Key Points
A thousand miles away and three days later, on the night of Jan. 31 into the morning of Feb. 1, unmanned maritimedronesdeployed by Ukraines secretive Unit 13 sunk the $70 million Russian warship Ivanovetsin the Black Sea..
And for the past several months, Houthi proxies have shut down billions of dollars of trade through the Gulf of Aden through similarly inexpensivedroneattacks on maritime shipping.Droneshave become suddenly ubiquitous on the battlefieldbut we are only at the dawn of this new age in warfare..
Much as the sarissa changed the face of warfare 2,000 years ago when employed in a phalanx of well-trained soldiers, thedronewill change the face of warfare when employed in swarms directed by AI..
Nations that depend on large, expensive systems like aircraft carriers, stealth aircraft or even battle tanks could find themselves vulnerable against an adversary who deploys a variety of low-cost, easily dispersed and long-range unmanned weapons..
Its easy to imagine a future, however, where navies will cease to operate as fleets and will become schools of unmanned surface and submersible vessels, where air forces will stand down their squadrons and stand up their swarms, and where a conquering army will appear less like Alexanders soldiers and more like a robotic infestation..
