03-05-2025, 02:24 PM
Attempting to predict the course of the "next" war from the previous one has a 100% failure rate. That said, it is the only data we have so it is always attempted. I will make an (vain I know) attempt here to do so, at least as it relates to drones. Every war has unique features that may or may not apply in the next one. I will attempt to identify at least some of these and discuss why they will or will not feature in the future. Having done that I will attempt to predict where drone warfare is going in the future.
US involvement in any given conflict can range from "moral support", committing various types of weapons, committing complete military units, to finally outright full-scale war. The opponent may range from peer down to massively inferior. I can't even pretend to cover all these cases, but I may point out situations where drone use will be affected.
The most obvious and significant unique feature of the Ukraine war is that neither Russia (because they chose not to) nor Ukraine (because they lacked the capability) attempted to establish air superiority of each other's territory, even locally. In no conflict in which the US is a direct participant will this be the case. The US must execute a SEAD/DEAD plan that provides at a very minimum air supremacy over the "blue force" territory and air superiority over designated areas of the "red force" territory. If we can't do that, we will probably lose the war. It is that simple.
Our Army relies on the ability to move men and material around (both by road and air) without significant interference from the enemy air force. The USAF relies on its ability to operate tankers, AWACS, and EW aircraft over friendly territory. The Army also operates ISR aircraft and expects them to be relatively safe. Losses of any significant number of the aforementioned assets cannot be easily and rapidly replaced. The US Navy uses its carrier fleet to project power over international waters and over designated areas of "red force" areas. This is a precursor to conveying the Army and USMC to the land battle according to an operations plan.
The US already has a bevy of air-launched cruise missiles that will function as our long range fixed wing drones. A peer opponent with an air force and/or an IADS will undoubtedly destroy some of these drones. If our opponents attempt to use drones in the Geran-2/AN-196 class our air force has demonstrated it can destroy the threat totally. The DEAD plan must attrit the enemy IADS in whatever depth necessary for our cruise missiles to reach their targets. The long range version of the HARM, AGM-88G AARGM-ER will be a key player in this process. It isn't finished yet. Previous models do not fit in the F-35A/C weapons bay. Carrying them externally reduces its stealth capability. I hope the Green Flag exercises have made us ready to remove as many S-400s as required using the weapons we have today.
The US already possesses quite a few reconnaissance drones that operate via satellite uplinks. They are effectively unjammable. Reconnaissance being the most important function of drones, even in the Ukraine war, leads to concerns about the cost and survivability of the very capable US drone force. Against lower-end opponents we are undoubtedly fine. Against Russia and China it is very questionable that we have enough such drones.
The success of US SEAD/DEAD plans are key to our ability to use these drones effectively. While that is being played out significant losses are inevitable. It is essential that this be accounted for in acquisition planning. As will become a refrain in this analysis, the cost of US drones is way too high. Up to the present this has led to simply reducing acquisition targets and/or forgoing certain capabilities. Virtually no effort has been spent in "productizing" these drones. IMO this has to change. They need to get cheaper.
That said, drones similar to [WA-1] are definitely a part of the future. They have many of the capabilities of drones like the MQ-4C (especially an "over the horizon" datalink) but cost an order of magnitude less. We do need to keep costs in mind and pound on the vendors to compete. We also need some "new" vendors that actually want to compete based on their products, not their lobbyists. AeroVironment is not a poster child for this kind of effort. They are better than Boeing and Lockheed, but that is damning by faint praise. Above all, out DoD leadership has to themselves understand and make clear to their subordinates that our fixed-wing drones will suffer losses in any war against a peer or near-peer competitor, no matter what the USAF accomplishes. Drones go where we don't rule the sky. Otherwise, they are unnecessary. Plan accordingly.
The US also has a significant number of theater ballistic missiles that will be used to strike important targets that are well protected from cruise missiles. Despite its very long gestation period the Precision Strike Strategic Missile (PrSM) is actually looking pretty good. Lets hope we buy enough of them. We need to find a way to make them cheap enough that we can do so.
