What is scary about everything that has unfolded over the last few years with this conflict, is the fact that we have built up a military of potentially obsolete fighting mechanisms. To me it does not appear that tanks, aircraft, and guns are the way to go. Drones seem to be the future, and this levels the field for countries other than the United States. Relatively inexpensive compared to high tech fighter jets. I hope USA is big into drone development. And I'm glad we have oceans as buffers. I suspect a drone cannot make it from China to the USA unless it is transported for a portion of the ride.
Drone warfare has been talked about for at least 20 years. Musk went on a rant several years back about how drones will be terrifying sophisticated. There are a lot of WWI parallels to draw from that should have many people concerned. People who are banging on about how Russia is an existential threat to Europe are completely missing the point. As drones become MUCH more sophisticated and these factories come online, this type of warfare will spread through the entire world. And if the US doesn't pull their head out of their ass soon, the world is heading into a global conflict that very well could bring the actual destruction to US shores.
Please be more specific. Who is going to start the next world war? and why? This will not happen on the Mad King Don's watch, so there is that.
Well according to SpaceGhost all you need to know here is its NOT RUSSIA!!! Did you get that... Russia is NOT a threat!! Who else is... well... let's not get bogged down with facts, and details. Lets just make sure everyone knows that Russia is NOT a threat.
Right now, our adversaries don't have to worry about using drones, or bombs to destroy the United States. The best weapon deployed onto American shores was America itself and turning this country against itself. I kind of get reminded often about the movie Inception when Leo's character says something along the lines of "the most dangerous virus is an idea". The idea that was implanted into half of American's brain 10 to 15 years ago, and now implanted into young men is one that will destroy this country. This idea that the greatest threat to their lives, and our civilization is liberalism. This distorted idea that "freedom" actually means freedom from having to live in a communal pluralistic society. This idea that has been planted as we speak is taking our country down as a global super power in a way that a drone strike from North Korea, or an Islamic terrorist attack ever could dream of doing.
read Ghost Fleet, which imagines a highly plausible Chinese drone attack on Pearl Harbor: https://a.co/d/iZm9NWB
Well, Ukraine just took out 1/3 of the Russia strategic bombers which is part of their nuclear triad ... and which they no longer have the skills to rebuild at least for now. Thank you, Ukraine!!!
Wars almost always happen due to continued escalation that require propaganda (convincing a country's population to send their children off to die for old men) and dire economic issues. The question isn't WHO is going to start the next major war but between whom. That I can't answer. What I can tell you is that the country who currently holds the global reserve currency is facing massive debt issues. Countries/economies who rely on this system start facing significant hardships while this debt starts unwinding. From here, we being to see escalations and factions being formed. As these countries start facing more and more hardships, aggressive populist leaders come into power who further escalate these issues. Then all it takes is a single psychopathic warhawk to come into power to push the situation into widespread conflict. Globally, we are no where near this point, despite low iq people thinking Putin is the anti-christ or Hitler 2.0. There is no appetite, demand or infrastructure for a global war. Germany didn't build a military in 6 months. It took many years for Germany to prepare. They used their experience from WWI to build up the most advanced military, lessons learned from the previous war. There was a massive technological difference between WWI and WWII, just like there is becoming an increasing technological difference between a 'modern' military a decade ago vs what we are currently witnessing in Ukraine. F22's and F35's are not going to cut it. We have known this. A hypersonic missile can deploy hundreds of drones and US assets are defenseless against such attacks. This is why its extremely important to keep large economic countries trading with each other. Pushing large countries into low yielding sanctions due to emotional response is utterly stupid. This is why the current administration is now working with middle east countries to relax some of the ITAR restrictions. If we do not work with them, they will simply go work with China. Both Republicans and Democrats need to pull their head out of their ass and stop treating everyone who disagrees with them as the enemy.
The US has been using drones for awhile now. A F35 or B2 Bomber can still hit targets farther away and with more ordinances than their drone counterparts. If anything, the ordinances used by our advanced aircraft will be more drone like so. Israel’s recent attack on Iranian hard targets couldn’t have been done with drones.
Of course F22s and F35s are going to cut it… especially as they get armed with more advanced ordinances. Like I said earlier, Israel launched US made aircraft at Iran which took out air defense and hardened targets. Elon Fanbois need to pull their head out of their ass and realize there is a growing alliance that wants to see the West degraded.
Half the national security apparatus right now (the part that isn't leaked on Signal like war plans) - is trying to figure out ways to throw flash bang grenades at restarurant workers and deport working nannies to salvadoran torture jails. This is actually true, the FBI, DNI, CIA - all of these orgs that are supposed to keep us safe are being redirected for Stephen Miller's fetish. An actual foreign state or non-state actor is sitting pretty with this shitty gangster state that installed itself - operations are much easier to plan now.
I get it that drones at this scale do look terrifying. That being said though I refuse to believe that there wont be drone defense tech & equipment developed at some point that can be shot up in the sky like a shotgun approach and just wipe all these radio shack toys out of the sky in an instance. I mean look at how a firework works conceptually. That's almost ancient craftsmanship at this point. The concept of creating a single piece of artillery that can go up in the sky, and explode over a massive size relatively safely for the people on the ground is not a novel concept. The value of drones so far really has been the surprise attack more than anything. What I see with drone warfare in the future is a huge giant waste of money mixed in with some surprise attacks here and there when people are caught off guard with whats up in their sky. That being said it has been an excellent value counteroffensive tool for a country being attacked by a superpower to make their war efforts frustrating. That is a good defensive tool every small country can have in their arsenal to deter malicious tyrants at their border so there is some good that is coming from drone tech at such an affordable price.
Agree there will be countermeasures. However, one of the values of drones is maneuverability and size. They can come in at 3 feet above ground. A countermeasure will take a dome from ground to sky. Or better Hunter-killer drones. Russia isn’t a superpower. China isn’t even a superpower. There’s only one military superpower, and that’s the US.
It's a cat and mouse game.... Those drones can't really carry much weight and have a limited range but a swarm of drones carry small explosives can do significant damage to a target if it's close enough. This is from WSJ from a year ago:
