[aftbit]

I think the insight is that you need a high-low mix. Some threats call for top of the line capabilities (like early days of the Iran conflict with stand-off munitions and top-spec interceptors being used against Shahed drones and cheap cruise missiles). Some threats can be more economically serviced by a less capable, cheaper, and more available system.

[LorenPechtel]

100% this.

It's always been about the biggest, fastest, longest range punch. That is extremely useful for deep strike (which has always been NATO doctrine), but when the range is short you need quantity and mobility far more than you need quantity.

Being able to cut off your enemy is an extremely effective weapon if your enemy needs massive supply. Drop the major bridges between Moscow and Ukraine and the war would soon be over.

But when you can't do that for whatever reason you need quantity and mobility far more than you need quality.

[stevenwoo]

Ukraine is using old school propeller trainer craft to shoot down some of the slower Russian drones. https://theaviationist.com/2024/06/26/ukrainian-yak-52-kill-... There's usually new footage of this every week on social media.

Don't really see or hear about the USA building or using propeller driven planes in military outside of special ops.

[aftbit]

There's a very interesting fallacy at play here. It's true that Ukraine is doing absolutely amazing and ingenious things on a shoestring budget across all military domains. It's also true that the armed forces of other world powers have a lot to learn from them, especially when it comes to drone warfare.

The fallacy comes in when blindly transferring these lessons to other wars and other armies.

In a perfect world with unlimited production and budgets, Ukraine would love to use Patriot or SAMP/T to shoot down every slow moving drone. In the real world, they make do with what they have, because the alternative is defeat and annihilation.

Ukraine is using propeller trainer planes to shoot down Russian drones because they have them and they can be quickly modified for the mission. That doesn't mean that an air force starting with a clean slate would prefer to use a cheap propeller plane in an anti-drone role. Instead, given enough time and budget, they'd probably prefer to build a custom-designed, more expensive and more capable solution, which still lands in a better spot on the shot exchange curve than Patriot vs Shahed. Think interceptor drone (which are usually several times more expensive and capable than their targets, but that's air defense) or 21st century gun systems.

Ukraine is a post Soviet state with a huge stockpile, engaged in a drawn out attritional defensive conflict where neither side has claimed air superiority. They have no choice but to be efficient, and to make everything they have go as far as they can. From an economic point of view, the USA can afford to be less efficient when fighting into Iran.

For the USA, shot exchange as an economic problem is mostly theoretical. The real problem is supply exhaustion. It doesn't matter if the air defense interceptors cost $10,000 or $10,000,000 if the total stockpile and yearly production capacity of them is only enough to fight for 3 months.

[bluGill]

It isn't reasonable to expect that propellor drones will be used long term - they are too easy to shoot down. you need just enough ability to force the enemy to not waste they energy making them when something more expensive is harder to shoot down and thus more likely to work.

[magicalhippo]

I mean the armed forces already know this well. They have a bunch of units of regular soldiers, and then they have a few special forces units.

[aftbit]

The armed forces know this well but many of the internet commentators do not. Many have over-learned the lesson from Ukraine, going all the way from "drones are an important (and even potentially dominant) new tool of warfare" to "everything more expensive than a drone is a huge waste of money - just buy more drones". The real world is rarely so simple.

There are strategic winners and losers of a drone dominated world, just like there were when the machine gun or the airplane began to dominate combat. Calvary charges did not play a major role in WWII for a good reason. I would guess that the F-35 (and in general, fast stealthy attack jets) will continue to deliver a lot of value even in a world with drones. Think more like destroyer and less battleship or horse.

If you made me guess which systems would become obsolete as a result of this, my first guess would probably be attack helicopters. Much of their role can be filled by other less expensive and less vulnerable systems.