Fighter jets and the drone revolution

Hello,

In this video I discuss whether the West's air power advantage will save Western Europe from the perils of the drone revolution. This is the primary counterargument I have heard since releasing my video on how NATO has missed the drone revolution.

Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

In this video, I want to address an argument that I have often received as feedback when I have said that drones are creating a revolution in military technology that fundamentally changes how warfare is conducted. I've also pointed out that Western countries are lagging behind in this area and Russia and Ukraine are much further ahead. They not only have access to the technology, but they also have valuable experience in using it.

The pushback that I usually get is that the reason why drones play this big role in the war in Ukraine is that neither side has a strong enough air force to achieve air superiority. So they compensate by having a lot of drones. But the argument here is that things would be different if there is a war between NATO and Russia because NATO has a much stronger air force than Ukraine does and would be able to achieve air superiority. So NATO would not need drones to the same extent.

In this video, I want to cover this question and explain why I think it's dangerous to assume that things will necessarily be different for us just because we have stronger air forces. So let's talk about it.

The argument that I and others have made is that drone technology changes the balance between offensive action and defensive action in war in a way that favors the defenders. This means that it's much more difficult to conduct offensive operations because the battlefield has become transparent. There are just drones constantly hovering everywhere, and whenever anything is observed, it gets attacked immediately. Instead of maneuver warfare on the battlefield, which is the doctrinal paradigm that we're coming from, we are then more likely to see a situation where what's happening on the front lines in Ukraine is going to repeat itself, so that there is a very static battlefield that resembles World War I-style war of attrition.

When I make this argument, I often get the response that things would be different between NATO and Russia because NATO has a much stronger air force and could use that to gain air superiority along the front line. So therefore, the argument is we should be careful about applying the experiences from Ukraine to a NATO context.

And it's true, traditionally, Western doctrine has relied heavily on air power. We can say that the Russian approach has traditionally focused more on artillery to deliver firepower, whereas Western countries in NATO have leaned on air power to achieve the same results.

And it's also true that if we just look at the numbers, then Western countries have much bigger air forces than Russia. Even without counting the United States, European countries still have, on paper, many more aircraft than Russia and therefore have many advantages in the air war.

I do think, though, that it's dangerous to assume that just because European countries have these aircraft that we can avoid the attritional style of war that Ukraine is dealing with now. It's risky to believe that we can beat Russia without taking heavy casualties or ending up in the kind of static situation that drones tend to create.

I'm going to mention a couple of reasons for that. The first thing I will say is that we need to be careful not to fall into what some people call the short war fallacy. That's the assumption that the war is going to be short and won within, say, a couple of months. So attrition isn't really an issue that you need to deal with. The idea is that the forces that you have at the outset of the war are what will determine the outcome.

This is, unfortunately, how long wars tend to begin, that politicians think that it's going to be a short war. And then it turns out that things are more complicated than that, and suddenly you're stuck in a long grinding war instead. Even if the European countries were able to establish some kind of air dominance in the early stages of a war, I think it's really important to ask ourselves, how are we going to sustain that in the long run? What aircraft are we going to use for this, not on day 10, but on day 100, or after six months, or after three years?

Because if we're only able to establish air superiority along the front line for a limited number of weeks, then what are we going to do if Russia can continue for longer than that? Russia is pretty good at handling losses and still managing to keep pushing forward.

We absolutely need to assume that Russia will manage to shoot down some of our aircraft. We also have to expect that some planes will need to be taken out of service for other reasons like maintenance, things like that. And on top of that, in the West, we have a major problem that we don't have large enough stockpiles of munitions. It's not enough to just have the aircraft if we only have munitions for a few weeks or months. And then after that, we can't maintain the pressure on the front line.

Justin Brunk over at RUSI has written a very nice policy paper about the state of European air power and the problems we'd face in a war with Russia if we don't have support from the U.S. Air Force. I'm going to link to that in the video description if you want to read it. But he has a long list of shortcomings that the European countries will need to address.

So that is my first problem with the assumption that just because we have more air power in Western Europe, a war between us and Russia would look very different from the one that Ukraine is fighting right now. I think it's an argument that is essentially based on the short war fallacy. And if things don't magically work out in a way where we will win the war within a matter of weeks, then we're going to be in deep trouble.

The second reason I don't think that having larger air forces will solve the problem of drones is that it misses the perspective of what these aircraft and drones actually do. Because to a large extent, they actually do the same thing.

When you have fighter aircraft engaged in the task of supporting forces that are fighting on the ground, then that's called close air support. It's one of the tasks that air forces can perform. But if you look at what the drones are doing, I think that could also accurately be described as close air support. To a large extent, they're doing exactly the same things that fighter jets would be doing if they were circling the skies over the battlefield.

The fighter jets, of course, carry bigger bombs than most of the drones that are currently in use. But we're actually moving in that direction. We're increasingly seeing larger drones being used also on the front line. For example, we've recently seen the Russians start using Shahed drones more on the front line. These drones are equipped with sensors that are needed to break through the electronic warfare defenses, and they have visual guidance systems and communication links back to the operator. So we already have drones on the front line that can carry a very large payload.

So, I would make the argument that what we're seeing in Ukraine isn't a lack of air power on the front line, but rather it's that both sides have amazing air power on the front line. We're seeing coverage of the sky with units providing close air support to an extent that's never been seen in warfare before. It's being carried out by drones instead of traditional manned aircraft, but the effect on the ground is largely the same.

Are drones then as good as fighter jets? No. Fighter jets are definitely more capable, especially in bad weather conditions. Drones have a lot of weaknesses. They don't handle bad weather very well and might not be able to fly at all. So obviously, there are things that that fighter jets do better than drones.

But the advantage that drones have is their quantity and the low price, which to a large extent can compensate for the fact that, of course, individually, a fighter jet is better than an FPV drone. You can have so many of them that you can cover the entire front line most of the time. You can even have enough drones to use them as close air support assets that are hunting down individual enemy soldiers. And you just can't have that many fighter jets. So advantages and disadvantages.

So that is the second reason why I don't think that having more fighter jets is going to solve the problem that European countries face with drones changing the dynamic in the land war.

If the essential problem is that Russia has access to almost unlimited close air support through their drones, then us adding close air support fighter jets on top of that isn't really going to change all that much. I don't see how we would be able to break down their drone capabilities just by circling with fighter jets above the battlefield because the Russian drone operators are already used to working in areas with contested air spaces where they are constantly being threatened by the enemy's closed air support units.

So these are my two arguments for saying that even though we in the West have much stronger air forces than Ukraine does, we still need to take the drone threat seriously. First, I don't think that the Western European countries would be able to sustain an air campaign against Russia beyond the initial phases of the war.

And second, I think that even if we manage to gain some level of air superiority along the front line, it doesn't necessarily change the fundamental challenges that drones present. Russia would still be able to operate its drones, even with our fighter jets flying overhead. So, they could also continue providing close air support, which would likely lead to the same kind of static situation that we're currently seeing in Ukraine.

So I think it's really important that we take the drone revolution seriously and that we start learning from Ukraine's experiences.

Okay, I will end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, then please give it a like. And also, remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon so you will get notified when I upload new videos. And if you want to support the channel, you can subscribe to my newsletter and get access to some bonus videos over on www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I will see you again next time.