In the 20th century, due to the promotion of war, military technology has undergone great changes. During the First World War, a new mode of air combat was opened, and the embryonic theory of "air supremacy" was put forward by Duhei of Italy. During World War II, the "God of War" of World War I - artillery was replaced by aircraft, and air control became the key to victory or defeat.
"Large-caliber guns" were replaced by "flying guns" - devices capable of destroying troops and heavy equipment from the sky while taking little damage from ground fire. However, the operational use of aircraft after World War II was limited by the "human factor".
The Origins of drones (The transition from jets to drones)
1. Aviation reasons for the birth of drones
The aviation system has proven itself to be the most effective, technologically advanced and dangerous weapon in the history of warfare. Mighty warships, tens of centimetres thick in armour, surrendered to the force of air raids, reducing the concrete and steel fortifications of the city to rubble; Neither the fleet nor the tank forces could withstand the pressure of an air offensive - mechanical birds seemed to occupy the top of the military food chain forever.
Decades of evolving aircraft have turned them into increasingly versatile and... Very expensive weapons. In the 1950s, in the era of the mass introduction of jet combat aviation, the military services began to realize that the latest manned aircraft systems were extremely complex, valuable and expensive, and could be used in many fields - detection, early warning, communications, attack - and the possibility of losing such an important asset became a constraint on operations. The fact that human pilots are used adds complexity to the work of jet fighters. As early as World War II, it was clear that people were one of the weakest links in the air combat system - limited by their biology, pilots at the time were unable to realize the full potential of aviation weapons. Aircraft electronics, which developed after World War II, seemed to find a way out of this situation - computers made up for the limitations of the human brain's poor computing power.
At the same time, the multiple complexities of jet technology require increasingly rigorous, lengthy and expensive training for both the pilots themselves and the technicians who maintain the aircraft. This has led to outrageously high pilot training costs, even so high that the combined effect of the price of gold and the weight of pilots has objectively driven the idea of building drones in the armed forces of various countries.
2. The U.S. military is the father of drones
The prototype of the drone actually appeared very early, but it has been unable to go to the battlefield. UAV is the abbreviation of "unmanned aircraft" (English abbreviation for UAV), in the unmanned conditions to complete complex air flight tasks, can be said to be "air robot".
During World War I, the British first proposed the concept of unmanned aerial vehicles, but subject to radio control technology at the time, they could only make unmanned training targets for air defense forces and pilot shooting training.
During World War II, Germany and the United States had unmanned bomber programs, subject to the remote control technology at the time was backward, and these experimental projects were carried out in real combat. Only Nazi Germany made a major breakthrough in the rocket, a close relative of drones, with the V2 rocket. This ancestor of the modern missile caused a sensation by killing more than 30,000 people in Britain. In today's war in Ukraine, the Iranian drone that launched a massive airstrike on Ukraine's power facilities in October, a 21st-century V2 rocket, left 10 million Ukrainians without electricity in the winter. Drones and missiles are inextricably linked in many ways, and Iranian drones are covered in more detail in a later article.
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II was the best catalyst for drones, and the first step in the long journey of modern drones was made by engineers in the United States of America. As early as the 1950s, they began developing remotely piloted aircraft that could secretly and safely conduct deep strategic reconnaissance. A pioneer in the creation of such systems is the US company Ryanair, which has extensive experience in the development of unmanned target aircraft.
For several years, the idea of an RPV (remotely piloted aircraft - as drones were called in those distant days) went unanswered at the Pentagon. However, improvements in radar and electronic intelligence systems and the advent of anti-aircraft missiles began to impose significant limits on the effectiveness of manned reconnaissance aircraft.
On May 1, 1960, an American Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured. On July 1 of the same year, a Boeing RB-47H spy plane was shot down during an electronic reconnaissance mission in international airspace near the Soviet border - four crew members were killed and two captured; On October 27, 1962, a Soviet S-75 air defense system shot down a U-2 over Cuba, killing the pilot. During the Vietnam War, 922 aircraft were lost during Operation Rolling Thunder, an air raid on North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968.
These events prompted a deepening of the development of reconnaissance drones, and the U.S. Strategic Air Command authorized Ryan to develop military drones.
Ryanair successfully completed the mission, building a series of reconnaissance drones to carry out reconnaissance missions from Cuba to Vietnam. The drone developed by the United States at that time was the Ryan Model 147 Lightning Bug (Firefly, also known as Firebee), an aviation complex that demonstrated the great potential of drones during the Vietnam War.
Firefly conducted photo reconnaissance in Vietnam's air defense operations zone, lured MiG fighters into ambushes, acted as decoys to open and study Soviet air defense missile systems, and also served as an electronic warfare and electronic intelligence platform. The success was impressive: during the war, U.S. drones conducted nearly 3,500 flights, losing just 4 percent of the sorties.
