Revolutionary change in military affairs is an integral part of the history of conflict and war. Today, technology is driving this revolution with unprecedented speed. Even now, drone warfare capabilities provide game-changing potential on real-world battlefields, as they integrate sensor technology with precision strike effectors and communications. They also have close links to hybrid warfare.
It can be expected that a trend towards AI-based autonomous systems and swarming will further exponentiate these revolutionary developments. Their military and warfare-related implications can hardly be overestimated.
This motivated Hybrid CoE and its Community of Interest on Strategy and Defence (COI S&D) to address this topic within its workstrand on Hybrid Warfare: Future and Technologies. As a first step, situational awareness regarding the current use of drones in the context of hybrid warfare needs to be built.
To this end, the latest Hybrid CoE Working Paper, written by Frank Christian Sprengel, identifies and analyzes lessons regarding the use of drones on five current battlefields: Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Nagorno-Karabakh. The paper serves as the starting point for a series of studies on the topic.
