Back in 2012 I wrote that American inventing drone technology was a self own. They’re easy to make, and over time everyone would learn how to do so. Iran has about 40K, according to most estimates. But that isn’t the key, the key is that they’re easy to make. Any boat builder or auto repair shop could make them:
An Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone is a simple weapon. The delta wings, which span 2.5 meters, are made of fiberglass and end in two fixed vertical stabilizers. The rear control fins are operated by simple servos. The drone carries an autopilot system, a global positioning receiver, and a data module. Propulsion is provided by a basic air-cooled four piston motor, made of cast aluminum, producing 50 horsepower to drive a pusher propeller. While built to aviation specifications, the motor is not unlike that found on a small motorcycle. The drone can fly at a speed of 185 kilometers per hour while carrying a 40-kilogram warhead over a distance of 2,000 kilometers.
This is the sort of weapon where the production is almost impossible to stop. Nothing in it is particularly sophisticated and everything you need to make it is available, cheap, from China. Nor are any of the parts all that hard for any real nation or even strong non governmental organization to make. (Hezbollah makes many of its own drones and has for a long time.)
Missiles are also relatively simple, certainly compared to manned fighters and bombers. The combination of the two has up-ended warfare as we’re seeing today, as Iran completely wrecks the Middle East and no one can stop them. Literally short of using strategic nukes (tac nukes wouldn’t work) they can’t be stopped, especially since they have a land supply line to China and China is the big winner in this war, which is bringing the global American Empire to an end.
Every Latin American country needs to take note. Enough drones and some missiles and you can tell the US to go fuck itself. If they try to interdict your shipping, well, that’s what drone carriers are for.
America’s global Empire is over after this war, but it will attempt to remain the hegemonic power in the Americas. That means everyone, including Canada and Mexico, needs to arm up, learning from the Iranians. And unlike Iran, if America wants a war with its neighbours, well, that war can come home. At this point America has no effective missile or drone defenses left. Attack anyone within range, and their own cities and domestic military bases can be hit.
Hopefully arming up will be sufficient, and actually bringing the heavy hand of war to the continental US won’t be necessary, but all nations in the Americas should start preparing to do so, because once it loses its global Empire there’s a good chance America will, even more than it already has, turn to attacking its neighbours.
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TM
The approach in Latin America will be to buy off the political class. Look at Ecuador’s collapse during Lenin Moreno’s administration. Unless you have some kind of deep unifying ideology and ‘true believers’ it is very very easy for a wealthy regime to personally enrich the decision makers and undercut all military preparations.
Ian Welsh
It’s not going to be much longer before China will easily outbid the US. This is the last time the US will be able to print its way out of a financial collapse. After that it’s all downhill.
Carborundum
I know that the common parlance term for things like the Shahed series is “drone” but they really should be conceptualized as ultra-cheap cruise missiles. The key distinction is that they don’t require pervasive / semi-pervasive sensor feeds back to operators. The original sin here is less Predator than the TLAM. All that unwieldy mission planning that used to take hours (if not days), requiring reach back to a mainframe and a mission planning suite that filled a decent-sized room can likely be done under a poncho on a cellphone these days.
I would argue that this type of technology democratization is actually significantly bigger – in coming years we’ll see the key Western hallmarks of precision weapons delivery, high sensor-density battlespaces and large scale information processing disseminate to lower tier militaries. I would guess that the limiting factor will be less technology access than culture (in the organizational sense) and access to the right human capital.
cc
Cancel the expensive boondoggle F-35’s pronto – the US has a de facto kill-switch over those anyway. Put the saved Canadian taxpayer money toward an effective drone-based deterrent force (air and sea, given our vast sea to sea to sea geography) – perhaps while also developing the nuclear deterrence that Ian has advocated for, longer-term. We need to be able to better deter the predatory bully next door, the #1 and only real threat to Canadian sovereignty, despite their constant attempts to misdirect our attention toward distant bogeymen all while they steadily erode away at our independence.
Purple Library Guy
As soon as Canada started talking about spending big on the military with an eye to defence against a potential US invasion, I was commenting “We’ll need drones. Lots of drones.”
