Drones Are Game-Changing, But They Are Not the Answer to the Inherent Challenges of Land War
Introduction
Are drones changing the ways in which wars are fought? And if so, how does that change contribute to, or take away from, how combatants win and lose wars? Those two questions are the central ideas that this article seeks to answer. These questions are challenging to consider because it is often difficult to separate the reporting from the excitement and institutional bias that is enmeshed throughout the open-source information on the subject. Likewise, it is equally challenging to separate general statements about drones, such as that they are game-changers or that they are fueling a new revolution in military affairs, from their contextual relevance. In the case of this article, that contextual relevance is identifying the drone and drone warfare’s contribution to land wars. Why land wars? Because, as scholar Christopher Tuck writes:
The fundamentals of land warfare often vary from those of other environments because of the effects of land itself. Land…exerts a powerful influence over the method required to fight over it. Success in land warfare matters: because humans live on land, occupying it or defending it successfully can have decisive political effects.
Tuck also notes that the techniques and causalities in land wars differ greatly than those in other domains, to include the air, space, and maritime domains. Therefore, attempting to understand the impact of a technology like drones and how it is employed, like drone warfare, in a specific domain requires a domain-specific theory of war. Similarly, theorist Carl von Clausewitz asserts that centers of gravity are the hub of all power from which a combatant’s strength is most concentrated. He qualifies that assertion by stating that centers of gravity often reside in a combatant’s army, their capital, and/or their alliances. Although writing from the position of a theorist enmeshed in 19th century wars and warfare, the validity of Clausewitz’s qualifications remains relevant. This is because of the important link between land war and the decision-spurring outcomes in war that policymakers require. Thus, combatants must apply maximum attention, and pressure, to the element(s) of Clausewitz’s center of gravity which best advances their policymaker down the path of profitable strategic outcomes and advantageous war termination. Yet, a combatant must simultaneously deny that approach to their adversary.
It is easy to get lost in the ink that’s been spilled regarding the drone and drone warfare’s revolutionary, or evolutionary, impact on war. It is quite difficult, however, to find practical assessments that are balanced against the drone’s ability to accomplish the requirements needed to generate win conditions that actively contribute to their respective policy aims in war. Nevertheless, this article attempts to breach those barriers. In doing so, this article provides a useful theory to make that assessment and determine the drone and drone warfare’s game-changing utility in land war.
To examine these questions with rigor, this article scrutinizes the question of the efficacy of drones and drone warfare through the lens of land war and ground combat, which scholars like Ben Connable, Christopher Tuck, among many others, remind the reader, are the most common type of war. In doing so, this article posits two main ideas – yes, drones are game-changing. They have created new problems for military leaders to address on the battlefield, which in turn is fueling new technology, strategy, doctrine, and force structure. Drones and drone warfare, however, are not revolutionizing warfare, at least in land wars, in a strategic way. That is, drones and drone warfare are not generating victory in war on their own, any quicker than we might otherwise expect, nor at a fundamentally cheaper cost. The primary reason for this is because despite being proficient at eliminating many threats, drones lack the capability to control the ground. The secondary reason for this, which directly supports the concept of control, is that drones and drone warfare are generally incapable of accomplishing the basic requirements that a force must realize to be successful in land wars. These requirements include taking and retaking land, holding territory, clearing hostile threats from challenging terrain, controlling borders and sealing boundaries, and protecting populations.
To support this hypothesis, I introduce a theory of land war to link the concepts of control, land wars, and the requirements of land war into a practical logic. Next, I cross-examine drones and drone warfare against the requirements of land war, each of which consists of two supporting conditions, to identify which of those tasks drones can, and cannot, accomplish. Those findings are then examined comprehensively to demonstrate that while drones have changed how combatants fight wars—especially land wars—drones and drone warfare are unable to control the ground. To be sure, drones and drone warfare have not fundamentally altered the fact that land wars are won through the control of territory. To this point, historian Lawrence Freedman posits that “Winning a war requires controlling territory, and that will always necessitate supporting ground forces.” Control of territory has always been, and will remain, the most germane causal effect that directly impacts the options available—or unavailable—to policymakers as they relate to either side’s war termination criteria. As a result, warfighting technology and approaches to warfare that de-emphasize or neglect the control of land, like drones and drone warfare, contribute to long, deadly, destructive, and extremely costly wars. Based on those findings, this article concludes with a set of policy recommendations. The recommendations are intended to help influence how policymakers understand the drone’s contribution to war and how policymakers and senior military leaders should approach organizing, equipping, and operating their forces in the future.
