Something to drone on about
Just last week, another headline grabbed attention: a drone dropping a bicycle to help an isolated Ukrainian soldier escape.
Well, I never. What next? Perhaps it's time for a little drone about drones because they really are everywhere.
A fascinating, and somewhat frightening, development is how drones are revolutionising modern warfare.
Will they one day rank alongside chariots, composite bows, phalanxes, heavy armour, Roman engineering, and the longbow of Agincourt? Could they match the impact of gunpowder (the death knell for castles) or muskets, artillery, bayonets, rifles, railroads, machine guns, and ironclad ships?
The modern accelerating pace of change is clear when you consider 20th century innovations: tanks, aircraft, carriers, radar, the atomic bomb, missiles, jets, and precision-guided munitions.
The 21st century has already brought drones and unmanned systems, along with cyber and electronic warfare. Now, AI and autonomous weapons are rapidly emerging.
Drones deliver low-cost, high-impact capabilities. They can loiter for hours as reconnaissance outposts and overwhelm defences in swarms.
Ukraine has demonstrated how drones cripple armoured columns, strike infrastructure and reshape strategy.
The drone's hum, like the whine of an artillery shell before it, has become one of the most chilling sounds of modern combat.
★★★
Like any major technology, drones come with both benefits and risks, and we're seeing both on display.
Matariki celebrations in Dunedin over the past two years have been lit up by dazzling LED drones dancing in complex patterns — a shining alternative to fireworks and a better bang for our buck.
Aerial photography and videography can be striking, and drones feature at weddings, in real estate marketing and promotion campaigns. Surveying and mapping are changing course, and agriculture boasts a growing list of uses.
Search and rescue, disaster response, infrastructure inspection, and environmental monitoring have all been transformed by drones.
Civis found some unusual and innovative uses: firing seed pods in remote areas to replant forests, acting as robotic bees to pollinate crops, and even patrolling beaches as shark spotters.
Tracking athletes from above and delivering emergency supplies are also on the rise. And Civis wonders, how many farmers now use drones to herd sheep or cattle?
New Zealand holds a special place in drone history. In November 2016, Domino's Pizza and drone company Flirtey successfully delivered two pizzas by drone to a customer in Whangaparaoa, just north of Auckland.
This was one of the world's first commercial food deliveries by drone, a clear example of the potential. The event made headlines worldwide. For the record, the pizzas were peri-peri chicken and chicken and cranberry.
Flirtey devoured another slice of the action and global attention soon after when it delivered medical supplies in Nevada.
Commercial drone deliveries never truly took off, perhaps for the best. We don't need buzzing drones crowding our skies and assaulting our ears.
Fortunately, rules stand in the way of widespread use in such circumstances.
Many fail to realise how circumscribed their legal use is in New Zealand. Operators are "pilots" of "unmanned aircraft".
Drones are banned near airports, generally over private property or people without permission, and in national parks. The regulations are extensive and complex.
They have flown a long way from their beginnings as toys — even conveying that rescue bike in the middle of a war zone.
civis@odt.co.nz
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
8 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Zelenskyy rules out withdrawing from Donbas, saying it would open bridgehead for Russia
The Donbas encompasses the eastern Ukrainian regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, both of which Russia claims as its own and has sought to control since its invasion began in 2022. Zelenskyy said the summit would effectively postpone new US sanctions on Russia - sanctions that Trump had promised to impose if Putin refused to halt his war. 'First, he will meet on US territory, which I consider his personal victory. Second, he is coming out of isolation because he is meeting on US territory. Third, with this meeting, he has somehow postponed sanctions,' Zelenskyy said. Zelenskyy also said he had received a 'signal' from US envoy Steve Witkoff that Russia might agree to a ceasefire, without elaborating. 'This was the first signal from them,' Zelenskyy said. To prepare for the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told a US radio show earlier that Trump did not regard the meeting as a 'concession' to Russia. The White House confirmed that the meeting came about after Putin requested it. Trump's spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the aim was 'for the President is to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war'. 'No equipment' On the battlefield, Zelenskyy warned Russia had made sharp advances near the coal mining town of Dobropillia and was planning new ground assaults on at least three different areas of the front line. 'Russian units have advanced 10km deep in several spots. They all have no equipment, only weapons in their hands. 'Some have already been found, some destroyed, some taken prisoner. We will find the rest and destroy them in the near future,' Zelenskyy said. A map published by Ukrainian battlefield monitor DeepState, which has close ties with Ukraine's military, showed Russia had made a double-pronged advance around 10km deep in a narrow section of the front line near Dobropillia. Dobropillia, home to around 30,000 people before the war, has come under regular Russian drone attacks. The advance also threatens the largely destroyed town of Kostiantynivka, one of the last large urban areas in the Donetsk region still held by Ukraine. Russian forces have been accelerating their advances for months, pressing their advantage against overstretched Ukrainian troops. The Ukrainian Army said today it was engaged in 'difficult' battles with Russian forces in the east, but denied Russia had a foothold near Dobropillia. 