Drones

A stray thought of my own while watching Iranian drones tracing fiery paths over the Gulf, a stray quote from Ukraine and the background rumble of uncertainty about Britain’s Defence Investment Plan, have set my mind racing. My conclusion is at the same time obvious yet unnerving. As a European power, we have been watching the Ukraine war from almost the front row, but it has seemed a world away. Nightly on television we’ve seen Russian and Ukrainian attack drones streaking through the sky, half-reminiscent of a grisly firework display. From our armchairs we’ve read about how this conflict is turning into a competition between drone capabilities.

When Donald Trump unveiled plans for a counter-drone installation on the roof of the new White House ballroom, critics called it theater. They may be right about the installation. But they are wrong about the threat.  I have watched the character of warfare change faster in the past four years than in the previous forty. In Ukraine, a one-way attack drone that costs a few hundred dollars routinely destroys Russian armored vehicles worth millions. Both sides now field these systems by the hundreds of thousands. Entire stretches of the front are governed not by artillery or air superiority in the traditional sense, but by small, expendable aircraft that soldiers can carry in rucksacks and launch from tree lines.

Last month, a mysterious drone swarm led to a lockdown at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Nothing was damaged and none of the 40 B-52 bombers or their cruise missiles were hit. At least not this time. But modern war no longer starts with an open attack. Instead we see hybrid actions: cyberattacks, information and psychological operations, GPS disruptions, damage to undersea communication cables and, increasingly, drone incursions into military sites and critical infrastructure. There is rarely a formal declaration. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the largest war in Europe since the Second World War, was labelled a “special military operation.

Ever since World War Two, America’s aircraft carrier fleets have served as imposing instruments of imperial power, roaming the oceans to cow recalcitrant nations into obedience. Favored by the Trump administration for this purpose, current experience indicates their day is done thanks to the proliferation of anti-ship missiles and the increasing ubiquity of drones. In America’s last Middle Eastern war but two, against the Yemeni Houthis in 2025, the carrier USS Harry S.Truman, complete with its attendant escorts, was driven into retreat, leaving antagonists in control of the Red Sea. On one occasion, the carrier’s desperate maneuver to avoid a Houthi drone caused an $80 million Hornet jet fighter to slide off the deck and topple into the sea.

Elon Musk’s influence on the federal government has reached new heights, with a memo going out to millions of federal employees with a simple message: get on board or take a permanent, (and expensive!) paid vacation.The Trump administration just sent a DoGE-infused ultimatum to much of the federal workforce: opt in to working in your office or take our buyout. According to the White House, “We’re five years past Covid and just 6 percent of federal employees work full-time in office.” President Donald Trump and Musk have made it clear that a return to in-person work is nonnegotiable. The ultimatum, described in a post as “a fork in the road,” would bring the federal government in-line with where the private sector has been moving in recent months and years: back to the office.

ABC News will pay Donald Trump $15 million to settle a defamation case the president-elect filed against the media outlet after one of its star anchors made false statements about him. This past March, anchor George Stephanopoulos repeatedly stated on air that Trump was “found liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll civil case during an interview with Representative Nancy Mace. Stephanopoulos said, “judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape” when asking Mace, a sexual assault survivor, if she had misgivings about Trump’s alleged abuse of women. A jury in the E. Jean Carroll case explicitly rejected the woman’s claims that Trump had raped her, instead reaching the conclusion that he had sexually abused her.

The nightly news is replicating Orson Welles’s 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds, which scared Americans by describing an invasion of space aliens. Listeners who tuned into the broadcast a little late didn’t hear the disclaimer that it was fiction. Now, they are tuning in on time and hearing real broadcasts about mysterious objects flying over our skies. And people are asking the same questions they asked long ago, “What are those things?” They have heard the government’s disclaimers, but they are not sure whether to believe them.  The public is frightened, and bland reassurances from Washington aren’t helping.

The West is struggling to confront the modern military technologies of Russia, Iran and China. A year and a half of the war in Ukraine has proved it. Iran has exported cheap Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to Russia, and they have been used to terrorise Ukrainians. Putin appears ready to invest further in procuring thousands more. Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, said this week that, in response, the British Army wants to create regiments of kamikaze drone pilots. He's right to do so. Iran’s drones are cheap to make, estimates say around £15,000 each, but the air defences needed to shoot them down are far more expensive.