Halfa league, half a league,

　　Half a league onward,

　　All in the valley of Death

　　Rode the six hundred.

　　Charge, was the captains cry;

　　Theirs not to reason why,

　　Theirs not to make reply,

　　Theirs but to do and die,

　　Into the valley of Death

　　Rode the six hundred.

　　– Alfred, Lord Tennyson,The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1856

　　Tennyson’s haunting lines, indelibly printed into Western military consciousness, portray a disastrous British light cavalry attack against Russian artillery positions in the midst of the Crimean War. While generally read as a paean to disciplined combat courage, it in fact presents a not-so-veiled warning—a reference to muddled orders (“some one had blunder’d”) and obsolete tactics in the face of technical superiority. Horses and sabers, after all, were no match for canister and grapeshot from well-entrenched artillery.

　　Psychologist Norman Dixon, a specialist in thepsychology of military incompetence, says that the implied heroism inTheCharge of the Light Brigaderather gets things backward—the event should have opened discerning eyes to the changing nature of warfare. Instead, it“did much to strengthen those very forms of tradition which put such an incapacitating stranglehold on military endeavor for the next eighty or so years.”

　　Today, after another frontline trip to Ukraine, I think it can honestly be said that the United States military faces a similar “incapacitating stranglehold” in its collective understanding of the changing nature of warfare. If we do not adjust (quickly) to the threat of drone warfare, we may well end up writing nostalgically of noble but futile charges of legacy weapons against better-adapted adversaries.

　　Drones have fundamentally tipped the scales of warfare, not merely in a technical and tactical sense, but in an economic one as well. Having observed firsthand the astonishing evolution in drone deployment, it can be fairly said that unmanned systems are not just an iteration in weaponry, but in fact, represent a wholesale revolution in the application of force. Technical advances, particularly in first-person view (FPV) drone deployment, mean that up to 50 kilograms of high explosive can be delivered to a 50cm2target from hundreds of kilometers away, practically anywhere on Earth. For pennies on the dollar.

　　The attacks on Russia’sToropetsandOktyabrskiyammunition storage depots are merely the latest examples of the astonishing asymmetries at play in the modern battlefield. Estimates are that something on the order of30,000 tonsin military munitions were destroyed in one attack alone, including some 750,000 artillery shells. At the Russian production cost for 152mm shells of$1,000apiece, the single attack vaporized about a billion dollars of hardware at the cost of perhaps a few hundred thousand dollars in drones. That is around a four-thousand-fold return on investment—a truly war-altering disproportionality.

　　While it is impossible to say where the Ukraine-Russia conflict goes from here (though I would wager it willend sooner than many suppose), the radical revolution in warfare it has revealed begs the burning question: are weourselvesready for the unmanned and autonomous future?

　　The answer, asGeneral David Petraeusand others amply point out, is no. Nowhere near. Meetings with colleagues (both active and former military) make it absolutely clear to me that our defense posture is barely more than a confused crouch. While elements of our joint services (especially classified experimental engineering units) have grappled creatively with the extreme vulnerabilities posed by unmanned systems, the services have not dealtsystematicallywith the rapid advances evident on the frontlines in Ukraine. No branch, to my knowledge, has meaningfully adopted the modern drone threat into its doctrines, training, or contingency planning.

　　If I were to say (for example) that an entire squadron of F-35s in Japan could be demolished by a Chinese teenager with a handful of $900 FPVs, many in the defense world might laugh. My Air Force Academy classmates, many with over 20 years of experience flying MQ9 Reaper drones, do not laugh. Those in the know recognize just how extraordinary the vulnerability really is.

　　Ukrainians and Russians have leapt far ahead in the race to develop extraordinary technologies and cunning tactics to defeat the very sorts of weapons the US military prides itself on.

　　There are simple things we could be doing now—such as training at the squadron and company level with small drones—that are simply impossible to accomplish in today’s military regulatory environment. Airspace clearances, frequency protocols, and the perennial catchall of “safety concerns” make the active deployment of small unmanned systems all but impossible. These prohibitions mean that mainline military units are fundamentally unfamiliar with these systems and are unable to tinker with the tactics and techniques that might give them an edge (or at least cushion the blow) if, on some quiet Sunday, a swarm of drones appears over the horizon.

　　The US Marine Corps, to their enduring credit, is not only taking the threat seriously but actively working to systematically address it. By accident of a family connection, I have been able to get these observations from the Ukraine battle-lab in front of at least one three-star general who has noted that they “clearly indicate this may be a revolutionary step in the character of ground combat.” He goes on, in admirable humility, to note that “as you know we [US military] have a poor history of not paying attention to foreign wars and adapting.” 

　　So there’s hope. While most in the Department of Defense would agree the Drone Wars represent a very real threat, developing actionable programs foractually addressingit is another matter entirely.The DoD’sReplicator Initiativeis supposed to deliver “multiple thousands” of “all-domain attritable autonomous systems to warfighters” by this time next year. I’m not sure the DoD even fully knows what that jargon-filled gobbledygook means, and I have not spoken to one soldier, sailor, airman, spaceman, or marine who has gotten their hands on one or would know how to employ it effectively. I’m an optimist, and always willing to be impressed, but in my long experience with government programs, I’ve yet to see a program of anything like such magnitude deployed in less than a year.

　　Perhaps a more viable program for the Replicator Initiative is to support vigorous “Red Cell” efforts to probe our weaknesses when it comes to unmanned systems. Successful simulated attacks may do more than anything to demonstrate just how fundamentally the rules have changed. We need an “Ostfrieslandevent”—akin to the Army Air Service’s bombing ofa captured German battleshipin 1921, which woke the nation to the vulnerability of its legacy weapons systems. Knowing where the gaps in our defenses are will help us hone efforts (like laser defense or other high-capacity programs) that can stem the oncoming tide.

　　Time will tell, of course. But in the meantime, Ukrainians and Russians have leapt far ahead in the race to develop extraordinary technologies and cunning tactics to defeat the very sorts of weapons the US military prides itself on. If we think that Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean technicians are not at the Russian front, busily taking notes and learning lessons, we are certainly in for a rude surprise.

　　After all, ours isnotto “do and die,” but to constantly, perpetually, ask why, why, why. We need to actively integrate the rapid evolutions in drone warfare across our broadest military defense sectors, and we need to do it soon.