'The situation is difficult and dynamic,' it said in a statement. 'New offensive' The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think-tank, said Russia was sending small sabotage groups forwards. It said it was 'premature' to call the Russian advances around Dobropillia 'an operational-level breakthrough'. A Ukrainian military group that oversees parts of the front in the Donetsk region also said Russia was probing Ukrainian lines with small sabotage groups, describing battles as 'complex, unpleasant, and dynamic'. Trump has described his summit with Putin as a chance to check the Russian leader's ideas for ending the war. European leaders have sought to ensure respect for Kyiv's interests. Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, has made costly but incremental gains across the front in recent months and claims to have annexed four Ukrainian regions while still fighting to control them. Ukrainian police said that Russian attacks in the past hours had killed three people and wounded 12 others, including a child. -Agence France-Presse
NZ Herald
12 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Trump sets a low bar for high-stakes summit and avoids key issues for Kyiv
He added, 'I may leave and say good luck, and that'll be the end.' Trump's own description of his goals for the negotiation, the most high-stakes international meeting yet in his second term, were telling — as much for what he omitted as for what he included. And that is what worries both the Ukrainians and Washington's European allies, who have committed to keep arming Ukraine no matter the outcome in Anchorage. What wasn't mentioned Ceasefire Zelenskyy, who has not been invited to join the talks in Alaska, has said that any agreement must start with a some kind of truce or ceasefire so that negotiations were not being conducted amid continued air attacks and territorial grabs. Trump has not stipulated that a truce must come first. Guarantees During his hour-long news conference, he never once mentioned security guarantees for Ukraine, intended to assure that Putin does not exploit a break in the fighting or new territorial gains as his moment to regroup, rearm and resume his effort to seize the whole country. Support Nor did Trump commit to making sure that Ukraine has the arms, intelligence and co-operation it needs to defend its territory and deter Russia from future attacks. His Vice-President, JD Vance, a longtime critic of American aid to Ukraine, was quite explicit during an appearance on Fox News. 'We're done with the funding of the Ukraine war business,' he said, insisting that the only way American arms would make it into Ukrainian hands would be if European allies bought and transferred them. A sense of haste Trump's comments came as the White House scrambled to make arrangements for one of the most hastily assembled summits of recent times. Usually, such sessions are preceded by detailed advance negotiations, with prearranged agreements and communiqués. Trump seemed to suggest that he was walking into this discussion with none of those, though European officials say they have seen evidence that, at lower levels, Russian and American officials are talking. Adding to the sense of haste, the White House has still not said where, exactly, the meeting will be held, how long it is expected to last or whether at the end Trump will preside over a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, two avowed enemies. Influencing Trump The risk now, as even some of Trump's Republican allies have conceded, is that Putin will see an opportunity to flatter Trump, play for time, and perhaps win him over to the Russian leader's own interpretation of events. Recent history suggests that Trump is inclined to accept Putin's version of reality. This year he suggested that Ukraine was responsible for the invasion of its own territory, and he refused to join America's traditional Western allies in voting for a United Nations resolution condemning Russia's aggression. Earlier this week, Zelenskyy worried aloud that Trump could be easily 'deceived'. For that reason, European and Nato officials — who mollified Trump at the alliance's summit in the Netherlands in June by pledging to spend 3.5% of their gross domestic product on defence over the next decade — are now carefully trying to hedge him in. They arranged a video call for tomorrow with Trump, aware that they will not be in the room in Alaska, so their power is limited to persuading him beforehand and risking his wrath by dissenting later. One of the most explicit warnings to Trump came from the Secretary-General of Nato, Mark Rutte, a former Netherlands Prime Minister who has invested heavily in developing a relationship with the President and devised the Nato summit to minimise the chances he would disrupt it. His bet paid off, and Trump sang the alliance's praises, rather than declare that it was 'obsolete', as he did in his first term. Rutte's guardrails But this week, Rutte was clearly drawing some guardrails for the coming negotiation. 'Next Friday will be important because it will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end,' Rutte said on ABC. 'When it comes to full-scale negotiations, and let's hope that Friday will be an important step in that process', territory will be only one issue, he said. 'It will be, of course, about security guarantees, but also about the absolute need to acknowledge that Ukraine decides on its own future, that Ukraine has to be a sovereign nation, deciding on its own geopolitical future — of course having no limitations to its own military troop levels,' Rutte said. 