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Drones Are The Predominant Weapon On The Future Battlefield

A Ukrainian soldier launches a drone during battles in Bakhmut. (Reuters)
A Ukrainian soldier launches a drone during battles in Bakhmut. (Reuters)
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Drones Are The Predominant Weapon On The Future Battlefield

A Ukrainian soldier launches a drone during battles in Bakhmut. (Reuters)
A Ukrainian soldier launches a drone during battles in Bakhmut. (Reuters)

Over the years, major wars have been characterized by the introduction of new doctrines, new tactics, and new technology. In 1453, the walls of Constantinople were breached by a gigantic cannon used by Sultan Mehmed II. Napoleon brought innovative new infantry tactics. In World War I, mustard gas and machine guns changed the battlefield. In World War II, it was aircraft carriers, blitzkrieg tactics and nuclear weapons.
Today, it is the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), commonly known as the drone. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Gaza, drones have become an essential tool of modern warfare and whether used for surveillance, reconnaissance or attack, the skies over Kiev, Gaza, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Taiwan Straits are filled with these small, deadly sentinels.
Drones are the dream of every combatant, whether major armies or non-state actors, and three attributes stand out. First, they are cheap... and plentiful. A small observation drone can be purchased from Amazon for less than $100 and delivered overnight. While it might not kill tanks, it can provide real-time video of the enemy trench line across the field, a rooftop sniper position, or an ambush site around the corner.
More advanced drones can fly higher, farther and stay in the air longer, and this is the bane of the support troops. While wars are fought on the front line with infantry, tanks and aircraft, wars cannot be won without keeping those front lines fed, fueled, and resupplied. It requires massive supply chains of ammunition dumps, fuel depots, repair facilities along with fleets of trucks and thousands of support troops to replenish the millions of tons needed daily to keep a small army fighting.
Most of that supply chain is well away from the front lines and before the proliferation of drones, it could only be observed intermittently and without sufficient accuracy for an enemy to target with artillery or missiles. Now, the entire area of operations is a battlefield and there is nowhere to hide. Drones can patrol above roads, reconnoiter locations with likely logistics stockpiles and zoom over to an infrared heat signal at night to discover a hidden artillery unit or a moving tank column. The power of drones to see throughout the depths of the combat zone, effectively creating a transparent battlefield, is unprecedented.
Drones can not only see targets throughout the combat zone, but they can also attack those targets. In military parlance, the goal is to establish a “sensor-to-shooter link” that can find a target in time and accurately and destroy the target precisely. Drones can solve the “sensor” part of the equation by providing real-time and GPS-accurate information. But until recently, even if the drone sensor is timely and accurate, the tools to attack that target have been relatively blunt. Conventional artillery and rockets are notoriously imprecise and often require hundreds of rounds to destroy a target. As but one example, in Ukraine over 65,000 rounds are fired each day, double the number of shells the US can produce per month.
Drones help solve the “shooter” problem as well. With the advent of laser designated and GPS guided precision weapons, an individual or aircraft with the proper equipment can guide a round onto a target with sufficient accuracy as to achieve a one-round kill. Yet individuals and aircraft are limited by flight conditions, aircraft availability, ground conditions, limited field of view and a host of other challenges that impair the ability to see or engage a target. Drones are not only far better at seeing targets but can also engage a target in several ways. They can provide a video downlink with precise targeting data, provide laser designation to guide a precision round onto a target, carry and fire missiles in its own payload or perform as a “suicide drone” to attack a target directly.
To many, drones are changing the nature of war and will be the predominant weapon on the future battlefield. In an extreme, theorists picture a battlefield filled with technology but devoid of humans. Self-driving tanks will be guided by operators far from the battlefield, drones and autonomous aircraft will be guided by artificial intelligence and ChatGPT and victory will be defined by who has any machines left over at the end of the battle.
That may be one day, but it is not today. Nor will it be soon. For now, drones are seen as invulnerable and revolutionary, but as is so often, radical new technology is quickly overtaken by a better technology which either leaps ahead or neutralizes that new technology. In the case of current drone technology, armies have been exploiting its advantage, but counter drone technology is racing to take away those advantages. Drones are not invulnerable – they can be shot down, they need to be guided, they need data links to pass information to operators and they need clear pictures of the target. Those elements can be interrupted or negated, particularly the critical radio links which can be jammed, spoofed, or blocked.
Despite their vulnerabilities, drones are having a significant impact on every battlefield, whether the high-intensity war in Ukraine, the attacks on international shipping off the coast of Yemen or counterterrorism operations worldwide. Drones have proven to be versatile, inexpensive, and extraordinarily effective, particularly deep targets such as command posts and artillery positions, and high-value targets such as terrorists. Inevitably, counter drone tactics and technology will somewhat reduce their overall effectiveness, but even if their capabilities are diminished, drones will retain an important and permanent role on the modern battlefield.

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The Fragile Israel-Hezbollah Truce is Holding so Far, Despite Violations

Mariam Kourani removes a toy car from the rubble of her destroyed house after returning with her family to the Hanouiyeh village in southern Lebanon, on Nov. 28, 2024, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
Mariam Kourani removes a toy car from the rubble of her destroyed house after returning with her family to the Hanouiyeh village in southern Lebanon, on Nov. 28, 2024, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
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The Fragile Israel-Hezbollah Truce is Holding so Far, Despite Violations

Mariam Kourani removes a toy car from the rubble of her destroyed house after returning with her family to the Hanouiyeh village in southern Lebanon, on Nov. 28, 2024, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
Mariam Kourani removes a toy car from the rubble of her destroyed house after returning with her family to the Hanouiyeh village in southern Lebanon, on Nov. 28, 2024, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

A fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanon's Hezbollah has held up for over a month, even as its terms seem unlikely to be met by the agreed-upon deadline.

