As the war between the US-Israel and Iran enters a high-intensity phase, aerial warfare is being dominated by low-cost drone technology. Iran is reportedly deploying thousands of Shahed-136 drones, which are said to cost approximately $20,000 each, to target high-value assets. The ‘popularity’ of drones has revived a take by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt during the early stages of the Ukraine-Russia war. Schmidt argued that the US military was overly invested in “legacy” hardware like tanks and aircraft carriers, and they should buy drones instead.Schmidt famously suggested that the future of defense lies in mass-produced, inexpensive drones rather than a small number of extremely expensive weapons like tanks. Schmidt urged the US to rethink its military priorities, suggesting it replaces traditional tank fleets with advanced drones. “I read somewhere that the U.S. had thousands of tanks stored somewhere. Give them away. Buy a drone instead,” he said at that time, citing Ukraine’s success in using affordable drones to counter Russia’s numerical and air superiority. Schmidt’s advocacy draws from his leadership of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which in 2021 concluded that AI would transform warfare across all domains.Schmidt, according to reports by Forbes, told the audience at the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia in 2024 that the Ukraine-Russia war demonstrated how “a $5,000 drone can destroy a $5 million tank.”

What US-Iran conflict is telling about ‘new’ warfare

According to several reports, the wave of drone strikes has demonstrated three critical capabilities of modern unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs):The first is said to be economic exhaustion wherein the use forces an adversary to spend millions of dollars in munitions to down a drone that costs comparatively less.The second is reportedly overwhelming sophisticated air defense systems by launching ‘swarms’ that provide too many targets for interceptors to handle simultaneously.Thirdly, striking sensitive targets, including airports and data centres, before traditional defense measures can react, reports suggest. Amazon has confirmed that its data centre in the Gulf countries, UAE and Bahrain, have been damaged in drone attacks.Iran has successfully used a mix of ballistic missiles, cruise missile and drones to target US bases and critical infrastructure in the middle-east.