By some estimates, 60 to 70 % of casualties in Ukraine now come from drones — low-cost, disposable first-person view drones piloted from miles away. They dive into trenches, slip via home windows, and snake into hatches of armored autos. The battlefield’s oldest insurance coverage coverage — cowl, concealment, or braveness would possibly prevent — is collapsing. This isn’t a tactical shift — however somewhat the beginning of a navy revolution, tearing aside the previous guidelines of conflict. It’s not ready for written doctrine to disclose it, however is being etched by the murderous hearth within the drone-choked skies above the entrance traces in Ukraine.
What’s unfolding is greater than a brand new tactic — it’s a systemic rupture within the conduct of recent warfare. First-person view drones are unleashing essentially the most important transformation in land warfare for the reason that rise of the Spanish tercio within the sixteenth century. Simply as firepower reshaped European warfare by influencing the creation of recent formations just like the tercio, first-person view drones power armies to reorganize, rethink, and relearn the way to combat and survive. Trendy armies ought to now understand that they’ll create their very own Twenty first-century tercios by inserting drones into each infantry formation right down to the bottom stage. Those that fail to remodel to adapt to this navy revolution won’t simply lose battles — they are going to be shredded on the battlefield and endure whole defeat in conflict.
The Authentic Revolution: The Third Spanish Tercio
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the appearance of the Spanish tercio ushered in a navy revolution. The tercio was not solely a tactical formation but additionally represented a change within the employment of violence. By integrating the standard staple of infantry formations armed with pikes and swords with the rising energy of gunpowder weapons such because the early musket referred to as the arquebus, the tercio solid a dominant power that reigned over European battlefields for almost a century. The arquebus alone was unreliable and gradual, however when supported by dense formations and mixed arms techniques, it reshaped how wars had been fought. This wasn’t only a shift in techniques — it was a full-scale navy revolution that demanded standing armies, centralized management, and new techniques of doctrine, logistics, and taxation.
By combining blocks of pikemen with traces of arquebusiers, the tercio fused shock and firepower right into a system able to dominating the battlefield. It departed from the muscle-fueled power of medieval warfare and embraced a brand new period pushed by chemical vitality — gunpowder. The tercio demonstrated that warfare was now not solely about uncooked braveness or a cavalry cost however the organized fusion of males and expertise united to unleash a new period of lethality. Infantry with out firearms weren’t solely defeated — they had been butchered.
As we speak, we’re witnessing one other navy revolution, pushed not by muskets however by machines. First-person view drones are altering the calculus of battle, inserting surveillance and precision strikes within the arms of infantry squads. Just like the arquebus, they’re tactically fragile however strategically revolutionary, and when built-in into trendy formations, they’re reshaping warfare. The tercio’s genius was not simply its weapons however its integration with present infantry formations. The Spanish tercio taught us that victory belonged to those that mastered the system, not simply the weapon. As we speak, first-person view drones demand the identical rethink. Whoever masters this integration first on a large scale will maintain a big benefit on the battlefield.
Some could argue that first-person view drones are merely the new tactical artillery, providing a less expensive, quicker means to ship a strike. Nonetheless, this analogy overlooks the size of the shift. Artillery operates in a linear, pre-planned method, pounding coordinates. In distinction, drones hunt. They chase warmth signatures via home windows, dive into trenches, and strike from angles no mortar ever may. This isn’t only a new supply system — it’s a new predator on the battlefield, enabling dynamic and networked lethality. First-person view drones do greater than merely ship results — they’re actively reshaping how combatants see, transfer, and survive on the battlefield.
From 2025 on, floor forces with out drones are extraordinarily weak. They’ll be hunted from the sky, tagged by sensors, and carved up by fearless machines. The previous tercio was solid in iron, flesh, and gunpowder. The brand new tercio is constructed by pairing people with drones — melding instinct with machine precision. And identical to earlier than, those that fail to adapt would be the first to fall.