The Theory of Land War
State and non-state actors fight land wars for a host of reasons. Charles Tilly, Stathis Kalyvas, Carl Schmitt, and others assert that common themes for these wars include sovereignty, territorial control, the domination (or elimination) of people, societies, markets and political institutions, the liberation of oppressed societies, to wage insurgencies, and to eliminate insurgencies. Control is the guiding principle behind each of these justifications for war. To be sure, Stephen Biddle comments that control—of land, people, markets, and politics—is the central theme that underwrites why actors engage in land war. Put another way, control is the causal mechanism in land wars. This is because control enables an actor to generate battlefield outcomes which open the political decision space needed to provide policymakers with a range of strategic options for successful war termination. Conversely, a lack of control over territory, people, and competing militaries results in policymakers possessing fewer bargaining chips and thereby negotiate war termination—if they are profitable enough to make it that far—from a position of weakness and dependency.
Drones are tactically effective, but strategically indecisive. They cannot control terrain, win wars, or generate the political outcomes necessary to terminate conflict on favorable terms.
Biddle posits that to gain control in land wars armies must (1) destroy hostile forces, while protecting one’s own combat power, (2) take and hold ground, and (3) maintain the time to destroy hostile forces. Biddle’s points are well-taken but slightly miss the mark because they emphasize the element of gaining control, but do not fully account for the range of actions required to also maintain control. For that reason, a broader range of requirements is needed.
To gain and maintain control in land wars, land forces—augmented by an ever-increasing panoply of joint and multidomain capabilities—must accomplish a set of six basic requirements to achieve control, maximize the impact of military operations, and profitably advance themselves toward war termination. These requirements—discussed in detail below—are not reserved just for conventional wars, but are equally applicable to small wars, insurgencies, and counterinsurgencies. Thus, these requirements span a range of wars upon which armies—both state and non-state—conduct military operations in support of political institutions. It is also important to highlight that these requirements are not a checklist of actions that armies must complete sequentially, but rather they are determined by situational necessity. Appreciating that control is the causal mechanism at the root of land wars, it is therefore prudent to examine the six requirements and the accompanying conditions of land war.
First, land forces must take control of physical terrain from an enemy force or hostile threat (Requirement 1). These two conditions include defeating an occupying land force (Condition 1a) and controlling the contested terrain (Condition 1b). Second, land forces must retake control of physical terrain from an enemy force or hostile threat (Requirement 2). Like Requirement 1, the conditions for Requirement 2 include defeating an occupying land force (Condition 2a) and controlling terrain (Condition 2b). Third, land forces must clear threat forces from challenging terrain, such as densely forested areas, mountainous terrain, and more importantly, urban areas (Requirement 3). The conditions for this requirement include removing a hostile land force from the contested terrain (Condition 3a) and controlling that terrain (Condition 3b). Fourth, land forces must hold, or retain, physical control of terrain from an enemy force or hostile threat, to include possessing the wherewithal, capability, and capacity to thwart looming counterattacks (Requirement 4). The conditions associated with Requirement 4 include defeating counterattacks (Condition 4a) and controlling the contested terrain (Condition 4b). Fifth, land forces must seal the physical boundaries and/or borders of a designated geographical area of interest (Requirement 5). The conditions associated with this requirement are controlling territory at the nexus of contestation (Condition 5a) and defeating enemy counterattacks seeking to overturn the balance of power at that nexus (Condition 5b). Sixth, land forces must protect the civilian population of a contested geographical area from harm (Requirement 6), otherwise they risk losing internal control of the land they seek to dominate. The conditions required for this requirement include preventing civilian harm and minimizing collateral damage (Condition 6a) while maintaining control of the contested territory (Condition 6b). Viewed collectively, this logic forms the theory of land war (see Table 1).
