FPV (first person view) drones have become ubiquitous over the battlefields of Ukraine. And they’ve changed the way war is fought there. These cheap and numerous devices can destroy a main battle tank or drop a munition in a trench without any reliable way of preventing these attacks.
So what’s a tank commander to do? Well, so far the answer is to cover your tank with sheet metal and chicken cages (see photo below).
These ad hoc modifications sort of remind me of what was done to the Striker vehicles with wire additions used to catch RPG’s before they reached the armor. The other change in tactics I’ve heard about is outrunning the drones. Now we have infantrymen riding motorcycles and even golf carts in order to avoid the drones while crossing open fields. So speed trumps armor for protection for now.
At a higher level what we are seeing is the beginning of automated weapon systems fighting each other on the battle field. As soon as we have drones attacking drones we have to wonder where the humble foot soldier stands in this rapidly escalating clutter of deadly devices.
Update:
War Pig:
Infantry will be necessary for the foreseeable future. Urban fighting is still beyond drones. Furthermore, you do not own or control territory unless you have a soldier standing on it with a rifle and fixed bayonet.
Drones are a fine tool for some fighting and reconnaissance. They make good suicide weapons and you save casualties by using them. Our 6th generation fighters will have in-cockpit pilots as an option, not standard. But because of the reasons you stated about quantum mechanics and the human mind, drones/robots will not replace infantry/special ops/guerrillas. Humans can be darned unpredictable. In fact we can be crazier than a squirrel on methamphetamine. One way Bobby Fisher beat the supercomputer at chess was to make wildly unorthodox and apparently random moves. Confused the computer and he won.
Having worked on the ground where making life miserable for the other side by misdirection, dirty tricks and random acts of sabotage, I can say that the more random you go, the more the other side tries to analyze your acts and tactics until it takes up more and more of his resources and drives him to distraction. If humans have problems with that, given we’ve had a couple million years to improve our internal programming; what chance does an inflexible machine have?
Infantry will be necessary for the foreseeable future. Urban fighting is still beyond drones. Furthermore, you do not own or control territory unless you have a soldier standing on it with a rifle and fixed bayonet. Drones are a fine tool for some fighting and reconnaissance. They make good suicide weapons and you save casualties by using them. Our 6th generation fighters will have in-cockpit pilots as an option, not standard. But because of the reasons you stated about quantum mechanics and the human mind, drones/robots will not replace infantry/special ops/guerrillas. Humans can be darned unpredictable. In fact we can… Read more »