The dangerous delusion of modern warfare
economist.com>William Owen, the editor of Military Strategy Magazine and an adviser to the British army, says that better trained and equipped armies would not be tied down in the first place. If first-rate Israeli kit and training were used against an opponent of the standard of Russia or Ukraine, he argues, $3,000 FPVs would be “mostly, if not completely, irrelevant”.
Oh how much I wish Mr Owen would be sent to the front lines to see for himself how irrelevant he can make 3000$ drones.
What "kit and training" is he even referring to? What let's you detect and destroy multiple small moving targets coming at you at various and unpredictable angles and speeds?? Oh and it also needs to be cheap and light-weight enough so you can equip infantry with it. AFAIK, currently there are no such systems. Unless he means shotguns and single-use net launchers, which are a last-resort thing you don't really want to rely on. And it's not for the lack of trying; it's just a very difficult problem to solve. And the problem will only get worse as drones are becoming quicker and gain more range. Already there are quadcopter drones reaching speeds of 500km/h; quadcopters with ranges of 50km+; quadcopters deployed from balloons at heights of 5km; remotely-deployed quadcopters from naval and ground drones ... and that's just one category of drones, not to mention wing-type mid-range drones now wrecking havoc at russian rear logistics at 100km+ ranges and long-range drone destroying infrastructure at 500km+ ranges. That's why the only ways of survival are concealment, digging deep underground, and turning anything that moves above ground into mad-max type porcupine monstrosities meant to absorb those fpv-drones, with varying success.
So hes partly right.
The reason why drones are _so_ devastating in ukraine is that there is no air superiority.
that standard "modern" way is bomb the living shit out of anything armoured, and then push forward with your own armour. Hence why ukraine needed so many javelins to stop armour and helicopters.
Its also why despite the sheer amount of stuff that Iran et al threw at Isreal, it hardly got through. unlike Oman or UAE. (However thats not actually apples to apples.)
What isn't said is guerilla warefare with drones is devastating.
"Air superiority" wouldn't do anything in 2026 unless you're fighting an African tribe with ak47s in a fullscale war and even then your enemies would probably supply the tribe with some air defense systems that would cause trouble for the pilots.
> "Air superiority" wouldn't do anything in 2026 unless you're fighting an African tribe with ak47s
It means that the side without superiority has no ability to do proper logistics.
Want to move artillery? its going to get blown up.
Want to move troops? can't, because the transport is going to get blown up.
You want to supply food to 10k plus fighters? can't because it's going to get blown up.
Now, it doesn't matter what provides the air superiority, be it missiles, planes or drones.
Its not without precedent, in recent times. If we look at battleships, they went from being the thing that projected power, to a liability when air carriers dominated. the effect is the same, you drive up with your battleship/carrier group and dominated the area for 300miles radius.
You establish air superiority first by doing supression of enemy air defences, then destroying any offensive capabilities they might have (air bases, fighters), and then you rule the skies.
This didn't work with Vietnam nor Afghanistan.. and US had 100% superiority.
Yes, it did. Over both of those the US had, mostly, control of the skies.
Hanoi had extremely heavy air defences and was left mostly alone (both because of that and because it wasn't considered a politically appropriate target).
> the standard "modern" war
For the US and friends is terrorizing the enemy, his forces, his civilian population into giving up. Is feeding a civil war until he crumbles.
> bomb the living shit out of anything armoured
That’s absolutely not what’s missing in Ukraine.
> and then push forward with your own armour.
And then, as soon as you assemble let alone move in the open, you get wrecked. No one has an easy answer for this. The answer is what we’re already seeing: attrition.
> Iran
Iran prevailed in an highly asymmetric conflict by successfully attriting US/Israeli air defenses and surviving their attacks, depleting their arsenals. Which was their goal, not “levelling Tel Aviv”—however much they would have liked to.
Finally, what Israel is facing in Lebanon right now is but a pale imitation of what’s going on in Ukraine. But bad enough. One can imagine what just a couple days of Ukraine-level losses would do to them, militarily and politically. No matter their air superiority.
> For the US and friends is terrorizing the enemy, his forces, his civilian population into giving up
The US has tried to do it a few times (most notably Vietnam), but it isn't the strategy in the slightest. The goal is always an Iraq style campaign with heavy air attacks to destroy/confuse most enemy capabilities before a swift invasion.