The deal struck on Nov. 27 to halt the war required Hezbollah to immediately lay down its arms in southern Lebanon and gave Israel 60 days to withdraw its forces there and hand over control to the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers.

So far, Israel has withdrawn from just two of the dozens of towns it holds in southern Lebanon. And it has continued striking what it says are bases belonging to Hezbollah, which it accuses of attempting to launch rockets and move weapons before they can be confiscated and destroyed, The AP reported.

Hezbollah, which was severely diminished during nearly 14 months of war, has threatened to resume fighting if Israel does not fully withdraw its forces by the 60-day deadline.

Yet despite accusations from both sides about hundreds of ceasefire violations, the truce is likely to hold, analysts say. That is good news for thousands of Israeli and Lebanese families displaced by the war still waiting to return home.

“The ceasefire agreement is rather opaque and open to interpretation,” said Firas Maksad, a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute in Washington. That flexibility, he said, may give it a better chance of holding in the face of changing circumstances, including the ouster of Syria's longtime leader, Bashar Assad, just days after the ceasefire took effect.

With Assad gone, Hezbollah lost a vital route for smuggling weapons from Iran. While that further weakened Hezbollah’s hand, Israel had already agreed to the US-brokered ceasefire.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023 — the day after Hamas launched a deadly attack into Israel that ignited the ongoing war in Gaza. Since then, Israeli air and ground assaults have killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians. At the height of the war, more than 1 million Lebanese people were displaced.

Hezbollah rockets forced some 60,000 from their homes in northern Israel, and killed 76 people in Israel, including 31 soldiers. Almost 50 Israeli soldiers were killed during operations inside Lebanon.

Here’s a look at the terms of the ceasefire and its prospects for ending hostilities over the long-term.

What does the ceasefire agreement say? The agreement says that both Hezbollah and Israel will halt “offensive” military actions, but that they can act in self-defense, although it is not entirely clear how that term may be interpreted.

The Lebanese army is tasked with preventing Hezbollah and other militant groups from launching attacks into Israel. It is also required to dismantle Hezbollah facilities and weapons in southern Lebanon — activities that might eventually be expanded to the rest of Lebanon, although it is not explicit in the ceasefire agreement.

The United States, France, Israel, Lebanon and the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, are responsible for overseeing implementation of the agreement.

“The key question is not whether the deal will hold, but what version of it will be implemented,” Maksad, the analyst, said.

Is the ceasefire being implemented? Hezbollah has for the most part halted its rocket and drone fire into Israel, and Israel has stopped attacking Hezbollah in most areas of Lebanon. But Israel has launched regular airstrikes on what it says are militant sites in southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley.

Israeli forces have so far withdrawn from two towns in southern Lebanon - Khiam and Shamaa. They remain in some 60 others, according to the International Organization for Migration, and around 160,000 Lebanese remain displaced.

Lebanon has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the ceasefire agreement and last week submitted a complaint to the UN Security Council that says Israel launched some 816 “ground and air attacks” between the start of the ceasefire and Dec. 22, 2024.

The complaint said the attacks have hindered the Lebanese army's efforts to deploy in the south and uphold its end of the ceasefire agreement.

Until Israel hands over control of more towns to the Lebanese army, Israeli troops have been destroying Hezbollah infrastructure, including weapons warehouses and underground tunnels. Lebanese authorities say Israel has also destroyed civilian houses and infrastructure.

What happens after the ceasefire has been in place for 60 days? Israel's withdrawal from Lebanese towns has been slower than anticipated because of a lack of Lebanese army troops ready to take over, according to Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman. Lebanon disputes this, and says it is waiting for Israel to withdraw before entering the towns.

Shoshani said Israel is satisfied with the Lebanese army's control of the areas it has already withdrawn from, and that while it would prefer a faster transfer of power, security is its most important objective.

Israel does not consider the 60-day timetable for withdrawal to be “sacred,” said Harel Chorev, an expert on Israel-Lebanon relations at Tel Aviv University who estimates that Lebanon will need to recruit and deploy thousands more troops before Israel will be ready to hand over control.

Hezbollah officials have said that if Israeli forces remain in Lebanon 60 days past the start of the ceasefire, the militant group might return to attacking them. But Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Kassem said Wednesday that, for now, the group is holding off to give the Lebanese state a chance to "take responsibility” for enforcing the agreement.

Over the final two months of the war, Hezbollah suffered major blows to its leadership, weapons and forces from a barrage of Israeli airstrikes, and a ground invasion that led to fierce battles in southern Lebanon. The fall of Assad was another big setback.

“The power imbalance suggests Israel may want to ensure greater freedom of action after the 60-day period,” Maksad, the analyst, said. And Hezbollah, in its weakened position, now has a “strong interest” in making sure the deal doesn't fall apart altogether “despite Israeli violations,” he said.

While Hezbollah may not be in a position to return to open war with Israel, it or other groups could mount guerilla attacks using light weaponry if Israeli troops remain in southern Lebanon, said former Lebanese army Gen. Hassan Jouni. And even if Israel does withdraw all of its ground forces, Jouni said, the Israeli military could could continue to carry out sporadic airstrikes in Lebanon, much as it has done in Syria for years.