Drones or tanks? How to spend rising defense budgets

In this video, I address the ongoing revolution in warfare caused by unmanned technology, and what NATO countries need to consider when they procure new equipment. I find that many people still haven't fully understood how disruptive this new technology is, and how significant its consequences will be for future warfare.

Watch the video and share your comments here. Or you can read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Transcript:

Lately, there's been a lot of discussion about how Western militaries should prepare for a war against Russia, and what types of equipment they should invest in now that defense budgets are increasing. Should the money be spent on traditional platforms such as tanks, fighter jets, and large warships, or should the focus be on new technologies, such as the drones and unmanned systems that have proven their worth in the war in Ukraine?

What I want to do in this video is offer a few points that I think are important to keep in mind when we make these decisions, because if Western militaries have the wrong focus and purchase the wrong equipment, the consequences can be catastrophic if there is an actual war with Russia. So let's talk about it.

With growing defense budgets in many countries, that naturally raises the question of how the money should be spent. The answer is not obvious, because while the threat is growing and countries see the need for increased defense spending, it's also clear that a revolution in military affairs is happening, driven by the technological developments we can see in the war in Ukraine.

That raises questions about whether the old types of equipment we would otherwise traditionally invest in are still relevant, or whether they've become obsolete, replaced by unmanned platforms and artificial intelligence. I obviously can't give precise answers on how the money should be spent in each country, but what I want to do in this video is offer a few points that I think are important to keep in mind when we have these discussions.

The first point is that it's important not to underestimate the consequences of the drone revolution. Unmanned technology is a revolution, and it's a revolution on the scale of the invention of the airplane or the invention of the tank. We don't want to be the ones still advocating for horse-mounted infantry twenty years after the invention of the tank. We want to be the ones who have the foresight to see what's happening and what's going to be needed in the future.

Drones are an invention on that scale. There's going to be a clear distinction between the time before and after the mass emergence of drones on the battlefield. It will require militaries to adopt this new technology, but it will also require that all doctrines be adjusted accordingly. Soldiers will need to learn how to fight alongside drones, and there will still be a place for soldiers on the front line. Manned platforms are not going to disappear, but their roles will change.

Fundamentally, drones have done two very important things on the front line. The first is that they've made the battlefield transparent. The element of surprise that used to be an advantage for the attacker has largely been neutralized by the defender's ability to monitor everything in real time.

Secondly, drones have brought down the price of firepower to a level where the overall amount of firepower that can be fielded in a war is much larger than it used to be. That means that in the age-old debate between attritional warfare and maneuver warfare, the pendulum is currently swinging toward attritional warfare.

That's going to challenge many Western militaries, because what pretty much all Western officers have learned in military academies is that maneuver warfare is superior to attritional warfare. But with the emergence of unmanned technology, that is no longer the case, and it's going to be difficult for many soldiers and officers to adjust to this new reality.

The way I think we need to understand this going forward is that there will be a division of labor between manned and unmanned platforms. We will need to use unmanned technology for the attritional part of the battle, and then, once the enemy's capabilities have been degraded, that can open the path for maneuver warfare. Because we will still need maneuver warfare — we will still need the ability to conduct offensive operations. That maneuver warfare can then be conducted with a mix of unmanned and manned platforms. But if we introduce manned platforms into the battle before the enemy has been sufficiently degraded, that will lead to disaster.

That leads to the second point I want to make, which is that future warfare is, to a large degree, going to be about attrition. This is simply a result of these systems becoming more affordable. Firepower is cheaper today than it used to be, and therefore countries are going to field more of it. That means that when we make procurement decisions, we need to consider attrition. We need to expect that the equipment we buy is going to be destroyed in the war, and that has consequences for which types of equipment it makes sense to buy.

In the past twenty-five to thirty years, Western militaries have largely transformed into organizations designed for expeditionary operations and counterinsurgency warfare. That's a kind of military reality where we expected to suffer very few casualties. If we bought, say, a hundred infantry fighting vehicles, we would expect to lose only very few of them. So it made sense to buy the best of the best. We could afford to go for the most expensive infantry fighting vehicle if it had some advantage over the second-best, because the priority was to equip the units deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq with the best possible equipment, and it mattered less what kind of equipment the units at home were using. It was also not a priority to have large reserves of these vehicles sitting in garages ready for mobilization.

That procurement mentality has to change. Now we need to think about quantity differently. We need reserves so that we can mobilize for war, and we must expect that much of the equipment we have when the war breaks out will be destroyed and will need to be replaced.

