Drone tactics to break positional deadlock
Everything was invented once. Once upon a time in the First World War, rapid-fire artillery and machine guns stopped the front and made the war a bloody positional meat grinder. Breaking through the front with infantry and holding the front with infantry became prohibitively expensive and virtually impossible. But the British and French created new types of equipment - tanks and aircraft.
Initially, tanks and aircraft played a supporting role and were commanded by infantry commanders who were given the equipment to reinforce them. The new equipment strengthened the troops, but it did not allow them to break through the front and inflict many times greater losses on the enemy. And after heavy defeats, the Allies realised that new means of warfare should be of independent rather than auxiliary importance. That is, tanks and aircraft should not be assigned to the infantry, but rather, for the best interaction and maximum use of equipment, the infantry's actions should be subordinated to the units that used the new equipment. And then the British and French decided to change the organisation, management and tactics of using new combat vehicles. Special tank and aviation tactical formations were created and given independent tasks, and operations began to be planned based on tactics that were optimal for tanks and aircraft.
As soon as the most convenient conditions were created for the massive use of combat vehicles, as soon as infantry commanders began planning actions primarily for the use of equipment and precision strikes, rather than assaulting with infantry and artillery shelling at coordinates, the front was broken through.
The positional strategy came to an end, as the massive use of tanks and aircraft resumed tactical manoeuvre on the battlefield.
The independent tactics of the new military equipment made it possible to solve the key task of the war of attrition - to reduce the losses of their infantry and sharply increase the losses of the enemy's infantry. The breakthrough of the front with the equipment began to cause more losses to the defence forces than to the attacking forces.
Drones have become the core of a new combat order on the modern battlefield. Planning for drone operations, enemy drone countermeasures, and communications is the basis of tactics.
Drones should not follow people, but people should follow drones.
To implement drone tactics, it is necessary to create independent drone tactical groups that will build control and interaction with other combat components and allow the use of drones in mass.
Drones, not people, should hold the front and break through the front. Controlling the frontline is not about sending people to landings, but about the frontline of drones, anti-drone systems, sensors and communications. We have both the resources and the strength to do this.
Over the past year and a half, I have repeatedly raised the issue of creating special tactical drone groups at the front. Because there are those who are already showing results.
Month after month, we have to talk to people in the government about the creation of a tactical drone group. Zaluzhnyi has heard about it for a long time, and the new head of the Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, knows about it, and the information has been passed on and presented repeatedly, and some members of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff have even travelled to the front to get acquainted with the tactics. The leaders are saying the right things, and they are attending drone exhibitions, and they have even started purchasing drones at the state level, and they have even created unmanned systems forces.
But there is no massive use of drones on the frontline, and only because there is a serious underestimation of the role of drones in leadership. We are utilising the capabilities of our drone units by 10 per cent, because new tactics and equipment simply cannot be applied without organisation, management and planning.
The only way to continue the war and achieve victory is to create a front of drones, anti-drone systems, sensors, and high-precision weapons. Not sometime in the future, but right now, while we still have people capable of repelling all assaults with their heroism and character. Drone tactics should not be invented, but created on the basis of successful actions and examples of massive use of drones and anti-drones. And we have those who can set such an example right now. We need solutions.
Yurii Butusov, Censor. NET