Drones and the Theory of Land War
If the theory of land war is correct, then the capability of the drone and the capacity of drone warfare in relation to that theory must be systematically evaluated to understand the true impact of drones and drone warfare on contemporary land wars. What’s more, this feedback will provide forecasts that can also be used to measure the potential impact of drones in the future of 21st century land war. To conduct this assessment, drones and drone warfare must be evaluated on their ability to accomplish both the theory’s six requirements and each requirement’s two conditions. The findings from that assessment will help illuminate the drone’s true potential and help fuel policy recommendations for further military innovation.
This assessment executes a simple two-step process. The first step is to evaluate whether drones can accomplish the supporting conditions for each of the theory’s requirements. The second step is to balance the outcome of those evaluations against a basic logic. The logic supposes that each of the requirement’s two conditions must be met for the overall requirement to be achieved. If only one, or none of the conditions are met, then the requirement is not achieved (see Table 2).
The final step is to collectively analyze scoring of the requirements and assess how that contributes to the theory’s causal mechanism (i.e., control). If any of the theory’s requirements are not achieved, that implies several things about drones and drone warfare’s importance and position in land wars. First, if drones are unable to accomplish the requirements of land war, the implication is that drones and drone warfare do not directly gain or maintain control in land wars. Thus, their contributions must be situated contextually in relationship to how their functions support a land force’s ability to gain and maintain control in land war. Second, if drones do not accomplish the requirements prescribed in the theory of land war, then the implication is that their contributions are auxiliary to those of a land force. That is, drone and drone warfare’s function supports and/or enables the land force to gain and maintain situationally relevant control in land war. Third, if drones cannot accomplish the requirements of land war, another implication is that drone and drone warfare’s enabling functionality might be the key catalyst within a larger cohort of combined, joint, and/or multidomain capabilities, whether this is in an offensive or defensive capacity. The findings from this assessment are used to provide a set of policy recommendations for continued military innovation and strategy development.
Can Drones Take or Retake Terrain?
Can drones take and retake physical control of territory? Likewise, can drones defeat an occupying army (Condition 1a and 2a) and control contested territory (Condition 1b and 2b)? These two requirements are evaluated simultaneously because they contain matching conditions.
Currently, UAS drones cannot physically control territory. They are unable to land on the ground, defeat an occupying force, and deny control of that land to the vanquished foe through their physical presence on the battlefield. That isn’t to say that it isn’t something UAS might be able to do in the future, but it is not a task that they can currently accomplish. Moreover, that is a potential angle for further development in drone warfare in the future.
Despite their game-changing role on the battlefield, drones do not meet the basic requirements of land war: taking, retaking, holding ground, sealing borders, or protecting populations.
Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) are also drones. UGVs are not as pervasive as UAS, but as reporting from the Russo-Ukrainian War notes, their involvement in land wars is increasing. The goal of UGVs is to further reduce war’s demands on humans in the future. Currently, UGVs are used most often in managing supplies and not in direct combat. However, the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps are experimenting with UGVs in roles traditionally reserved for infantry and armor units. Thus, neither UAS nor UGVs are directly involved in taking territory or retaking territory on the battlefield. Likewise, drones and drone warfare are incapable of controlling terrain.
In some cases, drones have been capable of defeating land forces, at least temporarily (Conditions 1a and 2a). The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020) is a case often highlighted to support this idea. Yes, Azeri drones—most notably the TB-2 Bayraktar—deftly eliminated the ill-positioned and poorly equipped Armenian military during that conflict. It is important, however, to note a few qualifying points. First, the theater, or area in which the war took place, was incredibly small – roughly 200 kilometers, or 120 miles. That is roughly the distance from New York City to Philadelphia. I’ve referred to this elsewhere as fighting wars in a fishbowl. By that, the potential effect of a technology in a small area is greater than if that same capability is applied in a larger area. Thus, the potential for UAS drones to dominate an ill-equipped, slow-moving land force in rugged, mountainous terrain, is significant. As a result, the outcome of a war in which a high-tech military operates against a poorly outfitted military, in a fishbowl, should rarely come as a surprise.
