Have you watched any of the drone footage from Ukraine? They are dropping hand grenades and modified mortar shells into tanks from drones. Mortar shells have about 500g of HE. Highly effective.

And yet Ukraine is stopped by old school mine fields... Well, slowed down considerably. It is almost as if everything is a trafe off with benefits and downsides.

Drones work until drone-specific AA is developed, and then it will be the same race we see between tanks and anti-tank weapons.

The drones don’t interact with the the mine fields, and in fact, are extra useful in this in this situation as they can fly over them. I’m not sure I see the trade off here.

Drone specific AA will be very difficult.

Well, a drone doesn't help ypu a tiny bit it getting across the mine field. Without that, well, your counter-offensive stalls, drones or not.

And for now, anti-drone AA is difficult. But not unsolvable. Jamming, small caliber radar controlled AA guns. Point defense weapons can shoot down cruise missiles and even artillery shells. Applying the same principle at slower drones isn't that hard.

Your demands are completely unreasonable, a weapon platform can be extremely effective in its role and not win a war outright. Yeah drones aren't magically solving the problem of minefields, so what?

My point was exactly that: no weapon system is a silver bullet, including drones. And just because something is old doesn't make it less useful.

And I didn't make any demands, not sure how you woupd read that into my answers to a thread started with "dropping stuff from drones is an attack that cannot be countered". People didn't learn anything it seems, first tanks were obsolete, until Ukraine wanted every single one of them. Then modern AA made fighters and helicopters obsolete, only to be replaced by drones as the latest shit. Those arguments are just cheerleading whatever is en vogue and hyped.

I’m not seeing your quote.

Tanks being obsolete is… not clear. Tanks vs. western anti tank missiles and drones dropping grenades does feel like a terrible ROI but they are still useful. Russia doesn’t have these things at the same level of efficacy so tanks are perhaps more valuable for Ukraine to have.

Helicopters and fighters are in the same boat. They’re useful, but vulnerable and expensive. The thing about drones is they cost $200 to take out weapons that cost up to millions of dollars.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, tanks, fighters, and helicopters are not obsolete by any stretch of the imagination.

That's why I always said the opposite. Internet, media and pundit opinion on the other hand...

So what's your actual argument here? Drones bad because new? Drones bad because minefields? Drones bad because mean people on the internet like them?

The argument is drones being the latest hype tech people don't understand. I'm fed up with hype.

$3M tanks getting busted by $200 drones is a paradigm shift in war. It’s going to be very hard to surpass this

Drones are immensely helpful in getting across minefields. Being able to attack enemy positions across the field prevents them from being able to safely attack sappers trying to remove the mines.

It is much harder to stop a small drone attacking a mobile position than it is to establish a large AA battery that defends against missiles. Missile AA is for protected largely stationary high strategic value targets. Drone AA has to be for small tactical level targets on the go. Way harder.

This doesn't negate the comment that you are responding to at all. Drones have been most effective in defensive operations, often in concert with mine fields.

Offensive is much more difficult, as it needs to be coordinated with ground forces that can be impeded by mine fields. It is also easier for prepared defense lines to stop drones than it is for an offensive operation in the open to defend against them.

It’s not an ultimate weapon. I don’t know why you judge it as if someone said it was. It’s just that small drones can be extremely effective against personnel and light armored vehicles. That’s why both sides have to use them.

I guess I was thinking about it from the point of view of a large industrial power fighting its equal.

Ukraine vs Russia seems more asymmetric. For instance, Russia can be an existential threat to Ukraine, but the positions can not be easily reversed since Russia has nuclear weapons. While they wouldn't want to deploy them, they'd rather do that than lose Moscow.

Asymmetric warfare makes use of a great number of things, which wouldn't be very cost-effective in a battle of equals. For instance all the insurgents that use IEDs to harass checkpoints, would probably rather use factory made air-craft delivered ordinance.

> I guess I was thinking about it from the point of view of a large industrial power fighting its equal

Human-in-the-loop ethical concerns aside: a highly industrial power can fully automate the entire process and massively scale up from individual-pilot controlled prosumer drones.

Imagine a high-altitude loitering spotter-drone that autonomously identifies any tanks with open hatches and tasks smaller multirotor drones to precisely drop small munitions. You may take out an entire tank battalion for less than the cost of a couple of traditional air-to-surface missile without putting your personnel in harm's way. Future wars will be horrifying for infantry and ground vehicles.