IMO "low-end" FPV drones will largely disappear from the battlespace. This is without a doubt a controversial opinion at this point in the Ukraine war. IMO the Ukraine war is a unicorn situation. The ubiquitous use of commercial derived FPV drones occurs in Ukraine because both sides were forced to utilize them. Ukraine pioneered the effort because civilians stepped up, bought the drones, showed up on the battlefield and made them work. Ukraine adopted this a a major part of their military effort due to lack of any immediately viable alternatives. Russia eventually followed suit.
Russia initially adopted a different course. Russia intended to build their own "military grade" drones to meet the need. Their initial path is discussed in [WA-2]. The result was the VT-40. [Ref 5] describes its failures. Russia then ended up using the same drones Ukraine was using and using the same control electronics and frequencies even in their "semi-bespoke" multirotor drones. Ref-5 also quotes a Russian drone operator
[WA-3] is a very good summary of the current state of play in Ukraine by RUSI. It is definitely worth reading. At a minimum read the one page section entitled Reconnaissance: Mass Observation. One quote from that section:
US involvement in any given conflict can range from "moral support", committing various types of weapons, committing complete military units, to finally outright full-scale war. The opponent may range from peer down to massively inferior. I can't even pretend to cover all these cases, but I may point out situations where drone use will be affected.
The most obvious and significant unique feature of the Ukraine war is that neither Russia (because they chose not to) nor Ukraine (because they lacked the capability) attempted to establish air superiority of each other's territory, even locally. In no conflict in which the US is a direct participant will this be the case. The US must execute a SEAD/DEAD plan that provides at a very minimum air supremacy over the "blue force" territory and air superiority over designated areas of the "red force" territory. If we can't do that, we will probably lose the war. It is that simple.
Our Army relies on the ability to move men and material around (both by road and air) without significant interference from the enemy air force. The USAF relies on its ability to operate tankers, AWACS, and EW aircraft over friendly territory. The Army also operates ISR aircraft and expects them to be relatively safe. Losses of any significant number of the aforementioned assets cannot be easily and rapidly replaced. The US Navy uses its carrier fleet to project power over international waters and over designated areas of "red force" areas. This is a precursor to conveying the Army and USMC to the land battle according to an operations plan.
The US already has a bevy of air-launched cruise missiles that will function as our long range fixed wing drones. A peer opponent with an air force and/or an IADS will undoubtedly destroy some of these drones. If our opponents attempt to use drones in the Geran-2/AN-196 class our air force has demonstrated it can destroy the threat totally. The DEAD plan must attrit the enemy IADS in whatever depth necessary for our cruise missiles to reach their targets. The long range version of the HARM, AGM-88G AARGM-ER will be a key player in this process. It isn't finished yet. Previous models do not fit in the F-35A/C weapons bay. Carrying them externally reduces its stealth capability. I hope the Green Flag exercises have made us ready to remove as many S-400s as required using the weapons we have today.
The US already possesses quite a few reconnaissance drones that operate via satellite uplinks. They are effectively unjammable. Reconnaissance being the most important function of drones, even in the Ukraine war, leads to concerns about the cost and survivability of the very capable US drone force. Against lower-end opponents we are undoubtedly fine. Against Russia and China it is very questionable that we have enough such drones.
The success of US SEAD/DEAD plans are key to our ability to use these drones effectively. While that is being played out significant losses are inevitable. It is essential that this be accounted for in acquisition planning. As will become a refrain in this analysis, the cost of US drones is way too high. Up to the present this has led to simply reducing acquisition targets and/or forgoing certain capabilities. Virtually no effort has been spent in "productizing" these drones. IMO this has to change. They need to get cheaper.