Likewise, what Azerbaijan’s victory actually shows isn’t the dominance of drones and drone warfare, but that the principles of combined arms persist. Specifically, Jonathan House highlights that for a force to remain credible it must possess capabilities that allow it to apply tools that take advantage of an adversary’s military vulnerabilities, or apply tools that accentuate its own advantages, and in both cases apply tools in a method that heightens its own asymmetric advantages. In the case of Azerbaijan, they accomplished all three of those requirements, whereas Armenia did not, hence the lopsided victory.
Nonetheless, simply copying Azeri force structure trends and hoping for similar battlefields and associated political decisiveness is a fool’s errand. Unlocking a similar outcome to that of Azerbaijan’s, requires creating a similar degree of combined arms overmatch. Creating that ratio overmatch is situational; that is, it is dependent on the battlefield’s terrain, the threat’s force structure, and the threat’s disposition within that terrain. Therefore, the focus shouldn’t be on the dominance of drones and drone warfare, but instead the emphasis and key insight should be oriented on how drones contribute to a force’s combined arms, joint, and multidomain relational asymmetry on the battlefield. Just mass producing drones isn’t therefore the answer.
Regarding Conditions 1a and 2a, the Russo-Ukrainian War demonstrates that drones are equally unable to defeat armies. Ukraine’s prolific use of drones has made for great content on social media, but they have done next to nothing to shift the military or political balance in the war to Kyiv’s favor. To be sure, despite all the hype surrounding Ukrainian drone production, the tactical prowess of First-Person View (FPV) drones, and the diversity of reconnaissance-strike capability that Ukraine’s drones provide, Kyiv’s drones have not taken or retaken Ukrainian territory from Russian land forces, nor have they provided a spark of opportunity for Ukrainian land forces to exploit. On the contrary, Michael Kofman and other analysts highlight that Russia continues to gradually gain ground in Ukraine. What’s more, drone warfare—both Ukrainian and Russian—has frozen the front lines, accelerated attrition, and continues to elongate the conflict in time. Likewise, Russia’s use of drones, which at this point in the conflict is quite similar to that of Ukraine’s, is equally unable to defeat Kyiv’s defensively minded army.
Despite providing tactical and operational game-changing capability, and delivering innovative technology to the battlefield, drones have hastened combat toward attritional and positional warfare. Drones and drone warfare have done so by depriving armies of their inherent tactical and operational mobility. In doing so, drones and drone warfare have driven mobile land forces, and their accompaniment of firepower, out of plain sight and underground. The ever-present threat of drones has created a psychological condition which some are referring to as dronephobia. This has resulted in the battlefield turning into a static front. Function is important to mention here.
The function of armies is to fight and win battles in order to gain situational control which is pursuant to strategic objectives. The function of drones, on the other hand, is to fight and win micro-engagements, often just a single drone eliminating one target, with no concern nor ability to gain or maintain control of the ground. In effect, the drone’s micro-engagement rarely contributes to strategic objectives. Stated another way, these micro-engagements and their outputs and effects are but mere blips on the strategic radar and do not contribute to creating the strategic pressure required to generate political decisions. At this junction, a brief mention about ‘spectacular’ applications of drone warfare is required.
Spectacular applications of drone warfare, like Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, emphasize this point. Ukraine’s attack used drones as a show of force, to eliminate the operational and strategic capability and capacity of Russia to apply stand-off warfare against Ukraine, and to punish the Kremlin. Yes, this type of operation potentially illuminates innovative ways that drone warfare can be used in future war, but it also emphasizes a disconnected understanding of how operations support strategy. The operation did not affect the strategic or operational balance of power as it relates to control of Ukraine’s land, which is a key victory condition for both Russia and Ukraine. In addition, arguments for how this operation is a harbinger of future war only point to the operation’s output (i.e., a bunch of burning aircraft on airfields) and not to how the operation fits within the requirements of land war, nor how it impacted, or didn’t impact, the control of territory.
Can Drones Clear Hostile Threats From Territory?
Drones must fulfil two conditions that meet the requirement of clearing hostile forces from contested land. First, drones must remove a hostile force from difficult terrain (Condition 3a). Second, drones must be capable of controlling contested terrain (Condition 3b). This article has already established that drones cannot control contested terrain, so the focus moves to removing a threat from contested terrain.
