How low-cost drones are used in modern military strikes
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How have drones changed the way wars are fought?
How drones are changing the way wars are fought. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Stephanie Hughes.
According to the Smithsonian, there have been attempts to make destructive drones going back to the First World War. The technology has advanced significantly since then, and drones range in size from tiny, as in fitting in the palm of your hand, to ones that are so big they look like little planes. Stacey Pettyjohn directs the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. She talked about how drones are being used in the war between Iran, Israel, and the U.S., including a drone used by Iran called a Shahed. On the Iranian side, you know, drones are their primary weapon right now, and they are targeting different types of locations. And it's proven to be something that's really difficult for the United States and its Gulf partners and Israel to manage because they can't eliminate it and because the means of intercepting it are pretty expensive locations.
One other thing worth noting about drones is the U.S. has made a lot of big announcements about the combat debut of the Lucas drone. It's a low cost uncrewed system, I think is what it is. And essentially, it's a reverse engineered Iranian Shahed 136, which is the main drone the Iranians have been firing. But it doesn't actually fly as far as the Shahed or carry as large of a payload. I understand that Iran is using some off-the-shelf consumer technology to create some of these drones. Is that correct? Tell me how this works.
What advancements have been made in drone technology since World War I?
Yeah, absolutely. So the first Shahads that Iran created, they were made of like this honeycomb core that was plastic or paper. And the Russians have moved to fiberglass. And sometimes they're even using carbon fiber, which is a little bit more, quite a bit more expensive and exotic. But fiberglass is pretty readily available today. They use a piston engine that was reverse engineered from a German engine that you can buy. And they've been buying most of the components for it through commercial intermediaries. And then the big thing is that they use a bunch of different Western commercial off-the-shelf electronics. So there's this global supply chain that they can tap into, which is really hard to cut off.
Because these aren't regulated technologies. These are things you can go out and procure. So there are all kinds of intermediaries and ways that you can work around any of sort of the attempts to limit the proliferation. Like Texas Instruments, there's navigation systems that come from Swedish companies, Norwegian companies that help with the flight controls, which is what makes them so cheap. And is also one of the key factors that I think will enable them to rapidly reconstitute this weapons capability, even if the U.S. were to destroy every drone they have today. How could the use of low-cost drones in large numbers change how wars are fought moving forward? I mean, they definitely are. What we're seeing with Iran, and I think the other side of it that you also see in Russia and Ukraine, is sort of this deep warfare where there are these strategic strikes and there's longer range power projections.
You're talking hundreds. up to like a thousand miles that they are allowing countries to reach out. And this used to be unheard of for the most part.
What role do Iranian drones play in modern military conflicts?
And what's changed is now using these commercial technologies, you have weapons that are actually pretty good. They're not nearly as good as the sophisticated U.S. or Israeli weapons. but they're good enough for a lot of purposes and they are a threat that has to be honored which is why you see countries having to defend against them and worrying about how to eliminate them and it's providing nations that didn't used to have this means to have sort of course of leverage and to pursue these strategies of exhaustion and attrition we'll be right back Dell PCs with Intel Insight are built for the moments you plan and the ones you don't. They're for those all-night study sessions, the moments you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken, the times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto-update.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
How have drones changed the way wars are fought?
0:00–1:41
2
What advancements have been made in drone technology since World War I?
1:41–3:39
3
What role do Iranian drones play in modern military conflicts?
3:39–4:32
4
How are low-cost drones used as primary weapons?
4:32–6:27
5
What challenges do countries face in countering drone technology?
6:27–8:32