Aerial suicide drones are just the explodey bits of an entire system built to create a kill chain from finding targets to destroying them. Suicide UAVs will become just one of many types of ammunition available to be selected by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for their needed capabilities to kill specific targets.
Preaching to the TDR choir, they are:
The AI orchestration software that fuses sensor feeds, assigns targets, and sequences fires across hundreds of platforms is already selecting and engaging in the functional sense. In other words, the software pulling the strings is where the autonomy lives, not the projectile.
As I observed a couple months ago:
We may say each drone is much cheaper than each shell or rocket. But you must consider the training needed to fly drones and the cost of the ground-to-space-spanning intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) network and communications network that allow both FPV drones and precision artillery to find and attack the enemy. With total costs considered, is the drone really lowering the total cost of delivering strikes significantly compared to a precision shell or rocket?
Heck, as I observed in this essay, rather than AI making even slightly old weapons obsolete, "perhaps we are underestimating what AI can do with older weapons. Even as new weapons and means of fighting are used in the Winter War of 2022, old—ancient in some cases—weapons are being hauled out of storage to fight."
The entire Reconnaissance Strike Complex system is the key. We can plug in lots of ammunition types into that RSC apart from suicide drones. And when we can do that, small suicide drones will be reduced in importance as other forms of ammunition prove they can do some things better than small suicide drones.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!
NOTE: Image from the article.
