The Sentinel Weekly: Boomtime for autonomous systems
Plus deterrence doctrine, airport closures, drone trials and more
For more than a generation, Western armed forces have been able to knock out their opponents’ conventional forces in a decisive early engagement, leaving only lightly-armed infantry or insurgents to deal with. While this has not always guaranteed strategic success, it has minimised losses of soldiers and materiel.
A near-peer conflict would look very different. Russia learned this in the invasion of Ukraine, which it initially planned to accomplish in three days. Nearly four years later, the war grinds on and losses mount on both sides.
Russia and Ukraine have both imposed extensive conscription and adopted a wartime economy. Russia can do so because it is a dictatorship, and Ukraine because it is under immediate, existential threat. Neither of these factors apply in most of Europe, meaning creative thinking is needed to reconfigure our armed forces for a long war.
Attrition and democracy
At a RUSI event over the summer General Roly Walker, the UK Army’s most senior officer, pointed out that “nearly 100%” of the British Army’s equipment budget is spent on “highly sophisticated crewed platforms”, losses of which would very quickly become unsustainable.
Simply scaling up this model won’t work, Gen. Walker said, largely because these expensive platforms and their highly trained crews are too vulnerable to cheap suicide drones. He did not need to add that putting large numbers of poorly trained and equipped infantry on the line is not an option for Western democracies.
The Army needs a “new source of combat mass”, he said, and this will take the form of autonomous or remote-controlled “attritable platforms”, on land and in the air, to extend sensor range and launch munitions from forward positions. “You don’t want to lose them, but it’s not a tragedy if you do because, although sophisticated, they’re uncrewed.”
This vision, of a protected core force screened by uncrewed platforms, will require “a completely new sector in our defence industrial ecosystem”, Gen. Walker said. “We want to make a market in land autonomous collaborative platforms.”
The British Army should spend just 50% of its equipment budget on conventional “survivable” platforms, with the other half on attritable vehicles and consumables such as ammunition and suicide drones, he said.
If similar calculations are made across Europe, that will result in a massive increase in demand for autonomous platforms. But there is a second, perhaps even more surprising implication: If equipment budgets are set to roughly double over the next decade, but the share allocated to crewed platforms falls by half, then demand for things like tanks and fighter jets may barely change at all.
A new market
The current range of uncrewed platforms is small, with relatively little innovation taking place in the 30 years since the high-altitude Predator drone entered service.
Nevertheless, the Ukraine war has created a surge in activity. Last year Ukraine deployed naval drones against Russia’s Black Sea fleet to great effect. This year, Ukrainian land drones have been used to capture Russian positions and even take prisoners (strictly speaking these were suicide drones, but it’s now possible to imagine an autonomous gun platform performing a similar role). All across Europe, start-ups are seeking to replicate and improve upon these designs.
Some companies are also bringing automation to larger platforms. Finland’s Patria last week announced a remotely piloted variant of its well-regarded AMV, an 8x8 armoured vehicle. This could be adapted to a range of roles including reconnaissance, air defence or forward firing of heavy weapons without putting its crew in harm’s way.
Point of view: Deterrence beats a drone wall
Building a ‘drone wall’ in response to Russian incursions is the wrong approach for Europe, which should instead direct its energies towards deterrence, RAND’s Ann Marie Dailey wrote this week.
Drone technology has not significantly enhanced Russia’s ability to violate European NATO members’ air space, she writes. Rather, it is a political calculation made by a country at war to test and provoke “countries that still think they are at peace”.
The Trump administration’s lukewarm support for NATO has emboldened Russia. Since there is no cost-effective way of countering drone incursions in a purely defensive manner, “Europe needs to invest in its ability to punch back”, she writes.
A credible threat to strike Russian production facilities would do more to stop Russian incursions than any amount of defensive countermeasures, Dailey suggests. But in peacetime Europe, delivering credible threats is as much a political challenge as an industrial one.
In the news
Unidentified drones continued to surveil Belgian airbases, with three large drones passing high over the Kleine-Brogel airbase on Saturday night and evading attempts to jam them. The base is home to F-16 fighter jets and is due to receive F-35s in the coming months. Defence Minister Theo Francken plans imminently to invest €50 million in capabilities to detect and shoot down drones.
Civilian airports in Brussels and Liege were closed for several hours on Tuesday evening due to drone sightings in the vicinity. Brussels airport was briefly closed again on Thursday night.
Leonardo and Rheinmetall won a contract to supply 21 tracked armoured vehicles to the Italian Army, marking the first order under their joint venture to produce combat vehicles. The two defence giants agreed the 50:50 joint venture last year, with its base in Rome and a majority of the work to be done in Italy.
German drone start-up Stark had a “disaster” in German and British military trials, with its Virtus strike drones failing to hit targets, the FT reported. Rival Helsing performed significantly better with its new HX-2 drone.
Norway has signed a deal worth 1 billion krone (€86 million) with state-controlled contractor Kongsberg to upgrade its NASAMS air defence system. The ground-based batteries will be given more powerful radios and improved mobility.
EU border agency Frontex could be given additional powers to protect critical infrastructure from hybrid threats, including drone incursions, Euractiv reported.
The German parliament’s budget committee approved 14 military procurement projects worth a total of €1.9 billion. They include €490 million for DefendAir anti-drone missiles made by MBDA, ES&T reported.
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