2024: Year Of The Drone

Authored by Patrick Drennan via RealClearDefense,

Drone boats, drone planes, trolly drones, drone traffic lights and more…

The 2024 word of the year was controversially proposed as either Brat (Collins dictionary), Polarization (Miriam Webster dictionary), or Brain-Rot (Oxford University Press) – however no word has more impact on the modern psych than the word Drone.

The weird and extravagant reactions to drones spotted in the night sky of New Jersey recently reflects that fascination. One member of Congress speculated that they came from outer space.

From drones that can soar through the stratosphere, to rotor drones that hover a few feet above the ground, and submersible drones that glide 50 feet underwater, drones have transformed our lives and modern warfare.

Their impact mainly comes from daily news and internet video images of war footage – particularly the fiery, innovative, and futuristic use of drones in Ukraine.

Cost effective FPV (First Person View), and kamikaze drones excel in reconnaissance, artillery spotting, and direct strikes, proving highly effective at targeting enemy positions…but they have been upgraded for much more than that -

Sea Drones

Ukraine use their Magura V5 and Sea Baby drones to sink Russian barges, attack oil rigs and devastatingly, sink billion-dollar Russian warships.  In February 2024, a video depicted a Ukraine sea drone sinking a Russian battleship. Later, Ukraine used a sea drone with a mounted remote-controlled machine gun to shoot at Russia helicopters. The Russians called in jet fighters to sink these drones, but it is only a matter of time when the sea drones will be mounted with MANPAD ground-to-air missiles.

Trolly Drones

The Palianytsia drone is actually a converted heavy missile powered by a turbojet engine and guided by GPS. It motors down a runway on a wheeled trolley, abandoning the trolley as it gains lift. 

Plane Drones

The Ukrainians have adapted small kitset sports planes into combat drones – flying them by remote control, loaded with explosives. They extend the range of normal drones and increase the payload. On December 15, a video was released showing a Aeroprakt A-22 Foxbat drone aircraft damaging a Chechen/Russian military facility 500 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Drone Swarms

Both sides in the Russian/Ukraine conflict use cheap plastic, polystyrene and wooden drone swarms to confuse and confound sophisticated radar systems, like the Russian TombStone system. The drones are often used in conjunction with more sophisticated drones and ballistic missiles. The Russians combine swarms of Iranian HESA Shahed 136 drones with Kalibr cruise missiles, and 9K720 Iskander ballistic missiles to attack Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians.

Both sides effectively use electronic jamming equipment to counter drones. In response both sides are increasingly reverting to algorithm trained drones that fly by visual navigation without ground signals. Ukraine also cheekily diverted some attacking drones into the territory of Russian ally Belarus.

Drones Operated by Long Fiber Cables

In response Russia developed drones that were operated by attached thin fiber-optic cables that were over 6 miles long. With no radio signal the drone was impossible to detect, and impossible to jam. However, when former U.S. Marine Troy Smothers saw this, he built similar drones for Ukraine with an incredible range of 15 miles.

Ground Combat Drones

Robot ground drones are being used for a variety of purposes including delivering equipment such as landmines, and astonishingly Ukraine has developed a tracked drone armed with a Browning 12.7 mm machine gun – the Droid TW 12.7. It has a range of eight miles and is also equipped with hi-tech cameras for reconnaissance. They are limited in number but have great potential.

Drone Traffic Lights

A telegram user posted a video of a Russian military traffic light system. It flashes a yellow light when a distant hostile drone is detected. The light turns red when there is a high-level threat, and green when there are no nearby threats at all.

Drone Detection From Space

The Chairperson of the Russian Center for Unmanned Systems,  Andrei Bezrukov claimed on December 14 that the center developed the “Kalinka” monitoring system to detect drones that connect to satellite systems, including Starlink. Bezrukov claimed that the system can detect Ukrainian aerial and maritime drones up to 10 miles away.

Specialized Military Drone Branches

Ukraine and Russia have both established large, dedicated military drone branches.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered  the establishment of a separate branch within the Ukrainian Armed Forces on February 6, 2024, called the Unmanned System Forces (USF). The USF is responsible for interactions with already existing unmanned systems units and with supporting these units. The USF is also responsible for supplying units with drones, training specialists, planning military operations involving unmanned systems, and cooperating with domestic unmanned systems manufacturers.

In response the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) launched a coordinated effort in August 2024 to create a centralized separate branch for unmanned systems, likely to reorganize informal specialized drone detachments and centralize procurement of unmanned systems. The Russian MoD is mainly trying to consolidate the state’s control over Russian drone operators and developers, some of whom had enjoyed relative semi-independence from the Russian military bureaucracy.D

While Russia seeks centralized control, Western armies are offering different tactics. Every British and American army platoon will now have a drone operator. The 75th Ranger Regiment at Fort Benning is being trained in using the RQ-28A short-range reconnaissance (SRR) quadcopter drone.  “The SRR RQ-28A capability will provide game-changing technology to Army platoons, enhancing both soldier lethality and survivability,” said Carson L. Wakefield.

Peaceful Drones 

Drones have incredible value in the civilian world. They assist in humanitarian and disaster response, engineering, construction, crop monitoring, weather forecasting, and search and rescue. They even have drones that can clean high-rise windows.

Despite all the remarkable innovations above, drones are not as destructively effective on the battlefield as artillery, missiles and landmines. However, drones are what captures the public imagination. Now imagine drones that are not operated by humans at all, but by AI programmed robots. Are you ready for that?

Patrick Drennan is a journalist based in New Zealand, with a degree in American history and economics.