Final evening, Israel launched a serious pre‑emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear and missile applications.
Whereas particulars are nonetheless coming in, early experiences counsel that drones and precision munitions performed a key position within the operation.
Regardless of the situation, autonomous weapons have develop into a defining function of contemporary warfare.
Working example: early Tuesday morning, the sky over Ukraine lit up with orange tracers as drones and missiles rained down on that war-torn nation.
Russia is estimated to have launched seven missiles and 315 drones throughout Ukraine that evening.
Some had been low-flying, GPS-guided Shahed variants, bought from Iran and retrofitted for longer vary and precision.
Some had been decoys, designed to overwhelm air defenses with sheer quantity.
Others had been meant to punch holes in Ukraine’s vitality infrastructure and injury the morale of its residents.
It was a horrific assault, one of many largest in months. It was one other escalation in a battle that has gone on for a lot too lengthy.
And it additionally represents a elementary shift within the nature of warfare…
Fashionable Warfare
For many years, the U.S. and its NATO allies have invested in cutting-edge weapons techniques. This sort of superior tech normally prices tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} per unit and takes years to develop and deploy.
However Tuesday morning’s assault reveals you the way warfare within the trendy period is altering.
Russia’s Shahed drones have a 2,000 kilometer vary and carry a 40 kilogram excessive explosive payload.
Supply: Wikimedia Commons
However their vary and firepower aren’t an important elements right here.
It’s their price ticket.
Every Shahed drone is estimated to value $35,000. That’s surprisingly low-cost for contemporary weaponry.
It implies that despite the fact that these Shahed drones hit their goal lower than 10 p.c of the time, Russia can maintain launching them by the handfuls.
And that’s an enormous lesson the battle in Ukraine is instructing the world.
In trendy warfare, adequate and prepared now usually beats high-end and sluggish to reach. This means the way forward for battle will probably be one among each autonomy and affordability.
Ukraine has realized this lesson the onerous manner.
With the nation going through a recruitment shortfall, it has responded with the one useful resource it has to fight Russia…
Its personal military of cheap drones.
Many of those drones are handmade, inbuilt garages or small industrial areas in cities like Kyiv and Dnipro.
Some are superior first-person view (FPV) fashions able to navigating Russian jamming techniques utilizing on-board AI and real-time path correction.
However others are little greater than hobby-grade quadcopters retrofitted with explosives.
The purpose is that many of those drones are low-cost to provide, quick to construct and straightforward to deploy at scale.
Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Ukrainian officers say they intention to provide over 1 million drones this yr in an try to satisfy Russia’s document variety of drone assaults.
Thus far they’ve skilled some main successes with them.
Swarms of Ukrainian drones have struck oil refineries deep inside Russia. They’ve hunted down tanks, artillery and cell missile launchers. They usually’ve taken out radar installations with $500 quadcopters as a substitute of $100,000 cruise missiles.
The success of drones on either side of this battle is making a radically completely different value curve for warfare.
It’s additionally forcing the West to rethink its military-industrial technique.
We’ve talked about Trump’s Golden Dome venture, and the way privatization ought to pace up the event of protection techniques for a army that’s perpetually in procurement.
However this proposed missile protection system could be an enormous, costly enterprise.
Nonetheless, there are many indicators that the West is studying you don’t essentially want 10 excellent weapons to win a battle when 1,000 “adequate” weapons can get the job finished.
For instance, the Pentagon’s Replicator 1 initiative is a program aimed toward deploying 1000’s of low-cost autonomous techniques to counter Chinese language army progress.
And in Europe, protection ministries are working with automakers like Renault to transform industrial manufacturing traces into drone meeting vegetation.
This shift to cheaper autonomous weaponry is without doubt one of the causes Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) was my prime inventory suggestion of 2024…
As a result of it builds the software program spine for autonomous protection.
Fashionable warfare is all about understanding the battlefield quicker than the enemy, and allocating autonomous techniques accordingly.
Drones, loitering munitions, floor robots and autonomous logistics autos all require coordination.
Palantir is changing into the mind for that coordination.
The corporate’s know-how is already serving to Ukraine combine intelligence from a whole bunch of sensors, satellites and battlefield gadgets. Palantir’s AI techniques fuse this knowledge into actionable focusing on and response suggestions inside seconds.
This sort of command-and-control benefit is exactly what’s wanted when a battle zone turns into a swarm setting.
And I imagine it’s solely going to develop into extra related within the years forward.
Right here’s My Take
Earlier this yr, Palantir secured a $480 million contract with the U.S. Military partly to deploy its TITAN battlefield intelligence system.
It additionally signed a separate take care of the U.Ok. Ministry of Protection for AI-driven operational planning instruments.
And the corporate is predicted to be a serious participant in growing Trump’s proposed Golden Dome protection system.
However I don’t need my pleasure about Palantir’s know-how — or its funding potential — to be mistaken for cheerleading.
Warfare is a horror. And what’s taking place in Ukraine is nothing in need of tragic.
But it surely’s vital to know that we’re witnessing the top of 1 army period and the start of one other.
This new period is being outlined by pace, adaptability and software program.
That’s sure to create a brand new class of protection corporations. And the winners will possible be those who make autonomous weapons smarter, cheaper and extra deployable in huge portions.
Let’s simply hope the machines we construct immediately finally serve to discourage battle as a substitute of prolonging it.
Regards,
Ian KingChief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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