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Saturday, July 06, 2019

Robotic Death from Above

Having experienced massed drone attacks on their forces in Syria, the Russians are moving to give their own forces the ability to use drones to bomb their enemies.

Here we go:

Following in the footsteps of U.S. Marines and Special Forces, the Russian military is looking to outfit soldiers with small multi-rotor drones armed with explosives, the Russian Defense Ministry told Russian news site Izvestia.

“It is planned that the new flight vehicles will perform not only reconnaissance missions, but also strike targets with miniature bombs” the news site notes. The outlet doesn’t say exactly how big the drones will be, only that they will go to divisions and brigades of the ground and airborne forces as well as special operations forces and marines.

If this capability does allow massed drone attacks, small American units at the tip of the spear will find organic ground-based air defenses overwhelmed.

Which means that my idea raised in Army magazine for air defense drone swarms to free forward combat units from being distracted from their main mission of closing with and destroying the enemy by needing to look over their shoulders to fight drone swarms might be more urgent.