Defense UAS

Deficiencies of US Drones

The interviewee, Sergey it would seem, doesn’t hold off on disparaging US drones sent to the Ukrainian battlefield. Two that are of note are the Switchblade and the ScanEagle. On paper it would seem that the Switchblade, made by AeroVironment, would seemingly be the ideal tool for the way drones are being used in the Russo-Ukraine war. If that paper included the acquisition cost, it might not look so good, at least according to Sergey who describes both the 300 and 600 series models of the Switchblade as “total junk” in his estimation. The Boeing ScanEagle is singled out too as a symbol of failure and incompetence. Here is how Sergey describes this drone:

“Another one was the ScanEagle, a drone developed by Boeing, I actually have a piece of one lying around in my lab. I don’t even know how to describe it. It is like it was built in a high school workshop. It’s so slap dash. Everything is held together with zip ties and cheap Chinese glue. And this is product from Boeing and it costs the same has half a tank.”

The ScanEagle is actually built in a relatively large modern factory nestled in the scenic town of Bingen, Washington. The ScanEagle was born out of garage workshop to track tuna for tuna fishing operations. The dawn of the Global War on Terror drew interest for use as an ISR platform due to lack of other US options. The drone’s origins also allowed for a smaller footprint in launch and recovery, being recovered through a Rube Goldberg like contraption raising a wire that after impacting the wire hooks onto the drone’s wingtip. Useful for remote US outposts in a counter-insurgency that never controlled the countryside around it, but would this feature be relevant in a war like we see in Ukraine? Likely not. 

Like all US drones over the past twenty years, the ScanEagle has operated in uncontested skies where even aerostats operated without concern for enemy action. Even a hobbyist RC toy with a camera could be of use in that kind of environment. The company that manufactures the ScanEagle, Insitu, was eventually acquired by Boeing, hence why Sergey refers to the drone as a Boeing product. It wasn’t originally designed by Boeing engineers though, but perhaps it follows the firm’s design and management ethos? The operational assumptions that made the ScanEagle what it is today reflect the structural constraints on the US drone industry, which according to our interview subject represents a low quality, high price, low capability set of platforms unsuited to operating in actual conflicts.

Sergey notes this drone as an example of the structural problems that limit the usefulness of US-made drones and it is a noteworthy section of this interview as these problems are unlikely to be addressed. Many of the same constraints will likely impact Russia’s drone industry as well, though it will not be just a failure to grasp the nature of drone warfare in Ukraine, but industrial capacity limitations that comprise a hard barrier to widespread disposable drones. US drone makers don’t just hype buzzwords and promises of artificial intelligence to convince investors and win government contracts. That is part of it, but they do so primarily because they have no other selling point. US, and Russian drone manufactures for that matter, cannot match the scale economies of Chinese drone components. 

Many of these dual use and produced in such a way that it presents a nearly insurmountable moat to any nation seeking to emulate the Chinese drone industry. With these constraints, US firms promise that technological solutions will overcome the lack of mass. Russia may hope to match that volume of production, but is unlikely to be able to do so without Chinese imports and will struggle to match US or Western firms in terms of technology. He is likely right in his assessment that China is either at or close to parity to many US technologies, but that isn’t easy to replicate for Russian firms on their own.

This focus on high-tech solutions has been the western mindset ever since the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs of the 1991 Gulf War era focused US efforts on targeting command and control nodes. This “clean war at-a-distance” preference along with casualty aversion for domestic political considerations provides a narrow avenue of maneuver for US military planners. That delusion was something that could be indulged in the window of time between the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of other “peer” level competitors, especially if used against strongmen running former colonial constructs backed by a Potemkin military with no industrial base. That isn’t the case in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Innovation and Limitations

Sergey states that in his estimation the Ukrainians are the world leaders in small drones today and the art of drone warfare. It is hard to disagree with this assessment, as many innovations in terms of tactics and technology have come from the AFU and supporting Ukrainian industries.

