The article has a good intro, and then never goes on to discuss the "key strengths". It's just clickbait. They're also late to the party on this. The US professional military has been discussing this for over a decade.
There have already been more than a half dozen articles on drones in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College's journal. "The coercive logic of militant drone use" [1] is worth reading. This covers how non-state groups have used drones, what worked and what didn't. The US Army is unused to fighting under a hostile sky, and now, a few times, they've had to. "In 2017, then commander of US Special Operations Command General Raymond A. Thomas noted, “[the] most daunting problem [of 2016] was an adaptive
enemy who, for a time, enjoyed tactical superiority in the airspace under
our conventional air superiority in the form of commercially available
drones and fuel-expedient (?) weapons systems, and our only available
response was small arms fire.” They also mention a drone disabling an Israeli naval vessel in 2006.
There's been a lot more military use of drones than is generally realized. Much of it is for recon. Commercial hobbyist drones are more than good enough for finding out what the enemy is up to, and most drone use by militant groups is for that.
So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield a decisive advantage in any conflict. At least to militant groups.
Not many people read Parameters. That paper has only 65 downloads. More should.
[1] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
There have already been more than a half dozen articles on drones in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College's journal. "The coercive logic of militant drone use" [1] is worth reading. This covers how non-state groups have used drones, what worked and what didn't. The US Army is unused to fighting under a hostile sky, and now, a few times, they've had to. "In 2017, then commander of US Special Operations Command General Raymond A. Thomas noted, “[the] most daunting problem [of 2016] was an adaptive enemy who, for a time, enjoyed tactical superiority in the airspace under our conventional air superiority in the form of commercially available drones and fuel-expedient (?) weapons systems, and our only available response was small arms fire.” They also mention a drone disabling an Israeli naval vessel in 2006.
There's been a lot more military use of drones than is generally realized. Much of it is for recon. Commercial hobbyist drones are more than good enough for finding out what the enemy is up to, and most drone use by militant groups is for that.
So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield a decisive advantage in any conflict. At least to militant groups.
Not many people read Parameters. That paper has only 65 downloads. More should.
[1] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...