The Strike On Saudi Oil Facilities Was Unprecedented And It Underscores Far Greater Issues - The Drive
►https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29874/the-strike-on-saudi-oil-facilities-was-unprecedented-and-it-underscores-fa
[...] this was an unprecedented attack. Welcome to the murky world of unmanned warfare that I have been warning about for many years. I almost take this issue personally because people use to blow it off or even snicker at it. Now all the predictions I wish were wrong are coming true and at an alarming pace.
The Department of Defense was ridiculously asleep at the wheel regarding this threat and is now scrambling to play catchup. Anyone who says differently is straight-up lying . It’s well established what non-state actors can already do with relatively low-end unmanned aircraft technology—Houthi rebels alone have been using suicide drones for two and a half years—just imagine what a peer state will be able to do in the very near future. Instead of a mass of individual suicide drones layered in with other weapons, like cruise missiles, attacking a target simultaneously, imagine a swarm that is fully networked and works cooperatively to best achieve their mission goals, including jamming or killing air defenses in order for the swarm to make it to its final destination. America’s adversaries are all too aware of this game-changing potential and the lack of defenses to counter it in any robust manner.
Here’s a cold hard reality that most people just don’t understand, including many defense sector pundits—air defense systems, no matter how advanced and deeply integrated, aren’t magic. They have major limitations, especially considering most primarily rely on ground-based sensors .