Terrorising the population in submission has never worked. The US Air Force's own study of strategic air power after WW2 concluded so.
> That’s absolutely not what’s missing in Ukraine
> and then push forward with your own armour
If you rule the skies, you shoot down most attacking drones / it becomes too dangerous to launch drones from short to medium distances (because you'd be found out and destroyed ASAP). It's important to remember that not all wars are the same, and a competent army from a strong military power wouldn't have gotten bogged down to trenches in the first place. Mobile warfare is all about speed and unpredictability and the enemy being unable to react in time
If you want to understand this, start with the classic Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47346164
"There are other similarities between Ukraine and Iran. Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers in the apparent belief of easy victory. Both have developed in ways those leaders did not anticipate into something like a stalemate—stalemates in which, for Russia and America alike, a lack of victory looks increasingly like defeat. Are technological changes making the role of the defender easier? Or systematically encouraging big powers to start wars they cannot win? Or is this merely a case of business as usual—great powers blundering into ill-advised wars that reflect the prevailing technologies of the day?"
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Putin was advised that Russian disinfo had worked and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately. His generals feared to offer a less rosy assessment because doing so would have been immediately fatal. Trump was advised that invading Iran was a very bad idea[1]. Putin's brutality led to him being misinformed, but Trump ignored good information and made a bad decision.
New technology didn't cause either of these bad decisions. It was old-fashioned arrogance, thuggishness, and stupidity.
As for drone warfare... A real X factor is going to be production capacity.
Ukraine has managed to capture manned Russian positions with only drones. Drone tech evolves so quickly that one side's technological edge can be blunted or even reversed in just a few weeks or months. Stockpiles are not to be relied upon. Being able to out-evolve the enemy is critical, but being able to turn lessons learned into new hardware immediately will likely be a deciding factor in future conflicts.
Learning from the failures and being able to turn lessons into hardware/weapons modifications has *always* been a deciding factor in any conflict.
What's changed is this ability is now easily accessible.
It will be interesting (and scary) to see weapons technology developed in near real time for the conflict that is actually happening, as opposed to the one you thought would happen 15 years ago.
The universe already created microbes. Check out how fast they can evolve.
The chimp troupe is full of itself. Its intelligence and "innovations" are highly overated. Covid brought the whole world to its knees. No intelligence or drones required.
As Lynn Margulis famously said - we are not the main show.
Interesting but I fail to see how that’s relevant to a discussion about man made weapons.
> Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers
having nukes and a lot of empty land does not make russia "great power", and their war results match this.
By your definition, there are no great military powers in the world right now.
Is that not sort of the obvious conclusion, right now? Military power is in flux, and not what it was even ten years ago?
It sure feels like “soft power” is “real” power - at least until (if) someone sorts out a defensive strategy. Bluster and bullshit appear to get very limited results, no matter how many missiles are behind them.
Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran: Rubio says US struck Iran fearing it would retaliate for Israeli attack - https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-re...
Part of a long trend: Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal - https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-operatives-...
To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country’s intelligence agency. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. - https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/lindsey-graham-trump-ira... (https://archive.is/G1Dt0)
Netanyahu started this war by attacking Iran. He assassinated Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, deliberately sabotaging US-Iran nuclear negotiations. - https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1934659864610918435 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shamkhani#Assassination_at...)
> Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran
When Israel attacked Iran in 2025, Iran was very, very clear that they did not consider it an attack from the US and did not retaliate against US assets. The US choose to support israel with intel and weapons, and Iran still didn't strike at US interests. Then the US joined forces with israel to push for bigger concessions from Iran just before the ceasefire (that the US broke 8 month later, once again during peace talks).
So do not act as if Israel pushed the US into this war. This was a political and strategical choice the US made, and you should own it. People who were silent on the 2025 bombardment and are now saying "we shouldn't fight Israel war" are to me hypocrites.
Oh I'm not saying Israel's decision to attack Iran forced the US to join in on strategic or self-defense grounds. I'm saying it forced them because the US does whatever Israel tells them. That is why both US lead negotiators with Iran are Jewish [1], why US congressmen have Israeli flags outside their offices [2], why Nancy Pelosi said the #1 priority in the Capitol is Israel [3], why Netanyahu gets 3 straight minutes of applause when he starts his speech in Congress (and lots of applause interruptions later) [4].
Because when 50% of donations to the Democratic party, and 25% of donations to the Republican party, are from Jewish sources [5], it can't be any other way.