Removal means one of two things. First, removal means eliminating (i.e., killing or destroying) all threats within a specified geographic area. Second, removal means inflicting sufficient losses on a threat to wholly suboptimize any rational reason to remain such that the threat’s military and/or political leader directs a withdrawal from that geographical area. Scholar Antulio Echevarria asserts that in stand-off warfare (i.e., fighting beyond direct fire contact, and often from the air domain) the defender often seeks refuge in complicated terrain. Echevarria’s findings echo the work of systems theorists Donella Meadows, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, and Lars Skyttner’s research into General Systems Theory and the inner workings of complex, open and dynamic systems. They find that when challenged with survival, an open system—like military forces—adapt their routine operating mechanics and seek alternative means to survive and re-establish order. In the case of military operations, when attacked, a defender will naturally seek cover, concealment, and deceptive operations in order to survive.
Likewise, attacks from above are rarely decisive in resolving a tactical or operational military problem. As a report from the RAND Corporation highlights, attacks from above expand the problems in land wars by forcing the defender to seek additional cover, concealment, and deceptive measures to protect themselves and ensure their survival. This is nothing new in war. Theorist Alexander Svechin, writing in the early 20th century, for instance, posits that the first rule in war is to protect oneself against what he deems “decisive blows.” History books and other publications are littered with accounts of how massive aerial bombardments, or precision strike campaigns—whether artillery or airpower—did little to dislodge ensconced military forces intent on holding terrain. Verdun, Passchendale, Operation Goodwood, Metz, and the Ho Chi Mihn Trail are classic examples of this phenomenon from military history. In turn, the military situation required infantry and other land forces to enter that terrain and physically extricate the hostile force. Biddle and Carlo D’Este offers a good example of this phenomenon. They each write that during the aerial prelude to the ground phase during World War II’s Operation Goodwood, German defenders either hid underground or vacated the area under bombardment to protect themselves and ensure their survival. Once the bombardment lessened, the Germans, who suffered little losses in the aerial attack, reoccupied their defensive positions. As the British land forces subsequently moved forward and attacked, they ran into a stalwart German defense, which ended up mauling the British army, who should have otherwise completely overrun the Germans. As these examples illustrate, aerial attacks, regardless of their precision, play a supporting and enabling role for armies in land war. This is because when a combatant attacks another combatant, the attacked force seeks protection and survival, thus making the attacking force’s follow-up assaults to neutralize, or destroy the threat more difficult.
Setting aside the theory for a moment and looking at a contemporary example is instructive. Drone employment and threat response follows a similar pattern today. Drones play an auxiliary role for the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in Gaza. Despite a sizable drone advantage over Hamas, the IDF had to enter and remove Hamas’ fighters from Gaza because the IDF’s drones—and other tools of stand-off warfare—were incapable of eliminating Hamas’ fighters who were operating in, and from, urban areas. As a result, the combination of ground combat operations and drone strikes (plus joint air strikes) fueled massive collateral damage and civilian harm throughout Gaza, without actually accelerating the IDF to a short, decisive victory.
Likewise, in Ukraine, though drone strikes have been successful in a few spectacular attacks on infrastructure, most of their effects are little more than tactical pin-pricks. As a result, neither Russian nor Ukrainian drone operations have proven successful in removing the others army from their static lines. Instead, those operations have caused complimentary developments in protective measures, such as very small tactical land operations, the expansion of trench, bunker, and post networks, and the focus on operating in, and from, urban terrain. This presents both sides in the war with even less opportunity to strike and destroy the opposing army, which as highlighted previously in this article, is one of Carl von Clausewitz’s three primary components of a strategic center of gravity.
Winning the next land war will not come from the side that perfects drone warfare—it will come from rugged, resilient, and mobile land forces capable of closing with and controlling terrain.
Many commenters have enthusiastically embraced the position that drones and drone warfare have redefined war by contributing revolutionary changes to doctrine, military organizations, tactics, and procurement. All those things are likely true, but despite that revolutionary change, drones and drone warfare have not nullified the requirement to clear hostile land forces from challenging terrain, and to date, they have proven quite insufficient at the task.
