Having more and better drones now matters more than having more soldiers

somenameforme 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think something most people don't consider is that war is still about logistics. Every single soldier needs food, water, basic consumables, ammo, and more. And each group of soldier will need comms, fuel, and so on. With even a relatively small group of soldiers you rapidly enter into the domain of tons of supplies needed every single day. And in general the majority of an army isn't out there fighting, but participating in supply and logistics. It's called the tooth-to-tail ratio. [1] In WW1 it 2.6:1 logistics:combat, in the Vietnam War (with its lengthy logistics pipeline) it was 12.9:1!

Operating, maintaining, and expanding these logistics pipelines is essentially what war is. Drones can play a major offensive (and defensive) role, but soldiers remain the most critical component in war, and probably will for the foreseeable future.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-to-tail_ratio

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ponector 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes and no. That's people what actually hold the ground. No drone will capture a city. But they can help assault team to survive/advance.

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tim333 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

They haven't done a city yet but

>Robot team captures Russian soldiers in world-first unmanned assault: Ukraine claims https://interestingengineering.com/military/ukraine-robot-te...

>the attack employed a combination of FPV (first-person view) kamikaze drones and ground robotic complexes (GRCs) to penetrate and neutralize fortified Russian positions that had previously repelled human-led offensives.

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kragen 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Clearly you need more than one drone to hold a city. But do you need more like one drone per thousand people, one drone per ten people, ten drones per person, or a thousand drones per person? Clearly at some point you cross the threshold.

Drones are cheaper to replace than people.

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ponector 2 days ago | parent [-]

>> Drones are cheaper to replace than people.

Only for western country.

	▲	kragen 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's true just about anywhere. Maybe if a militant group was really cut off from global markets it would be an exception. But, even in the lowest-GDP countries like Micronesia, the GDP is about a drone per year per person, and from my experience with Micronesia, that number is so low not because people are actually that desperately poor but because most of their wealth and productivity is outside the money economy. So, even in Micronesia, if you sacrifice a single soldier who could have been building drones instead (or producing goods to export to get foreign exchange earnings to buy drone parts), you lose their potential productive capacity of dozens of drones per year, even from a purely psychopathic perspective. More specifically, it is very clearly true in Russia and Ukraine that human soldiers are valued much more highly than drones, and they are not Western countries.

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scotty79 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> No drone will capture a city.

I think that assumption will quickly need to be reevaluated. Drones definitely can empty a city if there's enough of them and they are so doing their thing for long enough. People can't eat concrete and plants don't grow without the sun.

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ponector 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>> Drones definitely can empty a city if there's enough of them

As well as dumb WW2 era bombs. But even if the city is leveled to the ground you need a lot of ground troops to capture it. We've seen this recently in east Ukraine as well.

	▲	scotty79 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Unlike bombs, way cheaper and personal and with minimal destruction. And you don't have to capture anything. Just move your drone operators forward once it's safe.

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rcxdude 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Emptying is not capturing, and also I would suggest you look up how effective strategic bombing usually is.

	▲	scotty79 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		What is capturing? Who talks about bombing? I'm talking flying a small drone up the butt of every resident that peeks out of the basement.