Bloomberg sources commented that although AI drones cannot completely replace artillery shells, they help narrow the gap between the two sides and create new situations on the battlefield.
These AI-integrated drones will be deployed in large formations, capable of communicating with each device to target enemy locations without the need for a human operator to control each one.
Bankruptcy of NATO military doctrine
In Ukraine, the rise of UAVs is associated with the failure of the doctrine of military synergy that Ukraine learned from the West.
According to traditional military doctrine that NATO experts advise Ukraine, to make progress on the battlefield, Kiev needs to combine troops with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles with artillery and air support. army. Artillery and aircraft are needed to suppress defensive fire, opening up space for attacking forces to approach the defense line.
However, in the era of UAVs dominating the sky, any large-scale attack attempt is easily detected from afar, even before units are in a position to fire. Next, the defending side can carry out a pre-emptive attack with long-range artillery and suicide UAVs aimed directly at the enemy squad.
“Gone are the days of concentrated attacks with armored vehicles, spread over many kilometers in a short period of time like we did in the 2003 Iraq war, because now, UAVs have become too effective,” Bradley Crawford, a former US Army soldier and now training Ukrainian forces, said.
Ryan O’Leary, another US veteran currently fighting for Ukraine, commented that NATO training for Ukrainian soldiers did not take into account the reality of modern combat with UAVs, because NATO forces themselves have not yet adapted to this practice.
On the battlefield, suicide UAVs controlled from a first-person perspective (FPV), carrying B-41 warheads, easily suppress armored vehicles thanks to their many times greater numbers. The price of each UAV is only a few hundred dollars (while armored vehicles range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars) and volunteer groups on both sides are trying to produce thousands of such UAVs every month.
Military analyst Sergio Miller told 19Fortyfive that this abundance of cheap but accurate UAVs in anti-tank warfare has a similar effect to machine guns in World War I: At that time, machine guns made attacking through open ground is almost synonymous with suicide. Infantry soldiers during World War I were in the same situation as today’s tanks and armored vehicles – before they reached their target, they were neutralized by UAV attacks.
(Theo Bloomberg, WSJ, Politico)