On at present’s battlefields, drones are undeniably deadly. They kill with precision, form motion throughout the battlespace, and impose a continuing psychological presence. Their hum has change into synonymous with fashionable fight, and fight footage from Ukraine seems to recommend that their sound is a defining function of Twenty first-century battle. Analysts and policymakers more and more communicate of drones as transformational weapons as they seem to have essentially altered the character of floor fight
However historical past urges warning.
In Rethinking Army Historical past, Jeremy Black cautions in opposition to technological determinism, suggesting to us that “the age of cavalry was actually the age of unhealthy infantry — a political, not a technological, phenomenon.” Based on historians like Black and Stephen Morillo, cavalry didn’t dominate medieval battlefields as a result of it was inherently superior. It dominated as a result of the Roman establishments that after produced disciplined mass infantry had collapsed.
The query we face at present shouldn’t be whether or not drones matter — they clearly do. We search right here to acknowledge the real innovation of recent unmanned programs — their fast iteration, accessibility, and integration into kill chains as soon as reserved for states now exists on the squad degree. Nevertheless, innovation doesn’t essentially represent a revolution. And in making this argument, we’re revising a few of our earlier views. The actual query is whether or not their obvious dominance alerts a real revolution in army affairs or if it merely exposes extra acquainted points: institutional failure, fragile maneuver tradition, and the dearth of mixed arms.
Historical past means that when armies falter, new weapons typically rise to compensate: not as a result of they rework battle, however fairly as a result of they expose the weaknesses of these preventing it.
Why did Cavalry Dominate in Medieval Europe?
Why cavalry appeared to dominate European warfare from the late Roman interval by means of the Center Ages has lengthy tempted technological explanations. Older historiography pointed to the stirrup, arguing that it reworked the horse right into a secure weapons platform and unified rider and mount right into a shock drive able to decisive motion with the couched lance. On this telling, cavalry rose as a result of expertise made it superior.
Trendy scholarship is much much less satisfied.
Whereas the stirrup did improve rider stability and facilitated sure preventing strategies, it explains remarkably little concerning the broader ascent of cavalry over infantry. The stirrup appeared in Europe someday between the sixth and tenth centuries, however its presence alone can not account for battlefield outcomes. Effectively-trained infantry repeatedly defeated stirrup-equipped cavalry. Swiss pikemen, utilizing formations and ways essentially just like the Macedonian phalanx, shattered mounted elites throughout Europe. Anglo-Norman knights themselves typically dismounted to battle. Expertise, briefly, was not decisive.
Cavalry’s actual benefits lay elsewhere. It excelled in pursuit, exploitation, and the administration of retreat, which have been crucial in pre-modern warfare. Extra importantly, cavalry was a profoundly psychological weapon. Its success depended much less on bodily destruction than on worry. Infantry that broke formation, misplaced cohesion, or panicked quickly turned susceptible, as scattered troopers could possibly be ridden down and killed with ease.
For infantry to stand up to a cavalry cost, it needed to be extra than simply armed. It wanted to be dense, disciplined, and psychologically resilient. That required belief, drill, cohesion, and confidence in comrades to carry the road. Such qualities couldn’t be improvised on the battlefield. As a substitute, they have been the results of sustained coaching and institutional help.
And that is the place medieval infantry faltered.
Drill and self-discipline can solely be imposed by a government sturdy sufficient to assemble massive our bodies of males and rich sufficient to keep up them as soon as skilled. The breakdown of the Western Roman Empire destroyed exactly that capability. As Vegetius lamented even earlier than Rome’s fall, infantry coaching had already decayed. With out common pay, standardized instruction, or logistical depth, the infantry misplaced its offensive functionality and have become unreliable even in protection.
Cavalry forces and knights didn’t dominate as a result of they have been inherently superior. They dominated as a result of the infantry turned worse.
Feudal societies may maintain small numbers of well-equipped mounted warriors certain by private obligation, however they might not generate or preserve the mass disciplined infantry formations that after anchored Roman energy. The age of cavalry was due to this fact not a technological revolution, however an institutional regression. Cavalry rose to prominence as a result of it crammed the vacuum left by the collapse of programs that after made infantry decisive.
When succesful infantry establishments re-emerged, most notably within the Swiss cantons, the stability shifted once more. Dense, disciplined infantry formations restored battlefield dominance with none technological breakthrough. What modified was not the weapon, however the establishment behind it.