[1] In practice, critical negotiations, with Iran and elsewhere, have been put in the hands of two people, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with close personal relationships with the president and obvious economic stakes in the relevant conflicts. - https://snyder.substack.com/p/on-superpower-suicide
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2qjLaSyAWj8
[3] if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1LmnQRnw8I
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6XZKE7a_F4
[5] https://www.jpost.com/us-elections/us-jews-contribute-half-o...
Yes of course, the party in power in the US have to get the evangelicals in their pocket, and the best way to do it is to back up Zionism (as they believe that Jesus will come back once Jews will be in control of Israel). Still, this is entirely self-inflicted.
Conflating “Jewish” with “loves and supports Netanyahu” is a bald-faced antisemitic trope.
Pretending Kushner’s bullshit has anything to do with being a Jew and not being willing to sell anyone or anything for a dollar is just silly.
The pro-Israel group is just as likely, maybe moreso given the current administration and the people like Thiel running it, to be apocalyptic Christians, trying to bring on their own idiotic vision of the end times.
> Conflating “Jewish” with “loves and supports Netanyahu” is a bald-faced antisemitic trope.
I guess "Jewish has nothing to do with support for the Jewish state" would have sounded too silly, so you used Netanyahu instead. Luckily we have opinion polls to prove the "trope" true: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/646214/suppo...
The group with the most sympathy for Israel, and least for Palestine, is, unsurprisingly, Jewish.
> I guess "Jewish has nothing to do with support for the Jewish state" would have sounded too silly
It is not silly and it is true. In the same way as many Muslims don’t want to live in a theocracy and many Christians are not fundamentalists. Being a Jew, a Sionist, supporting the principle of Israel, and supporting its current apartheid iteration are all very different things.
"Putin was advised that Russian disinfo had worked and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators"
And where does your inside info from the Kremlin and Putin's head is coming from?
Putin was raised in the KGB, I think he knows a bit how to get intel. And with secret war style he was very successful in 2014 seizing the Krim and some areas.
It was likely just overconfidence in the ability of the russian army in a conventional war and underestimating the will of the ukrainians to hold their ground in the beginning of the war.
If that battle in the beginning would have turned out different, Kiew would likely have fallen and then the war would have been largely over in a few days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport
Not many believed, myself included, that Ukraine was strong enough to hold of the russian army - but they did. And now both sides use Drones heavily.
Sergei Beseda chief of the FSB "fifth service" was arrested after the start of the war. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/06/20/no-infighting-here is a story I found around it. I guess we can't be definite, but that journalist in Russia was citing sources saying that the service had essentially embezzled money and made up the data about their resources on the ground in Ukraine, and misrepresented polling data they had that Russia would be welcomed by the general population.
"Soldatov argued that decision makers in Moscow had approached the invasion as a police operation, not a military campaign, because they believed the Ukrainians would actually welcome Russian forces."
" a Moscow FSB agent once tried to convince him not to investigate the October 2002 Moscow theater hostage siege"
Ok, so the source is one russian journalist who was known at least since 2002 to the FSB as someone to keep away from inner sanctum information. It is something, but I doubt he got really access.
Andrei Soldatov is not merely "one russian journalist". Since 2000, he has been operating agentura.ru, which publishes information about Russian security services. He is well-connected and widely considered one of the most serious independent experts on the Russian security apparatus.
But he is not in russia anymore since a while. I doubt his ability to get insights into the highest ranks of security let alone Putin's head himself.
> And where does your inside info from the Kremlin and Putin's head is coming from?
It's coming from the fact that troops approaching Kyiv were supplied with 3 day rations and full dress uniforms, ready to hold a parade in Kyiv. It's also coming from US intelligence (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/russia...). And on top of that, russian propaganda literally repeated times and times again that this war will last for 3-4 days.
> Putin was raised in the KGB, I think he knows a bit how to get intel
Are you saying he planned for 5 years of war and russian economy being destroyed and also planned for over a million casualties for his army?
> underestimating the will of the ukrainians to hold their ground in the beginning of the war
There you go, you just said it yourself. That's the "insight".
I debated the claim that Putin believed he will be cheered on by majority of Ukrainians after conquering their army quickly.
I don't believe he had much illusions there, but he surely believed he will win in 3 days.
Nope. Even if you don't trust the reporting and information coming out of Russia, it's pretty self-evident that Russia thought they won't have much of a war to fight. Half of the attack on Kyiv was done by Rosgvardia (riot police), with parade gear and musical instruments in their logistics.
