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Do Drones Change Everything?
Why the answer is both no and yes
Over the last couple of years there’s been an enormous amount of talk regarding the impact of aerial drones on modern warfare. After Russia’s unprovoked invasion of its peaceful neighbor Ukraine, the defending side found itself hamstrung by the Biden administration’s misguided terror of Russian “escalation.” Aid to Ukraine was kept at a trickle, always far too little, far too old, and far too late. Although Biden wasn’t an overt Russian asset like Trump and his slithering Republican enablers, Biden’s inability to grasp the rudiments of reality meant that Ukraine was kept in an extremely weak position so as to enable Russia to win slowly. In the calculus of the Biden administration, Ukraine didn’t really matter but keeping stable relations with Russia did matter. The illusion of support for Ukraine could be semi-maintained by making a few pathetic speeches and sending some ancient worn-out equipment that was costing the US more to store and decommission than to ship east. Indeed, Biden lied shamelessly about the support the USA was providing, accounting for worn-out junk like M113 personnel carriers from the VietNam war at their “if we built them today brand new” value rather than at their actual value, which was around -$20 million per year, this being the cost to the USA of storing them and decommissioning them. So the USA actually saved…