Defining Army Revolution
Historians outline a navy revolution not just by inventing a brand new weapon, however by its ripple impact throughout techniques, group, doctrine, and technique. These revolutions happen when societies are compelled to rethink the very conduct of warfare. A navy revolution compels not solely new instruments but additionally new formations, technique, and the group of armies. As Michael Roberts argued, revolutions in warfare happen when new expertise compels a basic rethinking of how wars are fought and the way armies are shaped. Geoffrey Parker prolonged this view, exhibiting how improvements like gunpowder and fortifications triggered huge modifications in siege warfare, logistics, and state capability. Clifford Rogers added an additional layer, suggesting that true navy revolutions erupt not from linear innovation, however from bursts of disruptive change that power the reorganization of whole navy techniques.
What we’re witnessing will not be merely innovation or gradual evolution — it’s a disruptive shift that fully rethinks how wars are fought, how forces are structured, and the way states put together for battle. Army revolutions don’t happen solely because of the introduction of weapon techniques. The important lesson is that this: a navy revolution occurs not when a weapon is invented however when that weapon reshapes the very logic of conflict. Innovation tweaks the instruments, whereas revolution rewires the system.
We at the moment are on the fringe of one other such rupture. First-person view drones, and the networks that allow them, characterize not simply tactical innovation, however the seeds of systemic transformation. As Christian Brose argues in The Kill Chain, the U.S. navy’s dominance has lengthy rested on beautiful, high-cost platforms — tanks, stealth fighters, plane carriers — every costing tens of millions or billions of {dollars} to construct and keep. First-person view drones invert that mannequin. For a fraction of the associated fee, small, clever, networked machines are starting to problem the supremacy of the standard military-industrial complicated.
This isn’t nearly procurement. It’s about what sort of state equipment conflict calls for. Because the tercio required a brand new fiscal and bureaucratic basis, so too would possibly drone warfare. The protection financial system could shift from centralized manufacturing of some elite techniques to mass manufacturing of 1000’s of low-cost, disposable platforms. Our present infantry and armored formations can also be on borrowed time. Simply as World Battle I shattered the utility of massed regiment and division prices, drone warfare could render giant, typical brigade formations out of date — too seen, too static, and too gradual. The brigade, as soon as the constructing block of recent maneuver, could come to be seen as outdated as a Napoleonic line.
Briefly, if first-person view drones are extra than simply instruments — if they’re altering what it means to see, survive, and strike — then we aren’t witnessing an innovation. We’re seeing a navy revolution.
The Tercio
The rise of the Spanish tercio within the early sixteenth century marks one such second: when the appearance of the arquebus, a weapon gradual to fireside and weak by itself, was fused into a bigger system of pike and shot that dominated battlefields for over a century. The lesson right here is that weapons don’t rework conflict alone; the system that arises because of the new weapon applied sciences does. The tercio was not only a formation; somewhat, it was a doctrine, a coaching system, and a state-backed engine of conflict that dominated European battlefields for over a century.
The tercio represented a complete adaptation: it remodeled not solely weapons but additionally formations, doctrine, and state assist constructions. It mixed firepower with cohesion. It made conflict deadlier and extra organized. As we speak, we’re witnessing an preliminary form of transformation on the battlefield in Ukraine influenced by first-person view drones.
The Spanish tercio didn’t merely plug a brand new weapon into an previous system. As an alternative, it constructed a brand new system round a brand new actuality. That’s what makes it the proper analogy for this second. First-person view drones are tactically fragile, identical to the arquebus, however when networked with infantry, sensors, and oblique hearth, they rework the whole grammar of fight. The problem now isn’t just to adapt to drones, however somewhat to arrange round them. That’s what the tercio did. And that’s what the brand new first-person view drone tercio can do once more.
As students like Michael Horowitz and Stephen Peter Rosen have illustrated, new applied sciences hardly ever rework warfare on their very own. What issues is whether or not militaries can reorganize round them. The arquebus required the doctrine and formation of the tercio. Equally, first-person view drones demand new operational ideas, new power constructions, and new management keen to interrupt from legacy pondering. As Horowitz places it, states that undertake a navy innovation however fail to vary the best way they set up to make use of it could spend some huge cash with little repay. This isn’t only a take a look at of expertise, it is usually a take a look at of institutional creativeness.
This isn’t only a case of historic comparability. The tercio helps us perceive in the present day’s second as a result of it exhibits how novel applied sciences just like the arquebus then, or the first-person view drone now develop into revolutionary solely when embedded into techniques that rewire how conflict is fought.