The Fall of the Roman Legions: Institutional Collapse, not Tactical Innovation
The Roman defeat at Adrianople in 378 C.E. is usually remembered as a dramatic battlefield loss to Gothic forces. However its deeper significance lies not in ways, terrain, or expertise. Adrianople symbolized the erosion of a system. The defeat uncovered how far Roman army effectiveness had already decayed earlier than the battle was joined. The disaster was not sudden, however the fruits of long-term institutional hollowing.
The Roman legions have been extra than simply teams of troopers. They mirrored a fancy governmental system that oversaw taxation, logistics, standardized coaching, self-discipline, and command. When that system weakened, the legions didn’t simply lose battles: They disappeared. The legions relied on paperwork as a lot as braveness, and when the equipment of the state faltered, tactical unity naturally pale. What vanished wasn’t Roman braveness however Roman capability.
As imperial authority fractured within the West, Rome misplaced its capability to create massive, disciplined area armies. Recruitment turned localized and casual. Provide programs deteriorated and coaching requirements declined. What adopted was a transition that mirrored the political and institutional realities of the age. Army service more and more mirrored the affect of regional energy brokers fairly than the centralized state. Armies turned patchworks of models fairly than a unified instrument of state energy.
European warfare tailored to what was obtainable. Within the absence of state-sponsored mass infantry, violence was organized round feudal relationships. A small variety of extremely skilled mounted fighters — knights and men-at-arms — turned decisive. They didn’t dominate as a result of cavalry was a superior arm, however as a result of they confronted opponents missing cohesion, safety, and coaching. Feudal programs may help elite warriors certain by private obligation, however not the mass self-discipline wanted for infantry dominance. The battlefield more and more rewarded high quality over amount as a result of it may now not be organized successfully.
The so-called “age of cavalry” emerged not from innovation, however from absence. Cavalry crammed a vacuum left by the collapse of establishments that after made infantry dominant. This distinction issues. Weapons rose to compensate for weak spot, to not redefine battle itself. The prominence of cavalry was due to this fact a symptom, not a trigger, of transformation. It marked what states may now not do, fairly than what expertise instantly allowed them to realize.
Energy With out Belief: The Limits of the Russian Method of Battle
Russia’s fashionable army expertise illustrates this sample with specific readability. For many years, Soviet and Russian leaders have understood the significance of technological change and have repeatedly sought to modernize their forces in response to perceived revolutions in army affairs. The teachings of the 1991 Gulf Battle have been not misplaced on Moscow. Precision strike, fast maneuver, joint integration, and data dominance have been acknowledged as decisive options of recent fight.
What Russia struggled to internalize was that these capabilities relaxation on greater than platforms and firepower. They require establishments that domesticate belief, initiative, and decentralized decision-making beneath stress.
Trendy warfare amplifies these weaknesses. Precision fires, pervasive sensors, and contested airspace punish hesitation and reward initiative. Items that can’t disperse, adapt, and synchronize in actual time change into targets. Expertise can improve fight energy, but it surely can not substitute for belief between echelons or compensate for brittle command cultures.
This hole between technological aspiration and institutional capability helps clarify why Russia entered the battle in Ukraine with fashionable tools, formidable plans, and a idea of victory, but struggled to translate any of them into sustained operational victories.
Russian Battle Tradition Since 1945: Endurance With out Magnificence
Russia’s fashionable army historical past suits this sample uncomfortably properly. Since World Battle II, Soviet and later Russian forces have demonstrated a persistent capability to soak up punishment and proceed preventing — however typically by means of strategies that emphasize mass, firepower, and endurance over flexibility, initiative, and built-in maneuver. Tactical competence exists on the margins, however institutional adaptability has remained uneven.
Afghanistan revealed the boundaries of Soviet operational artwork outdoors a standard European setting. Soviet forces depended closely on artillery, airpower, and search-and-destroy missions, however struggled to mix intelligence, maneuver, and management in complicated human terrain. Adaptation primarily occurred amongst airborne and particular forces models, but it surely was gradual, fragmented, and inadequate to handle weak civil-military cooperation and inflexible command buildings.
Chechnya revealed related flaws at a sharper depth. Russian forces entered Grozny with poor reconnaissance, insufficient coordination between infantry and armor, and fragile command-and-control, leading to excessive losses in city fight. Whereas Moscow finally imposed management by means of overwhelming firepower and coercion, victory got here at the price of huge destruction, excessive casualties, and restricted institutional studying past the slender context of counterinsurgency by means of attrition.
Georgia in 2008 demonstrated Russia’s willingness to make use of drive quickly, but in addition highlighted enduring structural weaknesses. Tactical successes have been enabled by numerical benefit and Georgian unpreparedness fairly than by refined joint or mixed arms operations. After-action assessments revealed poor inter-service coordination, outdated communications, and restricted real-time command integration. These issues have been acknowledged inside Russian army reform efforts.