You don't do that if you think you'll have a quick victory, you do that if you're certain there will barely be any war.
> and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately.
It is wild how many conflicts involve this blunder. I can’t think of a single major example where the advisors were right. It’s such a great example of believing your own propaganda and/or being too afraid to actually look under the hood of your claims to your leader.
Autocracy tends to breed lying yes men near the top I suppose.
There are many ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine that really welcomed the Russian army. The problem is that the rest of the country is not that happy about this.
This has always been overblown and clearly that “many” was an insignificantly small portion of the population once the rubber met the road. Just because you have a favorable opinion of the Russian government doesn’t mean you’re going to suddenly start singing the anthem when their tanks cross the border as they bomb you/your friends (who according to Putin are all probably Nazis) out of nowhere.
So many left after all this so Ukraine’s sympathetic-to-Russia population will no longer be significant by any metric. Putin knows this. He’s lost Ukraine forever if he doesn’t make them surrender.
I have it on good authority that Putin woke up, took a big fart (the housemaid was surprised), thought the smell was an Ukrainian attack and decided to retaliate. That's how the war started.
Your claims about Putin are just as good as mine.
Ever since I consciously read and listened to people talking on tv and radio, so somewhere in the nineties, I heard countless military strategists explain why the war mongers in the USA were stupid to even think about subduing Iran by attacking them. Geography alone makes it impossible.
The current situation is not a consequence of modern warfare. It’s a consequence of the many layers of hubris, stupidity and arrogance uttered by incompetent people who put up a show for a shrinking audience.
The stupidity of the leadership in the USA is perfectly broadcasted in full view, for everyone to see, during Trump cabinet meetings, where he is undeservedly praised by weaker men and women. It shows all the weaknesses of the USA in just 5 minutes of watching that cringefest. You don’t even need spies.
I don't think they're this dumb, just bought by Israel. Same with the Iraq war that was obviously bogus.
Sure, Israel played a hand here, but it’s hard to believe they’re getting exactly what they wanted out of all of this either. Regime change does not seem like it’s coming any time soon. Unless that happens, any reductions in Iran’s capacity will be temporary.
As for the Iraq war, Israel was supportive, but it would be incorrect to say the war was at their behest.
Relentlessly attacked its better to counter attack the to play the goalkeeper to exhaustion.
I don't see why Israel would want regime change in Iran. The current one may hate them, but it's keeping the country poor and weak. Previous regime was starting to be a threat.
Who do you think the previous regime was? The Shah was installed by the US and was friendly to Israel. Under the Islamic Republic, Iran has been hostile to Israel and funded proxy organizations that have been in conflict with it.
Shah Pahlavi was installed by the US but soured with us later on. OPEC involvement was a big part of that. By the end of his reign, he was openly calling the US a puppet of Israel and criticizing both countries' actions there, and the US considered Iran a free agent.
I think an honest assessment of the history reveals that the Islamic Republic has been far more hostile to Israel and far stabler than the Shah, who oversaw a deeply unpopular monarchy and was deposed by his own people
I don't disagree with this, it's just that there's no reason to assume Israel simply wants the least hostile Iranian government. We never saw a real effort to replace the Islamic Republic, not even now. Likewise there was never an attempt to replace Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
Well also, about Pahlavi being deposed by his own people, who really knows.
What do you think Israel’s objective is then? It seems rather clear to me that they have expansionist ambitions which necessitate defeating their neighboring foes, who are backed by Iran. A non-hostile Iran is an Iran that does not back these foes. There has been no attempt to replace Hamas because Israel’s goal is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
They want to expand into the Palestinian territories and also want to not be existentially threatened, both of which require weakening their enemies. They aren't going to get a friendly Iran no matter what, but they can get a weak one.
They also need to maintain Western support. That's billions in both military aid and payoffs to neutral countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, plus diplomatic ties. Netanyahu's administration wants to maintain support from its own people too. Having enemies isn't a completely bad thing for those reasons.
Iraq was an attempt to create a democracy on the middle east and it disproved the whole leftist worldview. Not all cultures are compatibel and capable of democracy
Iraq war had bipartisan support, or more right-wing if anything. Any high-level politician saying we can install a democracy there was probably not serious about it.
