Drone Hedgehogs
Iran and Ukraine have combined cheap autonomous weapons and military innovation to invert the world’s power dynamics. Let’s dig in.
Over the last few years, drones (a subset of autonomous weapons) have revolutionized warfare and have upended the world’s power dynamic.
Medium-sized powers with drone-fueled arsenals have fought superpowers to a standstill.
Ukraine’s drones have ravaged Russia’s army, killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Now, it is routinely bombing Moscow and disrupting Russia’s oil infrastructure.
Iran withstood a relentless US and Israeli aerial assault for months while simultaneously damaging US bases in the region and sending Israelis into bomb shelters nightly. Now, with its drone capabilities largely intact, it has undisputed control over the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point that controls most of the Middle East’s oil.
What changed? Both Ukraine and Iran developed a new military theory that has allowed them to use the newly developed technologies of autonomy to radically amplify their ability to wage war. Let’s dig in.
Advances in Military Theory
Major advances in technology often create opportunities for decisive, disruptive innovations in military theory (something the US military doesn’t spend much time or $ $ on).
We saw it with new technologies like gunpowder and the internal combustion engine. Now we’re seeing it with autonomous weapons.
These technological advances only became decisive in warfare when a new military theory was developed that unlocked their potential.
Countries that developed these new theories early saw a massive improvement in their ability to wage war (often disrupting existing power dynamics, as we’ve seen with Iran).
The technologies of military autonomy span air, sea, land, space, ballistic, and subsurface drones.
The Drone Hedgehog
Iran and Ukraine advanced military theory by using drones to create what’s best termed a drone hedgehog.
Historically, a hedgehog is a geographically dispersed defensive formation. Typically, it’s put in a location that is nearly impossible for the attacker to bypass.
Hedgehogs use defensive barriers to slow an attacker’s movements and mutually reinforcing strongholds that inflict constant damage (hit one, the others hit back).
As losses mount, the attacker faces a choice: stay engaged and suffer escalating attrition while making slow progress (Putin), or withdraw (Trump) and find another path forward.
Here’s how Iran and Ukraine used a new technology (drones) to turn their countries into drone hedgehogs.
A launch pad network. A network that can be defended against ground assaults and is resistant to air assaults. To do this, they used;
swarms of tactical and operational drones to slow and attrit land offensives that threaten the launch pad.
drones to interdict enemy supply lines (air and sea) and restrict the area
of maneuver (i.e., the Persian Gulf).
geographical dispersion, decentralized command-and-control, and tunneling to blunt the effectiveness of airpower and missile attacks.
Defending the launch pad; drones have reduced Russian land offensives to only 50-90 meters a day. Iranian drones limited US shipping operations inside the Persian Gulf and dashed plans of a seaborne invasion of islands near the Strait of Hormuz.
Drone manufacturing at scale (quantity > quality).
Ukraine’s production has grown to ~7 m drones per year (largely short-range/tactical). Iran’s production is between ~80,000 and 120,000 a year (largely intermediate-range aerial and ballistic drones).
Instead of producing expensive weapon systems using traditional methods, both countries built inexpensive, minimally viable systems and improved from there. Quantity has its own quality, particularly if those numerous systems are rapidly getting more autonomous.
Both countries rely on China’s drone industry as a platform (for chips, electric motors, servos, and batteries). China’s massive industrial machine (thanks to globalization) will sell to anyone (even both sides in a war).
The capacity to inflict strategic disruption (hedgehog quills). Specifically, to;
Hit and disrupt strategically important targets far beyond their borders (from Gulf and Russian oil infrastructure to Moscow to Persian Gulf oil flow),
Dispersed, resilient nodes maintain the tempo of strategic and operational attacks using aerial and ballistic drones despite intense suppression efforts. Dispersed production of relatively low-tech weapons is sufficient to sustain these attacks indefinitely.
Use this costly strategic disruption, mounting daily, to put pressure on the (larger) enemy to end the war.
(More on how the US, China, and guerrilla groups will use this military innovation below).