Further commentary raises the question of whether drones have made traditional warfare obsolete. While the questions about the drone’s impact on war will persist for the foreseeable future, the fact remains that drones are currently incapable of removing hostile forces from difficult terrain. Moreover, an equally valid argument can be made that drones and drone warfare have further complicated the task of clearing hostile forces from terrain because of their current dominance of the air-ground littoral. Nevertheless, drones are currently incapable of clearing threats from the recessed and hardened terrain to which they often retreat when attacked.
Can Drones Hold Terrain?
To hold terrain, a force must be capable of defeating counterattacks (Condition 4a) and controlling the contested terrain (Condition 4b). This article has already established that drones cannot control terrain. Yet, can drones defeat counterattacks? The short answer to this question is yes. However, this position is more theoretical at this point because there are insufficient case studies to fully support the argument.
Theoretically, drones do possess the potential to defeat counterattacks, albeit that comes with three qualifications. To defeat counterattacks, the drones must be scaled to the scope of the drone capabilities and capacity present, sufficiently linked as part of a combined arms team, or be operating at a tempo that exceeds the counterattacking force’s ability to effectively protect itself. Examples of this might exist in ongoing conflicts, but insufficient reports of this have surfaced to make this more than a theoretical confirmation.
Nevertheless, for the sake of fairness, this article posits that drones do possess the capability to defeat counterattacks. Yet, viewed collectively, drones are incapable of holding terrain because though they can theoretically defeat counterattacks, they cannot subsequently control the terrain upon which the counterattack is defeated.
Can Drones Seal Boundaries?
Control of boundaries and borders rests upon a force’s ability to both control the terrain that they possess and defeat counterattacks that seek to dislodge their control of that terrain. In this context, controlling terrain includes insulating the area from small-scale penetrations, infiltrations, and infestations by hostile actors, to include subversive individuals and groups. This might appear simple when looking at the problem from a standard political map, but the problem is vastly more complicated when accounting for the length of the boundary, border, and the physical geography upon which they rest.
The causal mechanism for this requirement is thus control of terrain (Condition 5a), in coordination with defeating counterattacks (Condition 5b). The critical consideration is, are drones capable of controlling the territory that rests along the nexus of contested land? Having already established that drones cannot control territory (Conditions 1a, 2a, 3a, and 4a), it is safe to argue that they cannot control territory at the points upon which two hostile armies sit astride one another. In the previous section, this article also found that drones are theoretically capable of defeating counterattacks, assuming the appropriate conditions are met for the existing situation. When viewed collectively, however, drones are incapable of sealing boundaries and borders because although they can defeat counterattacks, they cannot control terrain.
Can Drones Protect Populations?
The theory of land war’s final requirement is the protection of populations; specifically, those within the contested terrain. This requirement, in particular, is what assists the theory to extend beyond applicability reserved to conventional land warfare, and what makes the theory apply across the spectrum of conflict – from conventional warfare to irregular warfare, small wars, insurgencies, and counter insurgencies. Protecting the population consists of two conditions – preventing civilian harm and collateral damage (Condition 6a) and controlling contested terrain (Condition 6b). As already discussed in this article, drones cannot control terrain, so we must examine whether drones prevent civilian harm and collateral damage.
Protecting civilian harm and collateral damage is a complicated condition to assess because drones often operate as part of a combatant’s integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) network. Again, the Russo-Ukrainian War is instructive.
According to reporting from early 2025, Ukraine is producing drones on a prodigious scale. Estimates suggest that Ukraine produces 200,000 drones per month. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s goal is to produce 4.5 million drones per year, while also stating that “Ukraine is now the world leader in drone warfare.”
