3 years of Ukraine footage just proved what Pentagon planners didn't want to admit: a $300 civilian drone with a $50 RPG warhead kills a $4 million tank.
Asymmetric warfare just went mainstream.
The data's insane. Both sides burn through tens of thousands of weaponized drones monthly.
Shotguns with birdshot became essential infantry kit because they're the cheapest counter.
Electronic jamming guns scramble drone signals. The whine of a quadcopter motor is now the most feared sound on the battlefield.
But flying drones are just the start. Ukraine's Magura V5 sea drones - carrying 1,400 lbs of explosives - are sinking Russian warships at a fraction of replacement cost.
The latest models mount anti-air missiles to kill helicopters hunting them. Unmanned ground vehicles with .50 cal machine guns are already deployed.
Russia's Iskander-M hypersonic missiles proved Patriot defense systems can't reliably stop them.
HIMARS was devastating until Russia learned to spoof the GPS guidance. Now it's a cat-and-mouse game where electronic warfare determines which weapons work.
Here's what changes everything: When cheap, mass-produced drones can swarm a $13 billion aircraft carrier strike group from air and sea simultaneously, the entire doctrine of naval power projection collapses.
When autonomous hunter-killer systems don't need human operators in range, troop concentrations become liability, not strength.
This is next:
Every military on earth is retooling right now. Tanks and artillery will be unmanned within 5 years tops.
AI-guided swarms become standard. Battlefields flood with radio jamming and microwave weapons.
The age of capital ships and massed armor ends - replaced by distributed networks of cheap, expendable platforms.
The implications haven't hit yet. Small nations and non-state actors now have access to weapons that can challenge superpowers.
The monopoly on high-end warfare just broke. Welcome to the era where a motivated engineer with $50K can build a weapons system that threatens billion-dollar assets.
Sources: DailyReckoning, ZeroHedge, DefenseScoop, Mario Nawfall
