Whenever people talked about "suicide drones", I felt like they haven't studied the history of warfare.

A surprising number of conflicts: WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, degenerated into artillery slugfests. You can't get much cheaper, faster, or more effective than guns shooting dumb explosives 20km away.

Only when the opponents were stupidly overmatched by US Air Superiority (Afghanistan / Iraq) did things change. But even with Air Superiority over say, Vietnam, USA still degenerated into an artillery slugfest.

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Its hard to beat 100lb shrapnel bombs delivered 20km away. Logistics wise, trucks carrying shells is just far cheaper than any other delivery mechanism. This fact has been true since WW1, and no technology has ever really changed the calculus. (Adding li-ion batteries, cameras, remote-control and other features so that you can turn the delivery mechanism into a drone is just unnecessary chips in most cases)

> But even with Air Superiority over say, Vietnam, USA still degenerated into an artillery slugfest.

I just finished James Holland's Normandy '44 and I'd say, according to his book, that sentence pretty accurately describes pretty much all of the WW2 Normandy campaign as well.

Said massive artillery fire is directed from the drones. You hear a lot about Ukrainian Bayraktars, but the most mass-deployed combat drone in Ukraine right now is actually Mavic 2 & 3 - on both sides! In fact, it got to the point where there's a shortage of them in Russia because DJI stopped importing them, but units fighting in Ukraine constantly demand and get more via crowdfunding.

(For the curious, here's a blog post from the Donbas separatist side that talks about drones and their combat use and maintenance, among other things: https://kenigtiger.livejournal.com/2140772.html)

However, Ukrainians have learned to embrace the drones in 2014-15 already, and have had a lot more experience with them since. Russia is still learning that lesson in the field.

BTW, the same blogger also wrote a post recently that specifically discusses the differences in how Russian and Ukrainian forces employ their artillery. Also worth a read:

https://kenigtiger.livejournal.com/2148946.html

(I would generally recommend this entire blog for those curious about the tactics and the logistics of the conflict, because it's one of those rare cases when a guy who is directly involved in the war, and has a long-standing reputation as one of the prominent hawks, is consistently writing posts that are critical of his own side - which criticism is far more likely to be accurate than propaganda from the other side.)

Puts the whole Seoul situation in a new light - there's something about just massive amounts of shells being thrown that's hard to deal with.

And dumb is cheap. Cheap can be king, especially if you can keep making them. The US had the same thing in WWII, the Panzer tanks were better than the Shermans in nearly every way - except cost and repairability.

Yes. This is also a lesson the Red Army learned in WWII, and why not continue with it? Simple systems that can be mass produced are better than complex, harder to repair ones.

The complex, hard to repair ones are great if:

1. You're selling them.

2. You have absolute complete superiority and are trying to minimize your casualties

There's a country that fits those parameters very well.

Both Russian and Ukrainian, also grad rockets. They're pretty much fighting each other with the same weapons.