Even I know that both Bushes were Republicans. But hey, if you ask me all Americans are complicit apart from the ones who actively oppose this regime.
I put this down to incompetence too. I know this is HN which mostly stakes it's claim on one side of the "culture war", but that is not where I am coming from - incompetence is incompetence, and we see that through the 2024 administration. (And I would argue - probably without much support here - a lot more incompetent than the 2016 administration which was unique in not actually starting new wars).
It's not even a partisan issue because mainstream Democrats support the war too, even though some of them are talking out of both sides of their mouths. They approved the emergency military aid to Israel right before.
They are compromised by Israel enough to not come out strongly against it, but not enough that I think they would have gone ahead with it - you need Epstein level blackmail for that.
I suspect the plan was (and still is) to weaken authorities in Iran so that the people take over. Or have the Iranian government reach a deal that would be less favorable to them.
A plan with quite long odds you could rightly say, but not as stupid as subduing them by invading them I suppose.
It would help if the US didn't ignore the actual protests in Iran and haven't let the Iranian regime slaughter the protesters in hundreds or even thousands.
It was even worse than that - the US leader actively encouraged the protests, only to forget about them once the slaughter began.
"Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! ... help is on its way", said Trump. And then... nothing. They could have provided money, weapons, intelligence, support of all kinds but instead chose to let their potential allies be slaughtered.
Similarly, the US facilitated the dismantling of Rojava, the Kurdish polity in North-Eastern Syria. The Kurds had been led to believe that they'd be able to retain some form of semi-autonomy, but the US pulled the rug from them at the last possible moment. And then, er, wondered why their cousins in Iran weren't willing to rise up against the government there.
It's almost as if they spent the whole of January putting themselves into the worst possible position for achieving their war aims. What did they hope to achieve by sabotaging themselves in that way?
It still sounds like a dumb plan, especially since part of it was the plan to put a hereditary king as new ruler in place - a king that lived outside of Iran the whole time.
And per analysis I heard in French media from Iranian opposition understood the war as a war of destruction, not as a war of liberation. As they continued to be executed daily by the regime.
Meanwhile one of multiple explicit day 1 plans was a plan to negotiate with successor within the regime - recreate the Venezuela situation where you keep the regime, keep its tortures, but put head more willing to give up oil on its head.
Who is the people, as opposed to who is in charge now?
Trump explicitly stated that was his aim, for the people to rise up after Trump did a little long distance assassination. The plan is far more stupid than subduing Iran by invasion.
"At 2:30 a.m. EST on 28 February, Donald Trump released an eight-minute video statement on Truth Social, saying that the purpose of the US strikes in Iran was effectively[vague] regime change."
He also said it was about The Bomb and nothing else. And that regime change has been achieved. And that the war is already over. Why do you feel the need to defend this stupidity?
There’s only one group of people dumber than US politicians and that’s the American people who support them.
Not saying this is a smart plan, but how is it far more stupid than invading Iran which is basically impossible unless you are ready for tens or hundred of thousands of casualties among your own citizens?
What about not ending a thoroughly negotiated JCPOA just because it was one of Obama’s achievements?
Who will ever trust the US enough to negotiate in earnest?
For the third time I never said it was a good plan.
US govt would've been propping someone else to take over if they were serious about that plan
After all this, you still believe there’s a plan? At what age did you give up on Santa Claus?
From what I've read, Franz Ferdinand was the only one with any say in the matter, who could foresee the result of the war. So there is really nothing new about this.
The archduke, the band, or some other soothsayer who shares the name?
Yes, the archduke who got assassinated just before the war started.
And what did he have to say about Trump's Iran war back in 1914?
Nothing of course. But he reportedly insisted that war with russia would lead to the rise of communism.
>Their use accounts for a significant fraction of the 1.1m-1.4m Russian soldiers whom The Economist estimates to have been killed or wounded in the war: one in 25 of the country’s men under 50. Ukraine’s losses are lower, in part because it is costlier to attack than to defend, in part because Ukraine has gone further in substituting robots for humans. Ukraine’s losses equate to one in 16 of its pre-war 18- to 49-year-olds.
... Isn't 1 out of 16 higher than 1 out of 25? (May be still lower in absolute numbers due to the population size difference, but the original text is unclear)
The loss rate is higher but the losses are lower, because Ukraine has about 1/4 of the people Russia has.
They have ~1/5th the population of Russia. They shouldn’t use per capita in this context it’s a bit confusing.