And happily the talk lately seems to suggest plans to get lots of drones. At first there was a lot about fighter planes and navy stuff, which IMO is mostly expensive toys for the boys. But right now the top level seems interested in drones. The way Carney talks implies a certain amount of in-Canada manufacture of these drones, but we’ll see. The Canada first Carney seems to be perpetually at war with the neoliberal free trade banker Carney.
Jack
Spot on – with a few insights.
First, my disclaimer: I am a retired military officer, USAF, major, C-130 flyboy.
In the early 90s when drones were first deployed, many pilots dismissed my assertion that drones would rule the skies by 2025.
My logic was simple. In WWII, the fighter pilot ruled the skies. By 1980, there was no such thing as aerial combat, mainly because the human being was the limiting factor. That was a 35 year life cycle so it was obvious to me that the evolution of the drone from concept to effective weapon system was upon us.
Necessity – and economics – always produce exponential advancements, and especially so when the alleged inferior force opts to fight asymmetrically. IEDs with Casio watches detonated and destroyed America’s conventional forces with aplomb in Iraq.
And now it’s drones. Cheap, yet precise and effective, we are the “Moneyball” effect applied to warfare.
Summarizing, America is a failed state because our leaders are universally incompetent, especially within our military.
But maybe that’s a subject for me to take up this werkend.
spud
Ian Welsh:
correct, the balance of payments is now going to be higher than ever because of the war, lots of over sea’s payments to others, coupled with the destruction of the moderate socialism of the new deal/fair deals which made capitalism tolerable and sorta of working, means the printing now will only explode inflation like pouring gasoline on a firestorm.
the flames of this gasoline induced firestorm, will be seen from the edge of the solar system.
then if the gold bugs(conservatives/libertarians, the neo-liberals will surely go along)win, that deflationary depression they will bring on, will be the largest catastrophe in human history, eclipsing WWII.
sell gold and silver, buy canned food.
cc
The unprovoked US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran (part of the neocon “seven countries in five years” quarter-century-long agenda going back to 2001) has shown the critical need for deterrence against the aggressive US bully – and has shown that the hugely expensive US-Israeli F-35’s and interceptor-missile-based Iron-Golden Dome projects are defeated by inexpensive drones and missiles. The Houthis in Yemen have demonstrated this and Iran has demonstrated this.
If Canada chooses to remain a tributary vassal to the US – with a PM effectively acting as governor – then we continue to give away billions of Canadian taxpayer dollars as ongoing tribute to the Empire through the wasteful “F-35” and “Golden Dome” imperial tribute programs, and that locks us in as completely dependent vassals.
But if Canada wants to truly be an independent and sovereign country, and not a de facto US 51st state – with a real Canadian PM and not a de facto governor – then Canada should reject the “F-35” and “Golden Dome” scams/traps with prejudice, and build an effective drone/missile/nuclear deterrence instead.
As the purpose of that deterrence would be to defend Canada against the US war-mongering predator, not against distant peaceful China, we could kick start that by going with the best and most affordable off-the-shelf drone technology out there, China’s. If the US makes use of Chinese technology as well, then there’s relative parity, but if they refuse that on their side, then we’d gain a cost-effective advantage.
Over the long term, we could try to develop our own supply chains and ecosystem for drones. But going with F-35’s or the “Golden Dome” also includes dependence on China (rare earth minerals, gallium, etc.) and locks us into complete and utter abject dependence on the increasingly-fascist US-Israel.
cc
As TM pointed out, to have Canadian sovereignty our governance has to be secured from foreign interference from US-Israel.
Removing the influence of private electoral campaign financing would help.
Private donations give far too much undue influence to the plutocratic 1% wealthy donors. We should move more toward public financing. We used to at least have some public per vote financing of parties until Harper, with Trudeau’s help, got rid of that.
We also need to build AI independence rather than dependence on American AI.
Canadians should especially stop using Sam Altman’s ChatGPT that’s tied to the US Pentagon.
