Drones Can’t Replace Artillery

DOD suffers from DOD!

And how’s that for a zinger lede? For those that are acronym challenged, I’ll explain military thinkers in our Department of Defense are struggling with what I call Drone Obsession Disorder. No question military planners are bouncing off Pentagon walls coming up with tactics and technology centered on drones. We have only to examine the record of recent events on battlefields worldwide to perceive why that is.

Headlines tell the story. Ukraine recently smuggled drones deep into enemy territory and used them in swarms to destroy or damage Russian long-range bombers. Israeli Special Forces launched drones from inside Iran to degrade air defenses prior to strikes on that nation’s nuclear program. Drones may well be changing some aspects of the way we fight but they won’t alter the bloody confrontational nature of ground combat where the objective is to close with and kill the enemy and then occupy his ground. The point here is that drones are good for some things and not so much for other things in the conduct of modern warfare.

What bothers me and why I’m concerned about Drone Obsession Disorder is the tendency on the part of our military planners to think armed drones will replace standard artillery. That’s just wrong in so many ways. Reducing or eliminating batteries of howitzers or cannons available for supporting our troops is a major mistake. Understandable maybe, given reports from Ukraine’s long and bloody war with Russia, but wrong, nonetheless.

Ukraine is using drones more than artillery mostly because it has more of them than it does howitzers and artillery ammo. It’s really not a case of drones being more effective in a brutal, semi-stationary slugfest like the one ongoing in Ukraine. Standard artillery would be better suited and more effective. Even the people who operate them will tell you drones have serious drawbacks in ground combat. Drones carry only light explosive payloads. They can be jammed, shot down, or adversely affected by weather.

Any military force that fields drones must consider the counter-drone technology that’s rapidly emerging. It’s always the way in modern warfare. You come up with something new and I immediately find and field something that makes your gadget ineffective. Serious research into counter-drone technology is going on around the clock these days. Several systems—including one that produces an electro-magnetic pulse—have been tested, but jammers tend to produce collateral damage to friendly electronics and communication networks. A battery of 155mm howitzers doesn’t create that kind of problem.

Drones are not the be-all and end-all in combat. They make terrific and often very effective additions to a nation’s military arsenal but under no foreseeable circumstances should they replace tube artillery which will remain the king of battle. A look at the assets of howitzers and cannons explains why that’s so. Tube-launched artillery provides massed firepower that can’t be matched by any drone swarm. Call the artillery and you get long-range delivery of lethal payloads that far surpass anything that can be delivered by drones. Rounds from tube artillery provide battlefield saturation in a short time and can suppress large enemy areas and formations. And tube artillery batteries deliver on call, rain or shine.

As a final element of my argument to organize, train, and retain artillery, ponder the psychological effect on combat formations subjected to long-range, lethal, and continuous artillery barrages. As a guy who has been under artillery attack in places like Con Thien and Khe Sanh in Vietnam and Beirut, Lebanon, I can tell you there are few things short of nukes that are more damaging to morale in ground combat. You just sit there being pounded, wounded, or killed with no way to respond.

We need to continue building a drone arsenal to supplement American battlefield firepower. Drones can provide a relatively low-cost and very agile asset, but they cannot and should not replace our artillery batteries. We need to avoid the knee-jerk obsession with military drones. Eschew DOD in our DOD! Nobody at lofty levels in the Pentagon is asking me, but here’s my advice. Add drones but save the cannons.

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