Crimea in 2014 appeared to mark a qualitative shift. Russian forces employed deniability, info operations, and fast seizure of key nodes with self-discipline and restraint, reaching political goals at minimal value. But Crimea was a permissive operation in opposition to a paralyzed state, requiring little sustained maneuver, contested logistics, or high-tempo mixed arms coordination. It demonstrated Russia’s ability at exploiting ambiguity — not its capacity to battle a contemporary, resisting opponent.
That check got here in 2022.
The Collapse of Russian Maneuver
Russia’s preliminary invasion of Ukraine uncovered deep institutional failures. The advance on Kyiv was operationally incoherent. Items outran logistics, infantry failed to guard armor, and fires have been poorly synchronized. It appeared that Russian command buildings proved brittle and centralized.
Moreover, Russian airpower failed to supply sustained shut help to floor maneuver. Regardless of possessing numerical and qualitative benefits within the air, Russia proved unable to combine aviation into advancing formations or to suppress Ukrainian defenses at scale. The consequence was a military advancing largely with out the air umbrella fashionable maneuver warfare assumes.
The Russian push towards Kyiv revealed an absence of coordination. It was velocity separate from mixed arms ways. Whereas the Russian Federation tried a daring airborne operation to seize Hostomel Airport, its ambition didn’t match its functionality. Its failures stemmed from its incapability to successfully combine follow-on floor maneuver and logistics right into a coherent system. On the bottom advance, Russian forces reached the town limits of Kyiv, however the burned-out remnants of armored automobiles alongside its edges uncovered fragile command buildings, weak cohesion, and an incapability to adapt as soon as the preliminary assault stalled. After the ahead armored models have been destroyed, a drive skilled in fashionable floor warfare would have modified its ways, dismounting infantry to clear city approaches and regain momentum earlier than sending in armor once more. Russian forces didn’t do that. Anti-tank guided missiles have been round because the Arab–Israeli wars, and they didn’t mark the tip of the tank period. Nonetheless, anti-tank missiles such because the Javelin are significantly efficient in opposition to armies that lack institutional competence. The wrecks outdoors Kyiv usually are not fossils predicting the demise of the tank, however fairly function the tombstones for a military that didn’t know how you can battle in the Twenty first-century battlefield.
This was not merely poor execution. It mirrored a deeper downside: Russia lacked the institutional capability to synchronize infantry, armor, fires, engineers, logistics, and airpower at scale. The consequence was paralysis. When Russia failed to realize a decisive victory, it resorted to attrition.
Staying Energy With out Operational Excellence
Russia’s endurance shouldn’t be underestimated. It continues to generate manpower, firepower, and maintain floor. However endurance shouldn’t be operational excellence. Nevertheless, because the failure of its early offensives, Russia has demonstrated little capability to conduct large-scale mixed arms maneuver. Breakthroughs are uncommon, localized, and dear. As a substitute, Russian forces have chosen positional warfare: digging in, fortifying, and buying and selling area for time.
This selection displays not technique however limitation. Russia fights under the anticipated commonplace of a contemporary nice energy. Its incapability to maneuver successfully has compelled it right into a defensive stance even when nominally on the offensive. It’s inside this static, attritional surroundings that drones have flourished.
Nevertheless, as fashionable army thinkers proceed to mirror on the ever-emerging classes from this ongoing battle, we should always all the time use warning earlier than cementing assessments, because the ash from this volcanic explosion of warfare has but to settle. Within the West, we should always take care about declaring what doing properly in fight even means. It’s doable that Western analysts, together with us, might have been too fast to evaluate Russia’s efficiency by means of a maneuver-centric, casualty-phobic lens. There may be, in actual fact, a risk that prime casualties and drone-enabled attrition and endurance, fairly than class, might come to more and more outline the character of recent fight.
Static Battlefields and the Drone’s Benefit
Drones thrive the place maneuver is proscribed, and airspace is contested erratically. Russia’s failure to maneuver and to determine air superiority has created a permissive surroundings for unmanned programs. The drones on the battlefields of Ukraine have been deadly. Nevertheless, with out efficient integration with doctrine and tradition, they seem to have contributed to a stalemate fairly than introducing a essentially new manner of battle.
With out a sustained air marketing campaign and floor maneuver to displace drone operators, Russian models stay uncovered. Fastened positions change into targetable and logistics nodes change into susceptible.
