Cheaper than a car, deadlier than a plane

Time of India

09-05-2025

Don't judge a drone's lethality by its price
Military drones aren't new. America used Pioneer RQ-2As in the '91 Gulf War. As one of them came in to survey Failaka Island, five Iraqi soldiers made history by waving a white flag and surrendering to it. But almost 35 years on, drone use has become common on the battlefield. Op Sindoor, Ukraine, Myanmar, Red Sea, drones have forced militaries everywhere to rethink strategy. If you find drone warfare intriguing, check out the podcast Drone Wars.
There's no denying that Ukraine mainstreamed the small 'homemade' drone as a weapon, but as military expert Mike MacKay points out in an episode, Isis was using cheap, store-bought drones to drop grenades on coalition forces in Iraq in 2016. Where the '91-vintage RQ-2A was 14ft long and had a wingspan of almost 17ft, a top-end military drone like Reaper MQ-9 – India has ordered 31 of them – now measures almost 66ft across and costs over $30mn. Pakistan's Turkish-origin Bayraktar Akinci drones also cost several million dollars each. But the drones revolutionising warfare are tiny in comparison, and dirt cheap, often costing no more than a few hundred dollars each. So, even a cash-strapped country like Ukraine can make hundreds of thousands of them. It made over 1mn in 2024 and would double output, funds permitting.
Can any military hope to acquire 2mn fighter planes? A B2 strategic bomber costs well over $1bn. But the Ukrainian drones – Magura V5 – that knocked out 40% of Russia's naval fleet in Black Sea cost only about $250,000 apiece. In Red Sea, Houthis have sunk ships with over $100mn worth of cargo, using drones that cost only about $100,000 each. Experts on the podcast say the low cost of drone warfare makes this a cavalry-vs-machine gun moment for militaries all over again. Where tanks and field guns intimidated opponents at one time, now they are sitting ducks for drones.
Christopher Miller, another drone expert, says militaries will need to adapt rapidly to drone warfare because old front line techniques, like firing mortars, are too slow. Where aiming at and hitting a target with a mortar takes at least five minutes, a drone with AI does the job in 90 seconds. And while a mortar can hit only up to a couple of kilometres, even small drones can fly 15-20km. That's why S Korea, learning from Ukraine, has decided to phase out its smaller mortars and train troops to become drone pilots. Experts on the podcast say Ukraine has 20 schools to train drone pilots. Its expert pilots can manoeuvre a drone by reckoning or counting rather than using the inbuilt camera. One of them was awarded Ukraine's Hero of the Republic medal for killing 400 Russian troops in six months.
You can shoot down drones, of course. Coalition forces in Iraq did so with guns, but when hundreds of drones – a whole swarm – come at you, countermeasures are harder. You could use sophisticated missiles like the Patriot Interceptor – or the S400 that India used to shoot down Pakistan's missiles – for bigger drones, but supplies and costs are a hurdle. For now, nobody has a foolproof counter to attacking drones, and as the bigger militaries – US, China, India – start inducting them in bigger numbers, questions about AI capabilities will also have to be dealt with. Autonomous drones could dodge hacking, jamming and GPS-spoofing, but will they hit targets their human masters want them to? That's the next drone frontier.
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