The Five Epochs
Of the drone war in Ukraine
Recently, on one of the many YouTube channels that he hosts, the ubiquitous Simon Whistler narrated a program that described the ongoing war in Ukraine as a series of five epochs, each of which saw extensive use of a new type of fighting robot.
The First Epoch
Long-Range Drones
According to this scheme, the first era began when, shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion of 24 February 2022, the Ukrainian Air Force used Turkish-built Bayraktar drones to strike distant targets, at sea as well as on land, in the manner, more or less, of manned attack aircraft. In the days when long columns of Russian vehicles could often be found rolling along Ukrainian highways, these remotely piloted aircraft proved especially well-suited to the conduct of armed reconnaissance.1
The Second Epoch
First-Person Drones
When, a few weeks later, highly mobile operations gave way to position warfare, large, long-range unmanned aircraft hand-crafted by aerospace companies yielded center stage to much smaller, short-range drones mass-produced by makers of consumer electronics. At first, these served chiefly as a means of finding targets for artillery pieces, whether howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, or the main guns of main battle tanks. Once, however, such robots began to proliferate at the front, inventive soldiers began to use them for other purposes.
The Third Epoch
Weaponization
The smaller, cheaper, short-range drones followed a path that reminded me of the evolution of manned aircraft in the early years of military aviation. They began as machines that were exclusively concerned with reconnaissance. Before long, however, people started to use them to drop improvised bombs, and, a little while after that, to attack, in flight, other machines of their kind.
The Fourth and Fifth Epochs
Responses to Electronic Warfare
Regardless of provenance or purpose, most of the robots flown in the epoch of ‘weaponized drones’ communicated with their masters by means of radio waves. Thus, while some soldiers looked for ways of shooting down drones, others employed the tools of electronic warfare to confuse, immobilize, or blind them. This, in turn, encouraged the development of ‘last mile’ artificial intelligence modules, which guided the last segments of the flight paths of remotely piloted aircraft. It also led to the replacement of some (but far from all) radio links with spools of fiber-optic cable.
Rather than striking targets selected by third parties (such as forward air controllers), aircraft conducting armed reconnaissance roam seek their own victims. For more on this mode of operation, see Martin Van Creveld (and others), Air Power and Maneuver Warfare (Montgomery: Air University Press, 1994). (The link will take you to a PDF hosted by an official website of the US Air Force.) See also the transcript of a conference in which American military theorists and aircraft designers discussed armed reconnaissance with a storied Stuka pilot. (Links to these can be found on ‘The Blaster’, the blog of American military reformer Franklin C. ‘Chuck’ Spinney.)
Great comparison to the evolution of air warfare and the transition from reconnaissance flights to air combat in 1915. You might say the fourth and fifth epochs are analogous to the development of Wild Weasel (SEAD) aircraft and EW aircraft in Vietnam.