There’s a global campaign to boycott OpenAI/ChatGPT:
https://quitgpt.org/#why
Anthropic’s Claude, is still US-based, but at least seems to have slightly more principle in being reluctant to allow US surveillance and autonomous killing.
Canada should use open-source models to provide Canadians with our own sovereign options. In the meantime, there are so many other great alternatives available to use, like DeepSeek, Europe’s Mistral, etc.
spud
pretty good over view. russia finally picked up the power that was laying at its feet. and a fascist idiot like Modi, made one of the biggest blunders in history since 1945.
turkey better understand how things stand now, and the fence sitting and double dealing better stop.
there are going to be a lot, and i mean a lot of rich parasites and leeches will be going under, no matter how many dollars are printed.
and the PMC class better get up to speed pronto as to what the rich parasites and leeches are, and what they have done to us, and what is going to happen to them, because they will be going to slaughter quickly in a vain attempt to capture their wages for a few more seconds of solvency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5X5FfkC3nI
Iran: War of Survival to War for Peace
bruce wilder
I remain skeptical. Defense against drones is effectively an unsolved problem, given that available “solutions” are mostly so much more expensive than the drone itself. If interceptors cost more than the drone, then even an intercepted drone has done valuable work in a war of attrition. I do not see some inherent quality, though, that would make this state of affairs permanent.
As Carborudum has pointed out, semi-autonomy and precision-targeting are defining features of this technology. Drones are robots. They might as well be self-driving taxis with the safety features turned off. Right now drones mostly deliver a payload to a more-or-less precisely defined target. My understanding is that in Ukraine, armored vehicles are readily neutralized because the drone can bring its munitions right to the chink in the armor, so to speak. Fire control cannot be far behind in this technological line of advances.
This is a technology of warfare by mass assassinations, as the Israelis have demonstrated. The ability to identify and locate targets is critical to its application. Those targets can be individuals or critical nodes in supply networks, social networks and electrical grids. Whether the political and military principals in devising and driving strategy understand the social and economic systems they wish to defeat or co-opt well enough to systematically identify critical targets and selectively destroy or spare such targets effectively to some purpose remains to be seen.
I am not sure that this technology does anything to make Cuba or Mexico or Honduras any more resilient. Being an “economic hitman” never required drones. A country like Lebanon barely holds together. I couldn’t tell you why the U.S. pays half the salaries of the Lebanese Army or has a massive embassy there, anymore than I could explain the relation of Iran to Hezbollah. The struggles, where they are most intense, are opaque to better news junkies than me. So, I don’t really expect to discern how this technology changes the balance of power in, say, Lebanon. Whether Israeli reckless cruelty is morally effective in the long-term does not erase the fact that Israeli tech firms are technically competent.
mago
A drone is a male bee that screws the queen and doesn’t gather honey or do much else.
Then there’s the monotonous drone that fills the airwaves.
Those flying drones are lethal and scary, even the hobby and reconnaissance versions.
Drone on sailor, all your dreams are fantasy and all your stories lies.
You can kiss your ass goodbye when all is drone and gone.
Once again, wisdom would dictate don’t hit send, but I can’t help myself.
Purple Library Guy
Uh, most drones are NOT robots. They’re remotely piloted by humans. One common term for the most common varieties even emphasizes that–they’re called “FPV” drones, acronym for “First Person Viewpoint”. They’re accurate because they’re very maneuverable; you fly the thing around until you see something you want to blow up, and then you fly at it and try to nail it at just the right place. Very video-game-ish.
Yes, many militaries are pushing for autonomous, “AI” controlled killer drones and some probably exist although how well they work is another question. But they’re not what’s changing battlefields right now.
bruce wilder
I don’t think roboticists make the sharp distinction PLG is insisting on.
FPV drones are directed remotely, but not strictly-speaking, piloted remotely. A lot of the work of keeping the craft stabile in the air has had to be off-loaded and made local to the craft, even the work of maintaining the target as the craft flies toward it. I used the term, semi-autonomy, to express this evolving aspect of the technology. Loss of radio signal cannot cause an instant crash. Otherwise mere latency would be fatal, never mind radio static or jamming.