That said, drones similar to [WA-1] are definitely a part of the future. They have many of the capabilities of drones like the MQ-4C (especially an "over the horizon" datalink) but cost an order of magnitude less. We do need to keep costs in mind and pound on the vendors to compete. We also need some "new" vendors that actually want to compete based on their products, not their lobbyists. AeroVironment is not a poster child for this kind of effort. They are better than Boeing and Lockheed, but that is damning by faint praise. Above all, out DoD leadership has to themselves understand and make clear to their subordinates that our fixed-wing drones will suffer losses in any war against a peer or near-peer competitor, no matter what the USAF accomplishes. Drones go where we don't rule the sky. Otherwise, they are unnecessary. Plan accordingly.
The US also has a significant number of theater ballistic missiles that will be used to strike important targets that are well protected from cruise missiles. Despite its very long gestation period the Precision Strike Strategic Missile (PrSM) is actually looking pretty good. Lets hope we buy enough of them. We need to find a way to make them cheap enough that we can do so.
IMO "low-end" FPV drones will largely disappear from the battlespace. This is without a doubt a controversial opinion at this point in the Ukraine war. IMO the Ukraine war is a unicorn situation. The ubiquitous use of commercial derived FPV drones occurs in Ukraine because both sides were forced to utilize them. Ukraine pioneered the effort because civilians stepped up, bought the drones, showed up on the battlefield and made them work. Ukraine adopted this a a major part of their military effort due to lack of any immediately viable alternatives. Russia eventually followed suit.
Russia initially adopted a different course. Russia intended to build their own "military grade" drones to meet the need. Their initial path is discussed in [WA-2]. The result was the VT-40. [Ref 5] describes its failures. Russia then ended up using the same drones Ukraine was using and using the same control electronics and frequencies even in their "semi-bespoke" multirotor drones. Ref-5 also quotes a Russian drone operator
Quote:“They reach the target only if [jamming-free] windows appear. A common practice is to hit a target with only one drone from a series of several units, the rest simply fall.”
Quote:“An operator who launches 30-40 drones a day and has zero hits is a very typical story,” one operator lamented. David Hambling wrote at Forbes that Ukrainian operators report hitting targets 20-50% of the time. Russian operators appear less successful in staying ahead of Ukraine’s electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, and often wastefully expend individual drones against EW “walls” until one finds a gap through dumb luck.
[WA-3] is a very good summary of the current state of play in Ukraine by RUSI. It is definitely worth reading. At a minimum read the one page section entitled Reconnaissance: Mass Observation. One quote from that section:
Quote:The aggregate consequence of this dense and overlapping network of UAVs is battlefield transparency within 3 km of the line of contact, with diminishing density of observation out to 15 km of depth.How can this mesh with the previous quotes? It is actually simple. As the Russian drone operator lamented, if your side is jamming the opponents it also jams you. Again, this is because both sides use identically the same technology.
At this point I want to document and clearly show why EW against these commercial FPV drones is and always will be fatally effective. [JAM-1] section 2.3 (pages 12-14) shows that the DJI video links use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). The video signal has a 10 MHz bandwidth with center frequencies in an 80 MHz region between 5.745-5.825 GHz or in a 50 MHz region between 2.412-2.462 GHz. The drone uses a Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) algorithm to avoid interference with other drones/signals operating in the same band. Obviously, if there are more than (5-8) drones operating near each other the video from some of them will be irrecoverably lost.
The control link uses Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS). The control signal (and response) has a bandwidth of 1.4 MHz. The center frequencies occupy a 120 MHz region between 5.7285-5.8465 GHz or in a 60 MHz region between 2.4075-2.4655 MHz. The controller transmits for 1.1 ms. It then "hops" to a new frequency, waits 9.9 ms, and transmits the next control command. The "hopping" was originally designed to mitigate interference between several drones operating in the same area. It works pretty well in that respect. It also functions as a very primitive anti-jamming measure. It is virtually useless for that task, as the hops are much too slow, 100 hops per second.