As far as I can tell Fareed Zakaria’s thesis about the effects of relatively inexpensive unmanned drone aircraft on warfare is summed up in the closing paragraph of his Washington Post column:
In 1991, the Gulf War taught the world that advanced technology could make war precise. In 2026, Iran is teaching the world something more consequential: Precision will now be mass-produced. The countries that prevail will not simply be those with the finest platforms. They will be those that can combine small numbers of exquisite, expensive weaponry with vast numbers of cheap drones. Human judgment will over time give way to computer algorithms. That is the future of war. And it is arriving faster than most of us imagined.
His implication seems to be that drones erode or even negate the tactical advantage possessed by the United States, China, and other major powers.
Unfortunately for Mr. Zakaria’s thesis, the statistics he cites (along with some he doesn’t) actually point in a somewhat orthogonal direction. Consider the following:
- Since the beginning of the war Iran has deployed about 3,000 drones.
- That has resulted in about 30 total casualties.
- A Shahed drone costs about $25,000.
- The cost to Iran has been around $100 million.
- Ukraine’s STING interceptor drone costs around $2,000.
- Iran’s drone usage have not yet reduced U. S., Israeli, Saudi, or other Gulf state military capability or will to use it.
The available evidence does not yet support the claim that inexpensive drones negate the advantages of major powers. What it suggests instead is that drones shift warfare toward a cost-optimization problem in which defense currently appears to have the advantage. There are reasons to believe that particularly from Ukraine’s use of its fixed geography and detection in its defense. Iran’s experience demonstrates that mass without integration—without targeting precision, coordination, and doctrinal coherence—produces low returns. The future of warfare will not belong to those who simply deploy large numbers of cheap drones, but to those who can integrate them effectively into layered systems of offense and defense. In that respect, drones may reinforce, rather than diminish, the advantages of technologically sophisticated militaries.
I listened to a talk from a CMU STEM professor last year where he mentioned Ukraine’s successful operation to launch drones from within Russia to damage Russia military assets was a gamechanger.
It turned defense from protecting a perimeter to having to protect “area” — which is much much harder.