The New World Of Warfare And What It Means For Us

This is something I have been meaning to share for some time, I am just now getting around to it: Drone Warfare in CW2. I assume most of you follow Matt Bracken to some extent but this is a good piece on how drones are changing warfare.

So don’t expect me to bash the great American gun culture. Not at all. But I think that on the Right, among patriotic heritage Americans who might describe themselves as preppers, our emphasis on firearms urgently needs to be updated to include the study of modern drone warfare.

Many of our peers own high-quality carbines and battle rifles equipped with variable power scopes our parents could only dream of. Many of them own night vision gear and hard-plate body armor. When they are not on the range, they are in the woods practicing patrolling and small unit tactics. But to a large extent I think they are missing the bus. In Ukraine, some of the world’s toughest soldiers are now reduced to hiding in bunkers and basements from the eyes in the sky. We have all seen dozens of FPV videos showing the final seconds of troops trying in vain to hide from drones. I’m not going to post them here, they are easy enough to find.

Most “prepping” looks like our military, focused on fighting like we did 25 years ago. Drones are quickly changing the battlefield as we have seen in Ukraine and that is a very different world. Even our local sheriffs have drones with IR to track down dudes who are running. You can hire guys with the same basic drones who will locate a deer you shot so you aren’t stumbling around in the dark for hours looking for it.

Drones aren’t going to completely replace infantry of course as there are still things drones can’t do but in pitched combat I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in some shallow trench waiting for a drone to drop on my head. Drones are relatively cheap and expendable unlike infantry grunts. I looked up what it costs to train an infantryman and this is one estimate I found from Military.com:

It cost millions to recruit, train new troops being booted for vaccine refusal

The cost to recruit and train a new service member varies, but the Army ― the largest service ― estimates it spends about $15,000 to bring someone into the service and another $50,000 to $75,000 to prepare them to join their first unit, depending on their job.

At a minimum that is around $65,000 to get a basic grunt ready to go. Compare that to the cost of a drone, even the expensive ones are nowhere close to that amount. Big Country did a follow-up post to Matt here: More Rifle Work and Commander Bracken’s Article on Drones

As I stated in my article linked HERE “The Infantry is Dead (For Now)” published back in September of 2023 (a lifetime ago it seems).

As I said then, and it bears repeating: “…unless there’s an absolute paradigm shift in personal armoring, i.e. Mobile Mecha/Gundam/Mobile Infantry ‘Marauder Suits’ then the Infantry is going to be damned near finished in it’s traditional role.”

Bill Buppert of the Chasing Ghosts podcast replied to my comment with one of his own that is great:

You have struck at the heart of the argument for the RMA. You are looking at a million dollars minus invested for training, equipment and feeding/billeting one soldier (this will increase and expand as NCOs and officers are put in the cost equation) and remember all American soldiery has to be transported to the expeditionary “beach” to step off and fight. This is why at the end of the day, the US was paying more than a hundreds dollars a gallon to fuel the vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan not to mention the absolutely ludicrous idea of using transportation aircraft to fly in thousands of pallets of water.

Water.

In the end, it all adds up. Drones are exponentially less costly even at scale and swarm. The salvo competition wins in the end.

Global hegemons like the US have to engage in transportation kabuki no one else can afford to project power and the other shoe drops there. Sure, I do think the infantry is ion for serious refitting and reassessment on their place in the battlefield but to steal a USMC GEN van Riper riff from Exercise Millennium Challenge, I promised I won’t touch your precious infantry but all modes of transportation to include refueling aircraft and naval ships will be attacked as the sky darkens with kamikaze drones. present and future foes have two options: hit US forces at debarkation near their countries or hit US forces in the US at staging areas and everything in between.

I am a former infantryman myself and we all have to step back and swallow our pride and assess this realistically.

When you understand that many of the people doing the planning in places like the Pentagon and the FBI consider White Americans to be a far greater and more immediate threat than Russia or China, you had better believe that in conference rooms they are talking about how to use drones to quell violence from “domestic terrorists” and so we had better figure out what that will mean for heritage Americans.

An important factor to consider. The drones don’t run themselves, and the fiber optic line drones have to have an operator at least reasonably close to the area they are striking. More to the point, these drone guys have names and addresses. It is one thing to fly a Predator halfway around the world from an air conditioned cubicle, it is quite another to be out in the field with a controller.

Regardless, drones are changing the face of the battlefield in a similar fashion to machine guns and tanks and that means that your preparations for the worst case need to include how to deal with drones. That doesn’t mean neglecting the stuff we have been focusing on, rifles and optics and body armor, but it adds yet another level of complexity. Better to think about it now than when you are hiding in cover and hear the sound of a drone heading your way.