That is actually the third point: we need to be aware that the military we start the war with will not be the same military that wins the war. Although this might sound counterintuitive, we actually need to move beyond the tendency to think that we must build an army capable of defeating Russia in a war. What we need to build instead is a military that can ensure we get a good start to a war with Russia.

Some of the equipment we have when the war begins might be the same equipment we have when it ends, but a lot of it will not. So we need to start thinking about how to gain the capability to scale the production of military equipment, and to have the innovation processes that will enable us to stay technologically ahead of the enemy.

In peacetime, we build the army that will fight when the war begins. Then, during the war, as soon as it breaks out, we start producing the next army that will take over once the first one is used up. That's how you prepare for a war of attrition. And that's also why it's so important to embrace the revolution in unmanned technology — because it's much better if the first army that gets consumed mostly consists of unmanned technology. We would much rather have the Russians trading their soldiers for our robots than the other way around.

The fourth point I want to highlight is the revolution in long-range fires. The pace at which Russia can produce drones and missiles is overwhelming compared to Europe's current ability to defend against them. There is a lot of work going on, especially with Ukraine spearheading efforts to build effective and affordable missile defense systems, but there is a long way to go before all of Europe has anything resembling meaningful protection. That's the defensive side — we need to prepare for the long-range fight.

But just as importantly, Europe really needs to get its act together in terms of building offensive capability so it can also strike back. Far too few European countries actually have the capability to strike deep into Russia, and those that do have far too small a quantity of these long-range capabilities. You're not going to win a war if all you can do is defend yourself against the enemy's missiles. You really need something that can strike back, so you can take out production facilities and defeat Russia's war economy.

So it's important to understand that the revolution in military technology on the front line, in terms of drones and robots, is accompanied by an equally important revolution in long-range missile technology.

Finally, just to complicate things fully, the last point I want to make is that even though this new technology changes many things, it's not going to change everything. There will still be humans on the battlefield, and it's much better if they're transported in armored vehicles instead of civilian cars. If the armored vehicle is hit, it might get damaged, but the soldiers have a chance of surviving. So we will still need armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles.

We will also still need tanks. And there will be tasks that only infantry can solve, which cannot be solved by a robot — simply things like having the ability to communicate with people in a war zone. That's something you can really only do well through face-to-face human communication.

This discussion is especially relevant when we look at the maritime domain, because classical warships are extremely expensive, and at the same time the war in the Black Sea has shown that they're also very vulnerable. So the question is whether it makes sense to spend billions on a new frigate when you could get a ridiculous number of drones for the same price.

This is where it's important to keep in mind that the new technology also has limitations, and there are many things drones simply cannot do. Warfighting is not the only thing militaries do. Looking at European states broadly, they will face many future challenges that are not specifically high-intensity warfare, but other types of responsibilities where they need to use military assets to solve a task — or expeditionary operations where they need to deploy forces away from Europe to operate elsewhere in the world.

In those types of situations, you really need to bring something that is capable, that can make a difference in the operational area, and that can also sustain itself over time. That's why there will also be a future need for frigates and destroyers in European navies. Even though they are perhaps not the most suitable platforms to bring into the Baltic Sea if there is a war there, they are pretty much the only thing we have to deploy to situations like the Strait of Hormuz, or to counter-piracy operations, or whatever else we need to do around the world.

So it's going to be a challenge to find the right balance. On the one hand, we need to embrace the new technology. We need to understand that drone technology is revolutionizing warfare to an extent that requires us to reconsider pretty much everything, and we need to stay on top of this development. Otherwise we risk taking horrific casualties if we end up in a war with Russia.

But we also need to understand that drones, unmanned vehicles, and new technology are not going to solve everything. There is still a need for many of the old capabilities — either because we still need them in a war with Russia, where they will still play a role on the battlefield working alongside unmanned platforms in different ways, or because we need them for expeditionary operations or other types of missions around the world where we need our militaries to project power. We need to be able to send powerful capabilities that can operate independently and sustain themselves for a long period of time far away from Europe. And that is just not a drone. So we will need to find the right balance.

Okay, I'll end it here. If you found the video helpful or informative, please give it a like, and remember to subscribe to the channel and click the bell icon to get notifications when I publish new videos. If you want access to bonus videos and to support the channel, you can subscribe to my newsletter at www.logicofwar.com. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you again next time.