Ukrainian drones exploit these situations ruthlessly by scouting and placing at will. However they accomplish that as a result of Russian forces can not transfer, suppress, or combine the air area.
In opposition to a military able to maneuver and using conventional airpower, drones would possible stay harmful however restricted. They’d complement fight energy fairly than exchange lacking capabilities. Their effectiveness would depend upon integration fairly than substitution.
If future forces lose the flexibility to maneuver beneath fireplace, drones will seem decisive there as properly: not as a result of the expertise modified, however as a result of the establishments did.
The Counterfactual: When Lethality Meets Competence
If drones are thriving primarily as a result of they compensate for poor maneuver and institutional weak spot, then their results ought to look markedly completely different when employed in opposition to a drive that retains sturdy mixed arms integration, decentralized command, and adaptive troops. In opposition to such a drive, drones would stay deadly however far much less decisive. Their concentrating on home windows would shrink, their survivability would decline, and their operational results would change into episodic fairly than systemic.
Historical past suggests this sample shouldn’t be new. The English longbow demonstrated its lethality in opposition to French cavalry at Crécy in 1346, but a long time later, mounted assaults at Agincourt have been once more slaughtered beneath arrow fireplace. These defeats didn’t finish cavalry as a battlefield arm: They ended its repeated misuse. Longbowmen required particular situations — open floor, ready positions, and time to arrange — that disciplined opponents may deny by means of dislocation and fast maneuver. It’s by no means sensible to try to stay one’s arm into the wooden chipper in hopes of stopping it, no matter how sturdy a belligerent believes that arm is.
The character of drone fight is considerably related: harmful and chronic, however reliant on safe launch websites, management nodes, and sanctuaries. The world has witnessed the affect of first-person-view drones in static trench warfare. Nevertheless, there has not but been a drone-enabled assembly engagement through which opposing large-scale fight components make contact previous to the institution of mounted defensive positions.
A drive able to sustained fast maneuvering would possible displace drone operators, disable launch and management nodes, combine conventional airpower to problem the air area, and disrupt drone operator help zones. Drones would nonetheless increase reconnaissance and firepower, however they’d now not exchange lacking institutional capabilities. In opposition to a contemporary, well-trained, and well-led maneuver drive, drones would possible not seem revolutionary however would proceed to function lethal nuisances.
Drones as Signs, Not Causes
It’s past query that drones are of the utmost and deadly significance on the battlefield of at present. Nevertheless, it seems that drones are slowly and incrementally remodeling fight, additional reinforcing the purpose that — as army historical past has demonstrated — it’s institutional adaptation, not the arrival of technologically novel weapons, that determines revolutionary change on the battlefield. The temptation is to view drones as the motive force of this new battlefield actuality. However the proof suggests in any other case. Drones are thriving as a result of they compensate for institutional weak spot. They substitute for absent airpower, insufficient maneuver, and brittle command buildings. Their effectiveness is magnified not by novelty alone, however by the absence of programs that may usually constrain and combine them.
This mirrors earlier historic moments. Cavalry as soon as crammed the hole left by vanished legions. Drones seem to supply a way of decision-making when floor forces falter. In every case, expertise superior whereas establishments retreated.
The lesson shouldn’t be that drones are unimportant. It’s that their prominence might inform us extra about failure than transformation. What seems revolutionary might, on nearer inspection, be diagnostic.
Western thinkers must also be cautious of treating drone-enabled fight in Ukraine as a common fact. The character, constraints, and grammar of fight on this show mirror these of this battle. The relevant lesson noticed might not apply to all future wars.
The Stakes: Time, Establishments, and Trendy Floor Fight
New weapons take time to matter — not solely to construct and area them, however to transition from tactical novelties into devices of choice. The Russo-Ukrainian battle has demonstrated that succesful drone expertise has already arrived. Nevertheless, what stays unresolved is whether or not fashionable army establishments can successfully soak up them and deploy them successfully within the artwork of recent mixed arms maneuver warfare. Handgonnes and early cannon appeared on European battlefields within the mid-14th century, but they didn’t instantly rework warfare. Solely after a long time of experimentation and centuries of institutional adaptation — culminating in formations just like the Spanish tercio and later Dutch battalions — did firearms reshape how armies fought. Weapons arrive with instruction manuals, not with doctrine or the institutional habits required to make use of them decisively.