Nevertheless, despite their prodigious drone output and their status as the world leader in drone warfare, Ukraine’s drones have not been able to effectively protect Ukraine’s population from Russian stand-off warfare, to include long-range missile strikes and long-range suicide drone strikes. For example, on 29 June 2025, Russia attacked Ukrainian cities with 477 drones and 60 missiles. Reports indicate that Ukrainian protection capabilities eliminated 249 of these aerial threats. On 5 July 2025, Russia attacked multiple Ukrainian cities with 550 drones over the course of seven hours. Two days later, on July 7, 2025, Russia attacked Ukraine civilian areas with 728 drones and 12 missiles. Moreover, on July 31, 2025, another Russia aerial attack killed 31 Ukrainian civilians and injured 159 more. As of the time of writing, in July 2025 alone, Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilian population centers have killed more than 170 civilians and injured another 850. Meanwhile, Russian land forces continue to gradually and consistently press their attritional strategy to make small territorial gains under the broad protection of their stand-off strikes. The inability of Ukraine to protect its people and infrastructure from these strikes indicates that though drones are an important part of IAMD, they do not adequately protect populations and civilian infrastructure.
Considering the struggles and strife that the world’s self-proclaimed leader in drone warfare has protecting its population with drones, even as part of a larger integrated defensive system, it is appropriate to infer that other combatants will be in an even worse protective posture than Ukraine. Thus, the deduction that drones cannot adequately prevent civilian harm and collateral damage is appropriate. Taking that consideration in conjunction with the fact that drones cannot control territory, it is equally valid to state that drones cannot protect populations.
Synthesis
The analysis in the preceding sections points to the fact that although drones have changed the doctrine, military organizations, tactics, and procurement models in warfare, they do not meet the requirements needed to fulfill the theory of land wars. That is, drones cannot take, retake, or hold territory. They cannot clear enemy forces from difficult terrain like urban areas or tunnel and bunker networks. Likewise, drones cannot seal borders and boundaries, nor do they adequately protect populations (See Table 3). Therefore, drones and drone warfare might be game-changing and revolutionary, but those outcomes themselves are not directly transferrable to generating strategically relevant outcomes that positively contribute to a combatant’s war termination criteria.
Another way to think of this idea is that although drones and drone warfare might be revolutionizing how combatants can fight wars, drones are not revolutionizing how combatants end their wars. That is, drones are tactically effective, but strategically indecisive. The long-standing continuities of strategic exhaustion, political and domestic will, and fracturing armies, capturing capitals, and splintering alliances are still the dark path to strategic victory in war.
By being strategically indecisive, drones are negatively impacting war in two key ways. First, drones are making wars equally, if not more, deadly and destructive as they have ever been. This is relative, of course. It is hard to surpass the death and destruction of the 20th century’s two World Wars. However, Ukraine’s ability to mass produce drones on an astronomical scale has allowed it to stave off strategic defeat, but in doing so they have increased the costs of war on both sides of the conflict. Russia has lost more than an estimated 1 million soldiers and thousands of combat systems and combat support vehicles, while Ukraine has lost several thousand soldiers and civilians.
Second, despite the million-plus casualties, and the ability to reach out and touch every point on the battlefield, drones have proven incapable of delivering battlefield results that positively contribute to war termination criteria. For Kyiv, the absence of land forces is what’s holding their strategy back, despite being the world leader in drone warfare. For Moscow, on the other hand, which possesses a significant advantage in infantry and other land forces, their strategy incrementally advances by holding the land they’ve taken from Ukraine, by defeating Ukrainian counterattacks to retake that territory, and by continuing to fortify the newly minted borders along that contested terrain. From this perspective, land forces, not drones, possess more strategic relevance. Thus, the emphasis on drones, at the expense of mobilizing additional land forces, is hurting – not helping – Ukraine. Whereas for Russia, the combination of drone warfare in conjunction with a grinding strategy of attrition, is slowly advancing Russia to amenable policy outcomes.
Conclusion
This article’s assessment illustrates that drones are a game-changing capability in war. Yet, drones and drone warfare’s inability to control the land and accomplish the critical requirements and conditions of land wars make them strategically irrelevant. Drones and drone warfare, without accompanying operations focused on taking, retaking, clearing, and holding land, while also sealing boundaries and borders, and protecting populations, are the white noise of war – tactics absent any true connection to strategy.
The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, often pointed to as the future of war, is an outlier in war, not a guidepost to the future. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, on the other hand, clearly demonstrate the limitations of drone warfare and the continuities in the theory and logic of land war. If properly understood, they provide useful insights into how militaries should prepare for the future of war.