To simplify and reduce design costs, Fireflies do not have the ability to take off independently - they are launched by a DC-130 carrier-based aircraft. The landing was carried out in a very primitive way, with the aid of parachutes, the drone's speed dropped, and then using special devices, it was captured by a helicopter in flight.
Based on the Vietnam results, Ryan proposed to the Air Force programs for attack drones and independent drone flight, but it was too late. Unfortunately, the loss of the Vietnam War and the subsequent crisis in the U.S. Armed forces put an end to the U.S. military's drone development program. But Vietnam's valuable lesson has not been forgotten - despite its timidity and uncertainty, drones have moved into the future. Israel, the embattled Middle East ally of the United States at the time, saw the huge operational potential of the Firefly and immediately introduced the original American UAV.
3.Israeli drones made a big splash in the 1982 Middle East war
The United States of America pioneered the creation of the first mass-produced primitive drones, but modern drones emerged on the other side of the globe - in Israel. Today, we are used to thinking of this country as one of the world's major suppliers of military high technology, but in the 1960s and 1970s, everything was very different. Israel is a country that fights or prepares for war almost non-stop, with extremely limited resources and limited external support.
At the same time, the Jewish state's Arab adversaries had wide access to Soviet military technology, including advanced developments in the field of layered air defense, such as the Soviet Sam missile. Israel faced the same problem that the United States had faced before - manned aircraft were unable to provide the necessary intelligence data in the face of powerful anti-aircraft countermeasures.
Initially, the Israelis sought a replica of the American experience by purchasing a small batch of 12 fireflies from Washington - drones were successfully used during the 1973 Yom Kippur War as operational reconnaissance and decoy for Arab air defenses, but their further introduction to the Israeli Air Force was unlikely. The United States did not allow large quantities of drones to be purchased for fear that the Soviet Union would get the "Firefly" intelligence, while Israel was well aware that drones were expendable and needed large supplies.
At the same time, the country's own production capacity was too thin at the time, for example, to replicate the Firefly design, a proper jet engine was required, and the device itself had many specific functions (using carrier-based aircraft to take off). The firefly landing required a helicopter, which captured the drone using a parachute with a special device, both at considerable cost.
Under the guidance of considering economy and practicality, the Israelis began to design lighter piston engine UAV models, which became the main trend of UAV development in the next few decades. The country's limited resources have proved to be a boon. Piston UAVs, which are much smaller than jet UAVs, can be built in large numbers, not only for reconnaissance but also for tactical communications. Moreover, from the point of view of radar reconnaissance and communication control, the reduced speed of the equipment had a positive effect on their stealth - for example, Soviet radars could not detect small Israeli UAVs at all in most cases - a completely ignored target for them.
By the early '80s, it was clear that drones were the most important element of the air offensive. A breakthrough in Soviet-style layered air defense can only be achieved with the involvement of a large number of UAVs, either for reconnaissance or to divert attention and reveal the location of anti-aircraft missile systems.
At the time of their appearance, Israeli drones did not make any waves at all. They were even shown at international arms shows, and they were not very impressive in the context of jet aircraft, and even less so in the context of third-generation fighters entering their prime, with the potential of piston drones only becoming clear after combat.
During the 1982 Middle East war, Israel used drones on a large scale for the first time in Operation Peace of Galilee. More precisely, the events of the Battle of the Bekaa Valley were very dramatic, during which the Israeli Air Force, combined with electronic equipment and drone reconnaissance, was able to reveal the location of 19 Soviet anti-aircraft missile divisions in Syria. The drones were used both to provoke Syrian missile units to return fire (which was later attacked by manned aircraft with anti-radar missiles) and to correct artillery attacks on Syrian air defense positions. This is the first large-scale operation involving man-machine and drone cooperation.
"As one of the developers of the air defense system, I was sent to the war zone with a team of experts to determine the cause of the failure," recalls Grigory Pavlovich Yashkin, a Soviet adviser to Syria, "The decision to determine the real cause of the heavy loss of the Syrian air defense system was the flight information of some small aircraft at their position." At first they were not important, and the operator in the Golan Heights, on his television monitor, saw the whole situation in the drone area......
"Israeli UAVs created a battery of electronic strike support. The group, which included reconnaissance drones, flew over the SAM-6 air defence system position and delivered live television images to the command post. After receiving such visual information, the Israeli Command made an unmistakable decision to launch a missile strike. In addition, these drones were also jammed, and they detected the operating frequency of the radar and guidance equipment of the Syrian missile system. Moreover, they play the role of "decoys," causing Syrian air defense systems to fire to reveal the location, and Israeli fighter jets that find the location information to strike..."
- From an article by General Gori Pavlovich Yashkin, Chief military adviser to the Syrian Armed Forces, Gerry, "We are fighting in Syria, not only as advisers."