The Importance of Starlink – The S in UAS

More than any drone system itself, it is communications infrastructure that allows for drone technology to be utilized to their fullest extent. That can be seen as piggy-backing off a cell network as we’ve seen in Iran and Russia, or it can mean the use of satellite communications networks like SpaceX’s Starlink. Even going back to the MQ-9 operations during the Obama years, the airframe of the Reaper UAS itself isn’t complicated. The Systems part of the UAS conception emphasizes the communication and control link technologies that really add the edge to drone warfare beyond line of sight remote control air vehicles. It would seem in Sergey’s estimation that Ukraine would not have any maritime sea-based drone capabilities without Starlink terminals. It is likely that Starlink is utilized in other ways as well, but is difficult to determine what is true and what is political narrative around the topic.

One should keep in mind that Starlink is supposedly a commercial project, Starshield is a SpaceX constellation for military purposes. Much of the use of this technology in this conflict is not available, though it would seem Ukraine utilizes these systems quite extensively for combat purposes. Withdrawal of US logistics support combined with cutting of access to systems like Starlink through export controls would be a severe blow to Ukrainian war fighting capabilities, especially when it comes to their already limited long range strike options. US DoD officials have praised SpaceX’s rapid response to cyberattacks on Starlink systems, an important lesson to learn for future conflict.

Curiously, the entire Starlink project reflects much of the same lessons with small FPV drones, of small satellites launched in batches that create a highly resilient communications network which is nearly impossible to directly disable or even degrade. A system so well aligned to national security interests one has to wonder if this project isn’t entirely a US intelligence community creation. One also has to consider in the Mahanian sense if an adversary is so troubled by a resilient network like this that they wouldn’t decide it best to shut down access to space for everyone, but that is beyond the scope of this article. What should be taken away from this interview is the importance of space assets like Starlink for drone operations and how the rapid-replenishment LEO constellation model mirrors drone operations in the Russo-Ukraine War.

Understanding the War of the Junk Drawer

If one takes anything away from this interview, it is the repeated admission that much of the Drone Warfare revolution we’re seeing in this conflict is fueled almost entirely by mass produced Chinese dual-use drone components. Sergey here describes the current drones as toys, but that is exactly what they are and why they’re even being used the way they are to begin with. To correct this supposed mistake in durability would be to end the operational use of drones as we see in Ukraine. They can be used like flying landmines and grenades only when a nation can produce internally all the component parts to make a drone at that price point. Again, not that these drones aren’t deadly, but they are only plentiful because they’re made like toys, and they’re only being used as disposable flying grenades because the logistics trail tracing its roots back to Shenzhen supports this level of use. Both sides of the conflict. To put it in Sergey’s words:

“Yes, components. Uh that’s true. Basically we’re all dipping into the same bucket of electronic parts. But the real secret isn’t in the components but in how you put them together”

This is a critical error on the part of Sergey though, because the secret isn’t in putting together a better quadcopter. A few handmade drones is a prototype, not a weapon of doctrine that can sustainably be deployed at scale enough to impact the course of the conflict. Battlefield expediency and problem solving in this case matters very little, though is a concern right now to each side in this conflict with each side seeking an edge over the other. In a strategic sense, what matters is how those components even came to exist in the first place and the cost of producing them at the rate they’re being expended in combat. Russia and Ukraine both do not make their drones in the way that Ford plants cranked out B-24s or Soviet ones churned out IL-2s in the early 1940s. Most if not all of those components to produce those warplanes of years past came from internal suppliers inside of the nations waging war. Suppliers that existed because car and tractor factories were already built with the labor force, tooling industry, and raw material inputs that could be repurposed to war efforts through centralized production and planning boards.

