Could Future Drones Help Supply the Battlefield? |
“Mobility is firepower.” That’s what Rani Plaut, CEO of Israeli aerospace startup AIR, wants the world to know. In an era of increasingly contested battlespaces, wherein conventional forms of mobility and firepower simply don’t pass the smell test anymore, Plaut is trying to find workarounds.
This is where AIR’s uncrewed aerial system (UAS) comes into play.
The Ukraine War, as well as other modern battlefields, such as those in the Middle East, have shown the world that drones are decisive playmakers. Even before Russia’s invasion in February 2022, drones had already made their mark in the Middle East and Central Asia, where the US military had used them in a range of roles—everything from reconnaissance to targeted assassinations—against insurgent threats during its two-decade wars there. But Ukraine marked the first full-scale war in which two strong militaries could produce their own drones and use them against each other, to devastating results.
In the morass of eastern Ukraine, the battlefield has become not just a contested environment, but a degraded one, wherein manned systems—notably helicopters and conventional airplanes—are simply too vulnerable to the disruptive actions of drones.
Rather than abandon the notion........