What stops drones just killing everything and whoever has the most winning every battle? How are they being defeated? What limits their use? Why aren’t infantry utterly terrified going into battle when drones seem able to blow them up without warning, dropping bombs out of nowhere? Can they be detected being small and flying low? Do they do air-to-air combat?
In: Technology
There is something called electronic warfare (EW for short).
Basically you have various ways to hijack or suppress the signal between the drone and its pilot.
One of these ways is the [anti drone gun](https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraines-anti-drone-guns-down-russian-drones-recover-intelligence-2023-2?amp).
You can also simply shoot it down with a high rate of fire weapon, this is something the [Gepards](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard) given by Germany to Ukraine seems to be very good at, it is essentially a big radar glued to twin autocannons shooting 550 35mm shells per minute each.
Different to what some computer games depict, the goal of warfare is not to “kill as much as you can”, but rather to gain a strategic advantage. Drones can help to gain this, without having to kill too many enemies – while also keeping your own soldiers safe.
Infantry ARE absolutely terrified. But for the most part, every drone needs to be crafted and produced, then manned by a trained soldier. AI is nowhere near the point of being able to effectively use combat drones autonomously, and even if it was, it would be incredibly expensive to source and mount that hardware for something that can be taken out relatively easily.
I think there is a problem here with the assumtion of what people are trying to accomplish. If the US wanted to completely annihilate an enemy force they could, with or without drones. But totally exterminating a nation you have a beef with is generally considered immoral. Large scale head to head battles don’t really happen anymore. If they did you might well see the most technologically advanced side just bomb the other side out of existence before the two forces ever reached each other. Modern combat is usually small and tactical, in areas that are difficult to bomb because of civilian casualties.
Well, larger drones, such as the [RQ-4](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk), are basically just full-sized aircraft without a pilot aboard. This means that they’re limited by the same thing that limits conventional aircraft: air defenses such as surface-to-air missiles or fighters. If you’re talking about much smaller drones such as we’ve seen being used by Ukraine against Russian soldiers, these are more difficult to detect, but they can’t carry much more than maybe a few grenades or a mortar round. Deadly, to be sure, but very small and short-range. It’s more a dagger than a machine-gun.
The size range in between these extremes is an area that’s seeing a lot of experimentation and research, but everything is a trade-off. More range and speed demands something bigger that’s easier to detect. And modern radar and sensors can detect even “toy” drones just fine, it’s just a matter of not getting taken by surprise.
So really, while drones can be very useful, they’re not revolutionary so much as evolutionary. Small drones can be thought of as much more accurate mortars. Large drones can be thought of as much cheaper spy satellites, or less politically risky recon teams, or much more cost-effective and discriminative cruise missiles.
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