I have for a long time considered autonomous drones to be the future of surveillance and warfare. I wrote about this initially in 2006 in my graduate school thesis. I then only knew a fraction of what I know now to be true about the premonitions I had. As the war in Ukraine rages on for a second year, my ideas continue to be reaffirmed. Russia and Ukraine are caught in the feedback loop of a weapons race. The deployment and development of drones on the battlefield has now clearly fundamentally changed the entire battlefield. FPV drones that cost a fraction of the equipment they are used to destroy are a great example of this. Both sides are using these drones simultaneously for offensive and defensive applications. The operators of these drones are human, however the ambition to have swarms of autonomous drones on the battlefield before 2025 is real. UPDATE: The day after this post the Pentagon announced it’s “replicator program”… The goal is to produce thousands of inexpensive autonomous drones and have them in use within two years. Here is a link to a POLITICO article with more info. I’m sure more will come of this in the media.