Ukraine: The Eye That Kills
Nowhere is the transformative energy of first-person view drones clearer than in Ukraine. What started as an improvised adaptation of hobbyist drones has advanced into a brand new fight doctrine — one being written in actual time by infantry items on the lowest ranges, not generals. Drones which had been the instruments of extremely skilled Air Power pilots working from safe bases, have moved to the squad stage of infantry forces. As we speak, first-person view drones are being wielded by the infantry of the road. They’re low-cost, quick, and lethal. Maybe in Ukraine, we’re witnessing the reemergence of the tercio, however as an alternative of pikes and the arquebus, there are infantry squads with their first-person view drones.
This shift marks greater than a tactical adaptation. It suggests a deeper reorganization of warfare, akin to the rise of the tercio within the sixteenth century. Then, the arquebus was a fragile however disruptive weapon that, when embedded in a disciplined formation with pikes and supported by state infrastructure, redefined how battles had been fought. Now, as an alternative of pikes and arquebuses, we see infantry squads networked with first-person view drones, radios, and tablets improvising new formations, new kill chains, and new rhythms of maneuver. What’s rising in Ukraine isn’t just a brand new toolset, however the early scaffolding of a brand new doctrine. Maybe we aren’t simply witnessing the reemergence of the tercio — we’re witnessing the beginning of its successor.
Ukrainian and Russian troops alike now communicate of the skies as haunted by fixed, intimate threats. One combatant put it merely: “It feels as if there are a thousand snipers within the sky.” These drones are greater than eyes but additionally executioners. Operators fly them into hatches of armored autos, via home windows of barracks, and down trench traces to ship explosive payloads straight on the weak factors of enemy formations.
By some estimates, drones now account for 60 to 70 % of broken and destroyed Russian techniques within the Ukraine conflict. The normal thought of a “secure” place — behind cowl, in a trench, or in a forest — has evaporated. The battlefield is open, observable, and harmful. First-person view drones’ mere sight or sound will ship infantry and autos alike scurrying for security. Their presence alone is maybe the new suppressive hearth of the Twenty first century.
In Ukraine, being seen by a drone is typically a dying sentence. Drones not solely hunt for targets but additionally stalk and relay goal coordinates to mortar, artillery, or missile batteries. The second that quiet buzz overhead spots enemy combatants, an invisible clock begins ticking. The time it takes for oblique hearth to reply could range. However as soon as a drone sees a goal, the coordinates of its place ripple down the kill chain and shortly convey an orchestra of metal rain.
To counter this deadly risk, forces have begun draping nets, digging deeper, or utilizing anti-drone weapons. However these are momentary options. As Ukrainian commanders word, adaptation is now not sufficient — transformation is required. The battlefield has modified, and so ought to our methods and techniques. These drones aren’t merely additive — they’re transformative. The battlefield has modified form. What was as soon as “no man’s land” between trenches is now a drone kill zone, patrolled by flying munitions that loiter, observe, and strike with terrifying accuracy. If the enemy sees you, they repair you. In the event that they repair you, they kill you.
Precision Dying, Mass Produced
The primary-person view drone isn’t only a weapon however somewhat the democratization of airpower. Low cost, quick, and brutally efficient, it’s turning into to the Twenty first century what the AK-47 was to the Twentieth: a software of worldwide violence that rewrites the foundations of conflict. However in contrast to the AK, it doesn’t want line-of-sight, energy, or braveness. First-person view drones are a part of a broader shift towards exact mass functionality techniques like loitering munitions, small unmanned aerial techniques, and extra conventional drones just like the Shahed which might be quickly increasing the vary and persistence of battlefield surveillance and strike functionality.
Within the final century, a combatant may belief that terrain would possibly save him — that cowl, darkness, or distance would possibly provide survival. Trenches, forests, and metropolis blocks could possibly be used as shields. The primary-person view drone has shattered that religion. That is the revolution: firepower has gone viral. Anybody should buy the power to see, hunt, and kill at a distance for a number of hundred {dollars}. What as soon as belonged to states now matches in a backpack. What as soon as required an airstrip now launches from a ditch. Stephen Biddle’s “trendy system” emphasised dispersion, cowl, concealment, and mixed arms integration to outlive on the battlefield however drones are rewriting these guidelines. If low-cost, disposable platforms can penetrate cowl and find hidden troops in actual time, then even the fashionable system could also be cracking beneath the strain of pervasive, networked lethality.
