The success of drone warfare, starting with the war in Nagorno-Karabach in 2020 to today’s war in Ukraine may give the appearance that the military environment has radically changed and that armored vehicles are as much used as armored cavalry While there has perhaps been too much enthusiasm for the drone, there have been too many obituaries written for the tank.

This ability to hit electronic warfare units is an additional argument for supplying Ukraine with advanced long-range rocket artillery, which can be used for this purpose. The next step will be to locate the electronic warfare units, seeking their spectrum and electronic signatures, so that they can be located and struck. Naturally, there will be large patches of the battlefield where electronic warfare is absent (as with this filmed Ukrainian attack on a Russian oil refinery), but this will change over time and as the fight develops. The Russians are trying to imitate the Ukrainian drone success, but they too face the same issue since the Ukrainians are becoming more capable of electronic warfare. The connection between operator and drone is a single point of failure, which, if attacked with electronic warfare, can render the drones useless on the battlefield. These comms channels were largely undisturbed in the early stages of the war, but that has not lasted - both sides are increasingly capable of executing electronic warfare attacks to degrade or deny the drone operators’ radio links. They require frequent radio contact with their operator, and most need close-to-constant communication. Air defenses can as easily target larger, slow-moving drones such as TB2 Bayraktar just like other slow moving aerial targets such as helicopters and transport aircraft.ĭrones have additional points of vulnerability.

The absence of short-range air defenses (SHORAD) in the initial months of the war gave drones free range.īut four months later, man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) like the US-manufactured Stinger, its Russian counterpart the SA-25, and other air defense systems, are bringing down drones. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) such as the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 have been successful in the Russian-Ukrainian war and helped prevent the Ukrainian defenses from crumbling under the initial Russian onslaught. Drones have changed the battlefield, providing additional situation awareness and the ability to strike targets, but their high success rates in the Ukraine war is a result of unique conditions unlikely to be replicated elsewhere.

Russian modern tank design