt;So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield a decisive advantage in any conflict. At least to militant groups.&lt;p&gt;Not many people read Parameters. That paper has only 65 downloads. More should.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;press.armywarcollege.edu&amp;#x2F;cgi&amp;#x2F;viewcontent.cgi?article=3069&amp;amp;context=parameters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;press.armywarcollege.edu&amp;#x2F;cgi&amp;#x2F;viewcontent.cgi?article...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/military-robots/to-protect-against-weaponized-drones-we-must-understand-their-key-strengths</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ProjectArcturis</author><text>Drones are the new aircraft carriers. That is, pre-WWII, the dominant naval ship was the battleship. Heavily armored, with enormous guns, military planners expected that the battle for the Atlantic and Pacific would be carried out by these monsters slugging it out. Though there were hints that planes could be quite effective against ships, few admirals realized that the longer range of an aircraft carrier would make the battleships effectively obsolete in ship-ship battles. And after all, they&amp;#x27;d spent a ton of money producing those battleships, and developing doctrine. Would you really want to throw that all away on some newfangled novelty?&lt;p&gt;After Pearl Harbor, it became clear that the answer should have been Yes.&lt;p&gt;Drones offer overwhelming advantages -- they&amp;#x27;re cheap and disposable. A drone generally costs less than the US missile used to shoot it down. You can lose 100 of them, and there will be no lives lost on your side.&lt;p&gt;During WWII, by 1943 the European theater was essentially decided, except for a lot of killing. The US was producing tanks and planes so quickly that it was simply mathematically impossible for the Germans to counter them. Will the same thing happen when China decides to throw its manufacturing capacity into war drones?</text></comment>