From First-Individual View to Deadly Autonomy: The Coming Drone Blitzkrieg
The Spanish tercio dominated European battlefields for almost a century — not due to a single weapon, however as a result of it fused rising expertise (the arquebus) with revolutionary operational artwork. Nonetheless, like each benefit in navy historical past, its supremacy was solely momentary. The technological and operational benefit in conflict can’t be completely owned, solely leased. Adversaries are consistently engaged on the down fee on the subsequent lease of supremacy.
By the early seventeenth century, European commanders started creating techniques to dismantle the tercio’s dominance. They launched novel formations to maximise firepower, velocity, and maneuver, which shrank the dense pike infantry formations, and expanded the deadly potential of firepower. The way forward for navy energy dominance belonged to not those that wielded new weapons first however to those that built-in them greatest.
The identical sample is rising in the present day. First-person view drones have remodeled the small-unit combat by the fixed overhead risk. However that is solely the preliminary stage of first-person view drone-enabled fight.
The following stage will come quick with the appearance of tactical and scalable deadly autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons aren’t new — loitering techniques just like the Israeli Harpy or ship-based close-In weapon techniques have lengthy been capable of detect and destroy threats with out human enter. However what’s rising now’s totally different — small, cellular, coordinated swarms of deadly autonomous drones working on the tactical edge. These techniques will prolong human attain and function independently in coordinated swarms, able to shattering defenses and creating openings for fast exploitation. What we’re witnessing now’s drone skirmishing. What comes subsequent could look extra like a drone blitzkrieg — quick, autonomous, and brutally optimized for lethality at scale.
A Fearless Machine, An Autonomous Way forward for Lethality
The Spanish tercio was highly effective not solely as a result of it fused arms but additionally as a result of it drilled them. The tight geometry of its formation required self-discipline beneath hearth. Braveness was foreign money. In a future conflict with deadly autonomous drones, the human restrict of concern is being designed out of the system.
First-person view drones and autonomous drones will do way more than change techniques; they’re eroding the psychological foundations of conflict. Clausewitz wrote that combatants needed to overcome concern, fatigue, and confusion to perform. However drones really feel none of these items. Whereas your greatest operator tires, the machine stays regular. It doesn’t blink, it doesn’t panic, and it doesn’t neglect the goal.
Autonomous drones don’t want stay hearth coaching to develop braveness. The braveness and talent to kill with chilly, inhuman precision will likely be programmed in. As soon as imagined as assist, autonomous techniques will probably develop into the frontline instruments of offense and protection. Autonomous drone formations will likely be proof against suppression, proof against casualties, and proof against hesitation.
Machines don’t really feel concern, fatigue, or friction. They don’t endure stress beneath hearth. They don’t hesitate. As one combatant in Ukraine defined: “You’ll be able to disguise from artillery. However drones are a unique form of nightmare.”
That is the deeper revolution: We’re approaching conflict with out concern. That idea ought to give us pause. The primary-person view drone is its newest and most chilling manifestation. The soldier’s coronary heart as soon as set the tempo of battle: braveness, exhaustion, panic. The drone erases that rhythm. It doesn’t breathe or want water, and its endurance is just restricted by gasoline or batteries. The results of unleashing such fearless weapons on the battlefield could possibly be far extra devastating than we are able to think about. Certainly, humanity could come to overlook the restraining and mitigating results of concern, fatigue, and stress on the horrors of fight. Warfare that turns into extra relentless, offensively, means swarms that bloodbath with out mercy; defensively, it means attackers pay a butcher’s invoice in blood and machines.
Envisioning the New Infantry Platoon
Commanders within the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries confronted an analogous problem to the one we face in the present day: unleashing new firepower expertise on the battlefield. The Spanish tercio was the product of commanders like Gonzalo de Córdoba, who experimented with new formations to interrupt the dominance of medieval cavalry. Later, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Maurice of Nassau refined these concepts even additional, reorganizing their infantry to maximise battlefield firepower, mobility, and suppleness.
We stand at an analogous inflection level. Our primary constructing block, the infantry platoon, was designed for a world of rifles, machine weapons, and mortars. But when drones change the character of contact, how we set up and combat on the platoon stage also needs to adapt. As soon as we set up the way to combat with this new expertise on the platoon stage, we are able to construct the next-generation DNA of warfare on the operational and strategic ranges of conflict.
