Science and Technology

Middle East and North Africa

In the past, only major powers with billion-dollar budgets could strike a target with precision from a distance. Today, commercial technology has democratized precision strikes. A soldier can hunker down in a trench with a simple controller and, streaming video through a pair of goggles, steer a commercial drone with a $500 payload to disable or destroy a $5 million tank.

Such technology has reshaped modern warfare in recent years, making it easier and cheaper to attack and more difficult and expensive to defend. Soldiers now drop grenades from store-bought drones, commercial satellites sustain military communications, and radios popular with hobbyists can be used for drone detection and even signal jamming.

In the past, only major powers with billion-dollar budgets could strike a target with precision from a distance. Today, commercial technology has democratized precision strikes. A soldier can hunker down in a trench with a simple controller and, streaming video through a pair of goggles, steer a commercial drone with a $500 payload to disable or destroy a $5 million tank.

Such technology has reshaped modern warfare in recent years, making it easier and cheaper to attack and more difficult and expensive to defend. Soldiers now drop grenades from store-bought drones, commercial satellites sustain military communications, and radios popular with hobbyists can be used for drone detection and even signal jamming.

Innovative, low-cost weapons have destroyed sophisticated military systems that can be dramatically costlier to build and operate. Russian warships costing tens of millions of dollars have succumbed to semi-autonomous Ukrainian sea drones costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even cheaper commercial drones have not only destroyed million-dollar tanks but have also performed missions that were once only possible with advanced military helicopters.

Countering these drones can drain the defender’s coffers. An undisclosed U.S. ally reportedly used a $3 million Patriot missile to shoot down a $200 drone in 2017, and half a decade later, the problem persists. In recent campaigns in the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy used million-dollar missiles against Houthi drones disrupting global maritime traffic. When Russian Gerbera drones violated Polish airspace last September, NATO scrambled fighter jets that fired AIM-120 missiles, costing more than $1 million per unit.

This economic inversion enables a new battlefield doctrine: swarming, in which an attacker overwhelms a sophisticated defense system with a mass of coordinated and relatively disposable drones, making it incredibly difficult to thwart every attack. It can........

© Foreign Policy