'And for Nato, to have no limitations on our presence on the eastern flank.' The dealmaker Trump said none of that in his comments in the White House briefing room yesterday. But he made it clear that striking an agreement was the key. 'I make deals,' he said. Trump has made no secret of his desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and has claimed that he was the driving force in recent ceasefires or peace accords in disputes between India and Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and other regional conflicts. 'What's the definition of a good deal?' Trump asked reporters. 'I'll tell you after I hear what the deal is, because there could be many definitions.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: David E. Sanger Photograph by: David Guttenfelder ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
Otago Daily Times
14 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Trump in element but summit unlikely to end war
"I love deadlines," Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , said. "I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." United States President Donald Trump sets deadlines for more complicated reasons that purport to be tactical, but he too is addicted to the whooshing sound they make when he breaks them. His latest display of disdain for the deadlines he sets himself began in mid-July, when he gave Russia a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire in its war against Ukraine. A week later, in an apparent fit of temper over President Vladimir Putin's relentless nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities, Trump moved the deadline up by a month, to August 8. Russia's penalty for missing that deadline was allegedly going to be American "secondary tariffs" against other countries that continue to buy Russian oil, notably China, India and Turkey. "I used trade for a lot of things, but it's great for settling wars," Trump boasted — only to discover, not for the first time, that his intended targets were able to push back. Trump declared, again before the actual deadline rolled around, that India's new tariff would be 50%, not 25%, if it did not stop buying heavily discounted Russian oil. Prime Minister Narendra Modi immediately declared that he was ready to "pay a huge price" rather than let the US dictate India's trade policies — and Trump did not even try it on with China or Turkey. So with no leverage in Moscow, his deadline for a Russian ceasefire passed unmentioned. Instead, he sent his favourite emissary, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, to make a new offer: a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin in which the two men would make a deal without the Ukrainians, the European Nato countries, or anybody else present. Putin jumped at the chance, as it will be his first face-to-face meeting with a US president since 2021. (He was being boycotted because of his invasion of Ukraine, but this is presumably one of Russia's rewards for agreeing to a "summit".) However, what Trump hopes to get out of it is less obvious. Although Trump is very much in thrall to Vladimir Putin, who he mistakenly believes to be his personal friend, he knows that a full Russian conquest of Ukraine would not look good on his record. His real goal is to win the Nobel Peace Prize in order to end the shame of having seen Barack Obama get one first. For that, he needs a longer-lasting "peace". This need not be a permanent peace settlement that includes an independent Ukraine. Trump really believes in "America First", and Ukraine's long-term fate is of no interest to him. But he must persuade Putin to accept only a partial victory now (and maybe final conquest later) in order to portray himself to the Norwegian Nobel committee as a plausible peacemaker. This explanation sounds so stupid and ridiculous that people have difficulty in taking it seriously, but it does explain why Trump has tried so hard to bully first one side (Ukraine), then the other side (Russia), and now back to Ukraine, into signing that kind of nothing-settled ceasefire. If you still question that analysis, consider the fact that Trump regularly indulges in extended public rants about the sheer injustice of Obama getting a Nobel Peace Prize and leaving him still without one. So when Putin dangles the prospect of a one-on-one summit before Witkoff, of course Trump is tempted, even if it would impose a disadvantageous ceasefire on Ukraine. However, there will probably not be a complete sell-out of Ukraine in Alaska, for two reasons. The first is that Putin, rightly or wrongly, is convinced that he is now winning the war by sheer weight of numbers, and that it is only a matter of time until Ukraine collapses. In that case, why would he now trim his maximal aspirations for the sake of a ceasefire? Those aspirations include Russian sovereignty over Crimea and the four south-eastern regions of Ukraine (including the yet unconquered parts), and permanent neutrality and a much-reduced army for Ukraine. In the long run, Putin aspires to "reunite" all of Ukraine with Russia under one pretext or another, but a decisive military victory might make it possible now. The other reason to assume that the Alaskan summit is unlikely to end the war is the fact that if Trump does completely sell out Ukraine, the Ukrainians will go on fighting anyway. They would be fighting at a worse disadvantage and facing a bigger likelihood of eventual conquest, but they know that wars can have unpredictable outcomes until the next-to-last moment. And whatever happens, Trump will go on setting deadlines and then missing them. Just like he did in the real estate business. • Gwynne Dyer is an independent London journalist.