Constructing the Drone Squad
The rifle platoon of the long run would possibly combat in a totally totally different method. As an alternative of the standard three rifle squads and one weapons squad, tomorrow’s platoon may be constructed round two rifle squads for maneuver, one weapons squad, and a newly created 9-man drone squad devoted to controlling the airspace over the combat. This drone squad may break down into 4 two-man groups. One crew would deal with drone protection, countering enemy drones. Two hunter-killer groups would go on the assault, launching their drones to hunt targets, particularly enemy drone operators. One overwatch crew would function to scan the battlefield, feeding stay video to the platoon chief, and coordinating fires. Drones will likely be as important to the platoon combat as machine weapons or mortars. The infantry of tomorrow will do greater than maintain terrain. They may now additionally personal airspace.
Conclusion: The Subsequent Army Revolution
The battlefield is being reshaped — not by metal or braveness, however by low-cost drones and tireless surveillance. This new geometry of conflict — persistent imaginative and prescient, disposable strike platforms, and real-time kill chains — problem each assumption of the Twentieth-century navy system. Infantry and armored formations constructed for maneuver now face a sky of dying. The air is now not empty, however somewhat, it’s hostile terrain.
The drone period is way more than evolution or innovation. As an alternative, this can be a navy revolution. Blitzkrieg, provider warfare, railroads, and rifles had been highly effective improvements — however they operated inside present navy frameworks. They enhanced velocity, logistics, and vary, however didn’t require the whole rewiring of the battlefield’s core logic. Against this, drone warfare is forcing modifications not simply in how we combat, however in how we set up, practice, lead, and equip. It calls for new formations, doctrines, and methods of seeing and surviving conflict.
As previous navy historians have remarked, true navy revolutions power societies to rethink the conduct of conflict itself. Drones don’t simply plug into previous techniques — they dissolve them. What as soon as required regiments and airstrips now matches in a backpack. What as soon as demanded braveness now requires solely bandwidth.
It is a revolution.
The Spanish tercio taught Europe that techniques and expertise ought to evolve collectively. First-person view drones train us the identical classes quicker and with far deadlier penalties. Whether or not in trench networks or battlefields in Ukraine, previous formations are breaking down, and one thing new and ever extra terrifying is rising of their place.
That is now not a science fiction prophecy of future conflict. As an alternative, it’s the actuality of conflict in the present day.
The lesson of the tercio is that when new weapons demand new formations, techniques, and methods, those that adapt survive, and people who don’t die. We live in one other such second. First-person view drones aren’t an adjunct to trendy conflict however somewhat will develop into its new core. Whether or not within the arms of state formations or backpacked by insurgents, they’re altering what it means to combat, win, and die.
For hundreds of years, firepower rode on human shoulders. Now it rises weightless, unburdened by concern, untouchable by flesh.
We can’t anticipate the subsequent conflict to put in writing the doctrine. It’s already being drafted in blood within the skies over Ukraine. The machines are already studying. The one query is whether or not we’re.
Antonio Salinas is an active-duty U.S. Military officer and Ph.D. scholar within the Division of Historical past at Georgetown College. Following his coursework, he’ll train on the Nationwide Intelligence College. Salinas has 26 years of navy service within the Marine Corps and the U.S. Military, the place, on this capability, he led troopers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s the writer of Siren’s Tune: The Attract of Battle and Boot Camp: The Making of a United States Marine.
Jason P. LeVay teaches joint doctrine on the U.S. Military Command and Basic Employees School at Fort Leavenworth and is a doctoral scholar within the Safety Research program at Kansas State College. He earned his undergraduate diploma from the College of Washington and holds graduate levels from Yale College and the Nationwide Intelligence College.
The views and opinions introduced herein are these of the authors and don’t essentially characterize the views of the U.S. Military, the Protection Division, or any a part of the U.S. authorities. The looks of, or reference to, any industrial services or products doesn’t represent Military or Protection Division endorsement of these services or products. The looks of exterior hyperlinks doesn’t represent Military or Protection Division endorsement of the linked web sites, or the data, services or products therein.
Picture: Midjourney