Flying Minefields and Winged Artillery Shells

This type of situation is not and never will be totally true for components supporting wide-spread drone usage like we see in Ukrainian battlefields, not enough to replicate this conflict without the specific constraints involved. Mainly, that China allows exports of critical dual use drone components. Widespread use of drones like the Geran-2 aren’t going anywhere. These drones function as a kind of flying artillery shell with enough of a warhead and impact on fixed infrastructure to remain a useful tool, we have seen this drone used against electrical infrastructure in Ukraine quite extensively. Widespread use of small FPV drones will remain shackled to the supply chains that support them at that cost, while the Geranium style drones reflect a different calculation. Is the world likely to see the use of small drones in every conflict to some degree? Yes. Even in low intensity conflicts or criminal activities we’re likely to see even lone individuals utilizing these kinds of ad hoc drone strikes. Hitting any target they wish at will. That does not translate though to a new paradigm shift in how wars will be decided, even if the tactical disruption caused by these system is very real.

Globalization has concentrated many key component manufacturers in Asia, where yes it is possible to source or smuggle these components out of places like China, as the interviewee admits, this is entirely due to Chinese authorities allowing this to occur. Endless drone swarms aren’t happening without Chinese factories. This cannot be replicated inside of Russia at this scale, not without massive state subsidies that are likely unsustainable and not economically viable. This also cannot be replicated in the West given structural legal, economic, and political barriers to developing the kind of enormous industrial scale and expertise that has been developed in areas of China over the last half century. That “cheap” drone component is in fact the result of an expensive and long term plan to craft an electronic manufacturing ecosystem, it is anything but cheap.

The reappearance of the trench has led many to puzzle at this First World War (though it existed long before this) technique juxtaposed to the high-tech flying grenades of the new drone war. This situation illustrates that the defensive aspects of war have been made far more scalable due to what is essentially mass-produced cellphone components. This situation in Ukraine reflects these constraints and advantages brought on by the current state of technology produced in a complex web of globalized interdependence. A world that is increasingly drawn apart with multi-polar interests, it is difficult to see how the uninterrupted flow of drone components at the scale they’re being used in Ukraine will be possible without implicit Chinese involvement. As Sergey says, at any time they can just turn off the component supply. Then drones are back to being a used far more selectively, encouraging investment in more capable platforms.

The Iron Triangle of all Aerial Warfare – Pick Two Sides

With any project you’ll often here that something can be good, fast or cheap, but not all three. For drones, we can think of this as affordable, capable, and scalable. Ad hoc front line drones can be relatively affordable and capable, but cannot be easily scaled into production without significant foreign imports. Even if western equipment like the ScanEagle was capable it would not be affordable, certainly not at scale. Ubiquitous FPV drones are affordable and scalable (albeit with imported components), but cannot match capabilities of more complex weapons systems and the costs only rise exponentially when you consider what that extra edge will cost. It is not to say that small drones are not incredibly dangerous on modern battlefields, they are as the casualty counts indicate in this conflict. At this stage around 70% of all casualties according to the interviewer. To claim though that mass produced small drones have revolutionized warfare would be to think that the IED revolutionized warfare of the GWOT era just because it was one of the main weapons of the adversary. Still, given their current situation, Ukraine’s use of FPV drones as a kind of area denial weapon and Russian Geran drones represent in their own way an alignment of drone technology use with national objectives.

The IED even in flying form of the drone still only one tool among many that never shifts the fundamental nature of warfare from the Clausewitz’s understanding of this phenomenon. Ways, means, and ends. We often forget that the information age is only possible because of the industrial age allows for mass manufactured goods like cellphones to exist in the first place. The US decades ago gave up that capability, shipping much of it overseas. Russia isn’t in a better situation, lacking the scale and global market to build a replacement for Chinese drone components on its own.

No doubt that the ossified nature of government procurement, corruption, or just plain old who knows who kind of connections will determine the future of this individual’s firm in relation to Russian military industry after the Russo-Ukraine War concludes. That won’t be the real story though, even if one sees the effectiveness of drones one can’t easily overcome their country’s own limitations in industrial capacity to wage war. The Germans weren’t ignorant of the ideas behind the Liberty Ships, when they tried to do the same thing with their U-boats it failed miserably as despite the name, there wasn’t a Henry Kaiser running Kriegsmarine dockyards. For a US viewer, it is wise to remember that Silicon Valley can’t replicate Shenzhen in terms of metal touching tech that really fuels the age of drone-based warfare.