There’s a whole line of robotics development that aims at enhancing or amplifying the human skeleton, like the “transformers” in a Michael Bay movie. These are not analog extensions exploiting the principles of Archimedes lever. To work, control from feedback is made digital and local and an abstraction layer inserted between human and machine.
“Autonomy” becomes a functional continuum as more information processing for control becomes local to the device and digital rather than analog. As with Elon’s Tesla sales pitch, “full-self-driving” remains a receding horizon even as capability mounts.
bruce wilder
I love the YouTube videos of drone swarms numbering in the thousands used as digital fireworks. To accomplish those feats of coordination, the individual drone has to be able to execute instructions at a fairly high level of abstraction. I imagine it is a bit like the systems of coordination applied by college marching bands during a half-time show: marchers separating into small coordinated squads, executing instructions to move and change direction.
bruce wilder
still thinking . . .
what makes kamikaze tactics an order of magnitude easier today is that the human agent is not being sacrificed. the consent of the agent to suicide put a considerable strain on the social “technology” for organizing armed conflict. fair to think that strain imposes a discipline of sorts on “principals” — the historical record is not especially encouraging, given that totalitarianism was one response to the strain.
whether there even needs to be a human agent seems to be a question AI is posing
an unanswered question (unasked in mainstream
discoursepropaganda) is whether the principals can be made smart enough or wise enough to use the tactical possibilities with strategic effectiveness.Trump seems to be the poster boy for clueless principal, without a strategy. elsewhere, i called Trump a ventriloquist’s dummy, identifying Netanyahoo as the representative principal, and characterized the Zionist “strategy” as reckless cruelty.
stepping back from the particulars of the Zionist hijacking, it would be fair to reflect that the institutional “agent” of the American state — the “Deep State” intelligence community, military-industrial complex — escaped nominal control of a democratic “principal” long ago. the spells of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice have been directed chaotically, without due attention to proper purpose or responsibility for consequence. The evils of the American state are the doings of a morally incompetent, thoroughly palsied “principal” who has lost strategic control of an over-mighty collection of “agents”.
Lindsey Graham or John McCain, George W Bush (dummy to Dick Cheney and company), Joe Biden — examples of clueless politicians acting as state “principals” in setting what passes for strategic direction and oversight abound. the Blob(tm), which consists of swarming MIC-financed “agents” like the pathological Kagans, drives policy past all attempts at rational deliberation or realistic or idealistic critique.
i don’t feel much confidence that Latin America will produce better “principals” as dependence on human agents is relaxed. one thing that troubles me greatly is the prominence of authoritarians in the global “resistence”.
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As TM pointed out, to have Canadian sovereignty our governance has to be secured from foreign interference from US-Israel.
To have Canadian sovereignty, your governance MUST be secured from ALL foreign influence, be it Israeli/American or otherwise. Canada could start by severing any and all connections with the Crown. However informal or unattenuated that relationship may be, the symbolism and implications are stark and poignant.
Carborundum
We do not have a problem with the 1% driving electoral finance in this country (Canada). The political base does skew towards upper income demographics, but it is *much* more diffuse than the top 1%. Looking at 2020 (the last Federal general election that we have complete data released for): among the main 5 parties, donors contributing less than $200 contributed between 20% and 33% of total dollars. That’s during a year where the maximum permitted contribution was $3,250 (split 50:50 between candidates and national office). Additionally, we do, in fact, have significant public funding of the electoral process through reimbursement, provided the candidate gets enough vote share. I don’t recall the exact percentage of expenses reimbursed off the top of my head, but it is over half. In addition, the individual donor gets a significant tax credit, progressively structured (i.e., larger amounts get a smaller credit). The 1% definitely have a disproportionate impact, but it isn’t in campaign finance.
As to the influence of the Crown, the PM is heading towards his 7th bilat with Starmer since taking office. Good. More, please. Our connections with the rest of the non-American G7 and the non-liability part of the EU should be equally as tight. The Yanks don’t like it? Tough shit – this is what it looks like when people work around false friends.
US: “Oh, you should be free of foreign encumbrances.”
Rube: “My, what big teeth you have Granny.”