Drones might characterize the same second. Their lethality ought to ship tremors by means of fashionable army thought, however tremors usually are not earthquakes. Adaptation at present will proceed quicker than the lengthy transition from arquebuses to linear warfare, however it would nonetheless take time for unmanned programs to be built-in into the deeper grammar of maneuver, command, and mixed arms. Treating drones as a completed revolution dangers freezing drive design round untimely conclusions. The age of drone-enabled large-scale fight maneuver might come, but it surely has not but arrived.
Western militaries ought to proceed to check, prepare with, and use drones aggressively — however not lose sight of the basics of land, sea, and air fight. Drone-delivered munitions have confirmed lethal in opposition to particular person troopers, automobiles, and small models, however they don’t seem to be but able to destroying brigades, divisions, or corps. What can accomplish that are built-in mixed arms formations constructed round infantry, armor, fires, airpower, and — maybe most significantly — well-led, motivated, and disciplined troopers. Drones might hum overhead, however decisive Twenty first-century fashionable floor fight continues to be determined in blood, metal, and maneuver — and establishments that neglect that not often get a second lesson.
Past the world of standard fight, the affordability, portability, and concealability of drones make them particularly harmful instruments for irregular warfare. In contrast to conventional heavy weapons, drones could be cached, dispersed, and reassembled in city neighborhoods or distant rural terrain, permitting guerrilla forces to harass, surveil, and strike occupying armies at low value and chronic danger. On this context, drones threaten not decisive battlefield victory however endurance — complicating management, undermining safety, and stretching forces tasked with stabilization and governance. Western militaries ought to due to this fact spend money on doctrine, coaching, and creativeness for drone-enabled irregular warfare as properly.
Altering Our Thoughts
Our views on the character of drone warfare have modified over the previous yr, from seeing drones because the forefront of a army revolution to viewing them as a part of a extra cautious, institutional growth. In 2025, we made daring arguments in these pages and elsewhere. Like many army thinkers, we have been influenced by the stunning casualty numbers linked to drones and by the fixed stream of fight footage that made drone employment seem ever-present and transformative. As veterans of floor fight, the concept of looking, stalking, and fearless machines layered onto an already lethal battlefield felt new, lethal, and revolutionary.
What modified our considering was not the character of the Ukrainian battle itself however an understanding of the components which will have amplified the usage of drones inside it. Whereas getting ready for his doctoral complete exams at Georgetown — immersing himself within the breadth, depth, and context of army historical past over the previous 2500 years — one among us (Antonio) encountered a continuing fact, if such a factor exists within the annals of army historical past. Whereas weapons positively matter — whether or not made from stone, metal, rifles, tanks, or drones — historical past repeatedly exhibits that what issues most is who wields them, how they’re skilled, how they’re led, and whether or not supportive establishments exist to maintain them and combine their unleashed violence into coordinated motion. The battle in Ukraine underscores this lesson. Drones appear most important when maneuvering breaks down, mixed arms ways fail, and establishments can not adapt. The actual hazard in battle isn’t new weapons however the misguided perception that they’ll exchange establishments and the troopers they form.
The Hazard of Misreading Historical past
The rise of drones in Ukraine ought to give us pause: not as a result of it heralds a clear break with the previous, however as a result of it suits an previous sample. When establishments fail, weapons rise to compensate.
Drones haven’t but essentially modified the character of battle. As a substitute, maybe they’ve revealed the prices of poor maneuver tradition, weak infantry establishments, and the absence of mixed arms. They’ve uncovered what occurs when armies can not transfer, combine, or adapt.
If historical past teaches us something, it’s that revolutions in warfare are institutional earlier than they’re technological. The hazard lies not in drones themselves, however in mistaking signs for causes.
The age of drones might but arrive. However at present’s battlefield suggests one thing extra acquainted: the hum above a hole military.
Antonio Salinas is an energetic responsibility U.S. Military officer, professor of strategic intelligence on the Nationwide Intelligence College, and a Ph.D. pupil within the Division of Historical past at Georgetown College. Salinas has twenty-seven years of army service within the U.S. Marine Corps and Military as an infantry officer, an assistant professor within the Division of Historical past on the U.S. Army Academy, and a strategic intelligence officer, with operational expertise in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s the creator of Siren’s Track: The Attract of Battle, Boot Camp: The Making of a United States Marine, and Leaving Battle: From Afghanistan’s Pech Valley to Hadrian’s Wall.
Jason P. LeVay teaches joint doctrine on the U.S. Military Command and Common Employees School at Fort Leavenworth and is a doctoral pupil 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 offered listed here are these of the authors and don’t essentially characterize the views of the U.S. Military, the Division of Protection, or the U.S. authorities.
Picture: ArmyInform by way of Wikimedia Commons
