Chemical weapons are called the poor man’s atom bomb. The drone is becoming the poor man’s carrier.
A three-year-old meme on Facebook discussing the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani shows how force projection has changed in the last few decades:
Sucks to be him. And I don’t question there were a few more people in the loop than the 23-year-old.
But it points out how drones are changing warfare, especially force projection. The United States (and to a lesser degree Great Britain and other allies) have used aircraft carriers to project power far over our shores and to secure the sea lanes since the mid-20th century. This method cost a fortune (the new Ford Class carrier is $13 billion for the ship alone, with a total of 10 planned), is complicated to operate, requires other ships to form carrier fleets, and is becoming more problematic as other weapons are coming on line to challenge these capital vessels. An open discussion these days: Is the carrier today at the stage of the battleship a century ago? That is a discussion for another day.
I found an article in Foreign Affairs (excerpted below) very interesting. It looks at how drones, and particularly drone sales, are shaping alliances and diplomacy.
Unmanned Vehicles Are Upending the Arms Trade—and the Balance of Power
By Erik Lin-Greenberg, December 20, 2022
Iranian-built drones now routinely puncture the skies over Kyiv. Elsewhere in Ukraine, Turkish and American manufactured drones help Ukrainian forces target Russian troops. These operations demonstrate the growing role of remote-controlled weapons in battle. The conflict also showcases how drone exports have increasingly become an instrument of diplomacy.
As drone use increases, states have capitalized on drone sales to increase their diplomatic influence. Understandable, arms sales have always been a backdoor diplomatic force. Sales/donations of weapons to like-minded partners are commonly used to influence other nations or obtain additional diplomatic goals. New arms dealers (e.g. Iran and Turkey) are moving into an area normally dominated by large countries (The U.S., Russia, China), which is a challenge to American influence. To keep ahead, U.S. policymakers should help allies build drone programs while developing approaches to counter the threat of rival drones…
Drone diplomacy is on the rise because international leaders are convinced that their policy objectives rely on possessing remote-controlled weapons for force projection. Drones have changed the character of modern conflict by allowing states to project power while minimizing risk to friendly personnel…
Recent combat operations in the Ukraine show smaller nations how to engage at distance with little cost…
While the US initially dominated the market, it became a signer of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), limiting sales of US drones, even to allies. China and Israel, not signers of the MTCR, quickly filled the void…
Drone sales help the supplier’s diplomacy by deepening ties with the client government, enabling the buyer nation to challenge adversaries for low cost, and allowing seller counties to use drone sales to leverage buyer nations for other items…
…By deepening ties with client states, countering rivals, and extracting quid pro quo concessions, drone diplomacy threatens regional stability and challenges the influence of established arms exporters such as the United States. Indeed, drone suppliers such as Iran routinely arm states such as Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela that were otherwise unable to acquire drones because of sanctions and other political roadblocks. Newly acquired drones allow these states to reignite frozen conflicts, violate human rights, and undercut internationally led conflict-resolution efforts. In recent years, activists and lawmakers criticized Turkey’s sale of TB2 drones to Ethiopia for enabling strikes that reportedly killed dozens of civilians…
The Biden administration wants to loosen sanctions on Iran, giving Tehran more money for development of weapons, access to markets, etc. Wait, did I say that? Yes, allowing them to continue to expand their sales to disabling regimes all over the world, what could possibly go wrong?
Let’s look at drone operations from an ally. Israel arguably possesses the most powerful military in the Middle East (it’s an open secret they’ve had nuclear weapons since the early 1970s). With an air force of over 500 airframes, the use of drones allows them to recon or attack terrorists operating past their borders at much lower cost in terms of men and money.
Back to the beginning of this article and the points about force projection. I won’t go as far as saying the carrier is at the end of its life, but it’s sailing into the sunset. As of right now, we use massive carrier task forces to project power. But a second rate nation can field a few dozen drones and strike or recon a few dozen miles over the battlefield. When will they be able to develop/buy/deploy a few submarines that can launch single use drones and attack one-hundred miles deep into a country? When will that increase to five hundred miles? One thousand? And for the cost of a $10,000 drone, eventually with artificial intelligence, rather than a $35 million airplane with a pilot.
For ages, chemical weapons were called the “poor man’s atomic bomb.” Now we have better war through technology. We better be engaged now; our adversaries are already moving to fill the market. A piece of paper like the Missile Technology Control Regime or the Munich Agreement and Anglo-German Declaration (“Peace for our time” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain) will be as effective at stopping future war as the 1922 Washington Naval Conference did in stopping World War II. Remember the words of one of the greatest butchers in history, Lenin, “Promises are like pie crust, made to be broken.”
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.
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Putting on my optimist hat, for the sake of argument. Consider how directed energy weapons might be used in protecting those Ford Class carriers, with smaller necessary ship contingents. Implemented correctly, they could defeat any missile fired at it.
Taking off my optimist hat, remember that we just were confronted by a device of war that no one saw coming, unless they looked back at the previous playing with biological warfare. The so-called pandemic was an act of war. I doubt anyone will ever be able to prove that, but it is one of the triad known as WMDs, and we should expect more to come. Not to mention the side effects that the “Wise Men Billionaires” have considered how they can be used to aid in the depopulation of the planet, along-side such gifts as women’s reproductive rights.
One thing that keeps getting overlooked when talking about war and weapons, is the fact that it is the warmonger who is responsible for all of it. The weapons are not the problem until the warmonger gets a hold of the ability to slice and dice away because of politics’ use of making an enemy for more accumulation of power.
It used to be, maybe back somewhere back in my lifetime, that we would identify an enemy ahead of time. Nowadays, it is at the whim of someone like Hillary Clinton, the disgruntled, that Russia became solidified as a clear and present danger, when if we had seen Trump’s advice followed by Germany and the EU over the use and securing of their country and subcontinent’s energy resource Russia didn’t have to be. They laughed at Trump, instead, when it was the best advice offered to them.