Claims

The US had a first strategic offset against the Soviet Union with nuclear strike, followed by precision strike, but now everybody has precision strike capability because the convergence of military drone technology with affordable commercial drones means even a 12-year-old with a hobbyist drone can conduct precision strikes.

The convergence of high-grade military attempts with very expensive drones down to hobbyists and smart people at the edge of battle adapting commercial drone technology focusing on low cost to deliver payloads in a very jammed environment means both Ukrainian versus Russian and Russian versus Ukrainian forces are developing effective drone warfare in contested battle spaces.

Russians just this week launched the first fully autonomous drone attack, an unmanned attack both ground and air against Ukrainian lines with no people showing up and machines sent against enemies, marking a Rubicon moment in warfare.

Large military drones like the Predator or Predator B, which are big turboprop aircraft that can stay aloft for 24 hours at 25,000 feet or higher with satellite communications and large 20-inch gimbal ball cameras capable of reading license plates or identifying faces from that altitude, have very limited effectiveness in contested battle spaces like Ukraine because they are in high danger of being shot down by missiles.

Ukraine conducted a drone strike on an oil refinery almost 600 miles inside Russian territory, which is significant because the strike was deep inside Russian territory at a distance (600 miles, not 60 miles or 6 miles) previously constrained by the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which attempted to keep cruise missiles or weapons capable of flying more than 300 km out of people's hands.

Ukraine developed its long-range drone capability themselves by taking a reliable motor and turbine engine (which were concentrated in Ukraine as part of Soviet industrial capacity) combined with any kind of guidance system available almost off the internet, and the drone doesn't really need a camera since it just drives itself to a specific coordinate using GPS, which cannot be jammed that far inside Russia because jamming would threaten their own aviation.

The battle is the ultimate laboratory of innovation because you have to innovate or you're dead, and therefore innovation is happening in both Ukrainian and Russian forces really quickly, suggesting that the Russians have taken elements of their old industry and are out-matching Ukraine with 6-to-1 advantage in artillery while also developing autonomous drone warfare capabilities.

Small, expendable drones are the way forward for current warfare, especially in contested battle spaces, because drones made from cardboard or wood materials that don't show up well on radar will make it very difficult for traditional radars and air defenses to detect them, creating asymmetric advantages.

When visiting the Nemesis Battalion during a recent trip, Petraeus observed extraordinary and unique partnerships between unmanned systems designers and operators, with all systems being unclassified and openly displayed on the Battalion's website showing their operational achievements.

If China is n-minus-3 or n-minus-6 in AI chip capabilities in 10 years is an important question for military power, as being n-minus-5 is a real disadvantage for AI training, especially across an entire society.

New systems like howitzers with Excalibur precision-guided rounds are potentially game-changing in Ukraine because precision guidance with good intelligence allows decapitation of individual enemy units without mass assault.