Neural networks have been leapfrogging across the globe. However, besides drawing a nice picture or helping a teenager write an essay, they can also detect an aim and strike.
Various drones are used in military conflicts. There are military-grade Orlans working like ‘I go high up in the sky, I can see far and the troops get me after a special permit from commander’. There are commercial drones, and all those fighting in the special military operation, from an artillery commander to a motorized rifle platoon, are trying to get a bunch of such drones. These can be used both to coordinate an attack or counterbattery defence, or to drop light explosives on the enemy.
There are also drones, which are often spotted on the frontline and feared not less or even more than artillery fire. They are FPV drones both conflicting parties are actively using.
FPV means ‘first person view’ drones. Its operator can use a remote control and with special goggles on see the same picture the drone sees. FPV drones are small and their stabilization systems are off making them perfectly manoeuvrable. They also are very cheap costing just a few thousand roubles. Which makes them quite an affordable, disposable explosives delivery vehicle, and a highly precise one, too. You just attach an RPG rocket to such a drone and get an ATGM substitute, which is an improvised explosive to combat with the enemy’s infantry. And you can also use it to destroy armoured doors of fortifications remotely and then… yes, to send a second and a third drone, which will kill the adversaries sitting inside.
In the recent year, FPV drones have been abundant in troops from both sides and changed the tactic combat approach. If it was possible to drive close to the frontline relatively safely, today it is completely different: FPV drones can fly at dozens of kilometres, while larger drones with good cameras handle targeting. ‘They are using a lot of FPVs. We would not recommend going there, at all’, this you will hear at every checkpoint already 15 kilometres before the contact line. The enemy’s attacks against vehicles in the close rear area are largely explained by the operation of ‘the trench electronic warfare, EW’. Soldiers just put jammers at their positions, which gave them a relatively reliable shield. But no one knows how long this protection will last for both sides.
There have been messages on the use of neural networks in FPV drones appearing recently. AI can take attack decisions on its own, the operator link and the operator, too, are not needed anymore. Jamming such a drone flying and ‘thinking’ on its own will be useless. This system is now being developed and improved. But it is possible that the whole ‘trench EW’ will become useless in a snap.
Interestingly, the situation similar to the possible invasion of homing FPV drones happened before. It was back in 1944 on the Pacific front of the Second World War. At that time, the Japanese understood their enemy, the United States, would mobilize and ruin all their gains of 1941–1942 and then reach Japan itself. They needed a wonder weapon.
It was a sea warfare. The Americans had lots more ships than the Japanese. There were no chances to win in a traditional way. Bombing or torpedoing manoeuvring ships armed with AA guns was not easy, at least dozens of battling through aircraft were needed to take an aircraft carrier down.
Then the Japanese decided to sacrifice pilots. Pilots had to fly at a ship until hitting it instead of dropping bombs. This made survival impossible but made precision dozens of times better. The aircraft turned into something like an FPV drone. The Japanese called this ‘the divine wind’, Kamikaze. Well, this is how they call FPV drones today – kamikaze drones.
The Japanese started using the kamikaze tactics in October 1944 and succeeded at the beginning, having put several escort aircraft carriers out of action and destroyed one of them. But overall, the Kamikazes’ success was quite modest throughout the war: they downed only 34 out of 229 ships the Americans lost during the war. Over 360 ships were damaged but could get back to operation before the war ended. And the Japanese completely sacrificed their aviation in return, pilots kept killing themselves in the first attack, no experience or knowledge sharing was possible.
The Americans took timely measures having strengthened their interceptor patrol corps and started heavy bombings of aerodromes where Kamikazes’ bases were allegedly located. Automatic AA guns also played a great role stopping many Kamikazes at the final segment of their journey with protective canons made of lead.
In the 1940s Kamikazes brought more benefits to the enemy, but with FPV drones it is different. Drone operators gain experience with every new one-way drone launched and do not die together with it like the Japanese with their planes during WWII.
The low price-tag of FPV drones is another problem. They are times cheaper than the missiles, which can stop them. It is not even necessary to hit any aim to reach the goal by making the defence spend expensive munitions on drones, which cost almost nothing.
This means a cheap and efficient weapon is needed. The efforts to find it might lead to a renaissance of light AA guns. Especially if they work in liaison with air target detection systems. If some of such systems’ elements, from radars to turrets, are integrated into, say, pickups like in the Middle East, we should get a tailored mobile AD unit against drones.
There is another option widely discussed today, combat lasers, which cost even less to use. Yet, they are still being developed, otherwise we would see them in operation in the frontline.
Will these lasers appear quicker than drones getting more dangerous thanks to AI? Well, the eternal race of weapons and protection means gets more futuristic.