Both the Russo-Ukraine War and the Israel-Hamas War demonstrate that drones are great auxiliaries to combined arms, joint, and multidomain operations. However, Ukraine demonstrates that being the world leader in drone warfare means nothing if you lack the land forces to accomplish the requirements needed to win land wars. As such, drones are not replacements for legacy systems, nor does the retention of useful legacy systems reflect a backward-looking approach to war and warfare. Rather, the retention of legacy systems and formations like field artillery, engineers, ground reconnaissance, and mechanized and armored platforms and formation recognizes the reality that the logic of land war plays in the long history of war. As U.S. Army officer Bill Murray, analysts Michael Kofman and Justin Bronk, and others assess, drones cannot replace systems like artillery because ground-based legacy systems provide 24-hour, all-weather solutions to tactical and operational problems in ways that drones are just not equipped. Without 24-hour, all-weather options, militaries become increasingly fragile and thus prone to surprise, shock, and being entirely overwhelmed.
It is therefore prudent for policymakers, strategists, and senior military leaders to keep the theory of land war at the fore of their minds when pondering military innovation and transformation initiatives. Innovation and transformation focused on trendiness, ahistorical interpretations of wars of the past, and misreading contemporary armed conflict is an error. These leaders must keep the land force—and what the land force must accomplish to generate the strategic outcomes needed to fuel positive political decisions—at the top of their priorities.
To that end, militaries require rugged, redundant, and resilience land forces that can move to an objective (e.g., a hostile force, a piece of terrain or area of ground, or the hinge between two or more partners), iteratively apply the appropriate action to that objective—and do so without culminating—to create the situationally relevant conditions needed to advance the strategic balance to their favor. In doing so, that land force makes positive steps toward war termination from an advantageous position. Innovating to create this type of combined arms, joint, and multidomain military is imperative. In considering this, it is important for policymakers to keep in mind that their adversaries are also innovating and transforming their technological capabilities and their militaries. Jumping on the proverbial novel technology bandwagon is probably not the best way to truly innovate for the future of war just as throwing out legacy systems because of bad interpretations of contemporary conflicts and selling off the preponderance of one’s army to stay trendy is just bad policy, poor strategy, and tactical suicide.
Lastly, policymakers must focus prioritization for innovation and transformation on the air-ground littoral. The air-ground littoral is now the lynchpin to maintaining operational and tactical mobility for land forces capable of, and intent on accomplishing the requirements and conditions of land war. Innovation and transformation strategies must account for drones and mobile short-range air defense as a protective shield enabling the striking power of land forces operating in the air-ground littoral. Policymakers and senior military leaders advancing innovation and transformation initiatives must not place a premium on stand-off warfare via drones and long-range strike. Rather, if policymakers and senior military leaders are truly interested in generating strategically relevant battlefield outcomes, they should emphasize combined arms, joint, and multidomain forces that are capable of protecting, moving, and striking at an adversary’s center of gravity—a threat’s army, ‘capital’, and/or alliances—and controlling terrain.
To conclude, winning the next land war will not come from the side that perfects melding drone and maneuver warfare. Winning the next land war will result from positively advancing five lines of effort. First, militaries must keep the airspace in the air-ground littoral sufficiently open to enable freedom of movement for one’s land forces. Second, with freedom of movement realized, militaries must use mobile, rugged, resilient, and redundant land force to advance to the threat’s center of gravity. Third, having closed on the objective, mobile, rugged, resilient, and redundant land forces must continuously apply firepower against the threat’s center of gravity sufficient to the point that they have gained control of the terrain upon which the conflict is fought. Fourth, having gained control of the terrain, militaries must reinforce their success and consolidate their gains by retaining control of the air-ground littoral, defeating counterattacks, protecting the local population, and sealing borders and boundaries. Fifth, militaries must have the tactical, operational, and strategic depth of economic and military resources, plus political and domestic will, to maintain the tactical and operational pressure until the strategic options slowly dwindle for the opposing side’s senior military leaders and policymakers. Drones will play an important role in this process, and they will help set those conditions, but despite being revolutionary and game-changing technology, they will not provide decisive outcomes on their own.