The drone success was stunning - one of the densest air defense zones in the world was breached in a matter of days with minimal loss for Israeli aircraft. In this operation, the only victims of the Soviet-Syrian air defense system were drones. In terms of concept, what is a drone?
As readers may already understand, unmanned aerial vehicles appear to be a substitute for manned systems to perform the most complex and dangerous tasks. Conceptually, drones do not bring anything fundamentally new to military science - in fact, they are new embodiments of old ideas: reconnaissance aircraft, missile platforms, autonomous munitions, reconnaissance aircraft... But drones could once again provide military science with "cheap aviation consumables," thousands of flying reconnaissance devices that can be used and lost. With the development of military microelectronics, it is clear that UAVs are indeed acting as an "extra link" in the aviation system - a trend that affects not only all levels of aerial reconnaissance, but also direct fire cover for troops.
When drones hit the scene in the 1980s, they didn't just happen. Because of its low cost and asymmetric tactical role, it has become a new darling in the field of aviation weapons, which has rapidly multiplied to the present.
The application prospect of UAV in war
To sum up, the US military is the pioneer of drone warfare, the successful use of the most primitive unmanned aerial vehicles in Vietnam in the 1960s, which is against the Soviet-style Sam missile air defense system that appeared in Vietnam, with these drones as bait, let the Sam missile forces expose their targets, and then the US fighter jets destroy these missile forces, opening a safe passage for large-scale bombing.
Drones were originally created to spy on and locate opposing air defense systems, and Israel has creatively brought this tactic to a climax. In the Fifth Middle East War in 1982, Israel brought a newly developed unmanned aerial system capable of independent flight to the Bekaa Valley, while Syria was equipped with a new Sam missile air defense system, which was behind the US-Soviet Cold War. The result was a resounding Israeli victory, destroying the Sam missile base commanded by Soviet advisers and wiping out an air defense project that Syria had spent more than $2 billion on for more than a decade. Subsequently, Israel mastered the air, successfully invaded Lebanon, and won the fifth Middle East War. It can be seen that drones have always been a key tactical tool for mastering air superiority.
In the 1980s, the U.S. military continued to communicate with the Israeli military industry system, and after obtaining a large number of key data that have been tested in combat, they continued to develop their own UAV family, which has the four UAV tactical categories introduced earlier. In the two Iraq wars and the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military's drone family has been subjected to the brutal baptism of war, thus possessing hierarchical, long-distance, large-scale, all-weather combat capabilities. This can be seen from the US military drone strike on Iran Soleimani in 2020.
Although drones are the star of low-intensity local warfare, it is large-scale, long-term warfare that will test their true tactical effectiveness. The war in Ukraine in 2022 provided this kind of battlefield, and during nine months of intense combat, Russia and Ukraine made extensive use of various UAVs, which also evolved from reconnaissance and positioning functions to various air-to-ground attack modes.
Militaries are extremely secretive about the use of drones in war. In this article, we have only used some fragments of open source data to describe the approximate outline of the truth, so that readers can understand the asymmetric tactical functions of UAVs in war. In 2022 Ukraine's Economic Pravda newspaper shared a drone combat story, with elements of exaggeration but the process is very real and vivid. Imagine this: There is a school in the middle of a village with 50 Ukrainian soldiers, surrounded by elite Russian airborne troops with tanks and armored vehicles. Several attempts by the Ukrainian army to clear the siege were fruitless, and the village could no longer be entered. Ukrainian drone reconnaissance units came to the rescue. Several Ukrainian soldiers used anti-tank missiles dropped from drones to hit several Russian tanks and armored vehicles, shielding the remaining Ukrainian soldiers from the encirclement under the cover of artillery.
In this military operation, the Ukrainian artillery achieves a certain accuracy in artillery bombardment with drone reconnaissance and positioning, especially when the 7th Guards Airborne Commando Division confronts you - Putin's highly trained favorite, along with "Wagner" mercenaries and a lot of military equipment. Before that, Ukraine used drones to drop NLAW (anti-tank missile) batteries on a dilapidated house in a village. They covered the mattress so the equipment wouldn't break. They also dropped wireless communications equipment. The battle was small, 50 men a week. With all the power of Ukrainian tanks, self-propelled artillery and mortars, they could not be rescued.
But the Ukrainian "aerial reconnaissance" came out, and in two nights the infantry defeated the Russian tanks with NALW, along with various short-range missile defense systems, and armored personnel carriers. Under the guidance of the drone, the Ukrainian artillery accurately punched out a gap, and the 50 talents broke through the siege. It can be seen from this small story that the density of UAV confrontation in the Ukrainian war is quite high, for example, the sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet Moscow is related to drones, and the Ukrainian UAV also hit the Russian Mi8 helicopter for the first time in the battle of Snake Island. As the war drags on, the drone confrontation will become more intense.
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