Tech: How Technology Is Changing The World Of Warfare

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0:31The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and Israel's war in Iran, the Israel-Hamas war, each of these conflicts of the last few years is rewriting how war is fought. Cheap drones are doing damage that once required far more expensive weapons. Battlefield information is now available at a distance almost in real time. And some of the biggest innovations are coming from countries with relatively small defense budgets. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Today we ask, what are these conflicts teaching us, and how is the U.S. responding? We'll work through those questions and more after this short break.

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2:40Chloe Mal, this week on NPR's Newsmakers. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the 1A Podcast. We're talking about the changing nature of war and how they are fought. Joining us from London is Emma Burroughs, European security correspondent for the Associated Press. She's been tracking Russia's covert sabotage campaign across Europe and drone warfare from the Baltics to the Middle East. Emma, welcome to the program. Hi, thanks for having me. Also with us, Eric Lynn Greenberg. He's an associate professor of political science at MIT, a former U.S. Air Force officer, and author of The Remote Revolution, Drones and Modern Statecraft.

3:20He studies how new military technologies are changing international politics and the dynamics of war. Eric, thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. Emma, let's start with the technology. What's the biggest shift in the technology used in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East right now versus what we've seen in the past? I think you've already said it. I think the answer is drones. And I think the thing to point out is the speed at which these drones are being innovated. Four years ago, Ukraine didn't really have a drone defense industry. And now Ukraine is offering support to the United States when it comes to drone warfare.

3:59That's the shift that we've seen over the last four years. the two countries in the world right now which have demonstrated their ability to carry out extremely advanced drone warfare are Russia and Ukraine. And Ukraine has developed a domestic industry that is now so advanced that I think Zelensky said a couple of days ago that it carried out strikes on an oil facility in Tumen in Siberia in Russia, which is 2 ,000 kilometers away. And this has been driven of necessity because many countries were very hesitant initially at giving Ukraine long-range missile strike capabilities, which they desperately wanted in order to bring the war home to Russians and to hit the Russian energy sector.

4:46And so necessity was the mother of invention for Ukraine. They've had to come up with ways of delivering those strike capabilities, getting around technology that they didn't have. And so we've seen that, you know, Zelensky is saying that they're carrying out these strikes on facilities in Siberia. I'm sure plenty of people saw the images of Moscow last week with huge plumes of burning smoke above the sky as Ukraine attacked oil refineries, which supply just under half of the fuel the Moscow region needs. And so this is something that is developing not just on an hourly, not just on a weekly, but on an hourly basis.

5:34And I'm speaking to you right now from a conference in London, the Land Warfare Conference. And it's a group of very senior land commanders from across Europe. And everyone is talking about how drones have changed the nature of warfare. And the Finnish commander just said, now no one is safe from drone warfare. Well, I want to bring Eric in here because war has been evolving for thousands of years. Bows and arrows, swords, guns, airplanes, tanks, nuclear weapons, all of these were once new technology. To your mind, is there something about these latest innovations that represent a break from the development of the past?

6:12Absolutely. And I think this follows along with what Emma opened with, and it's the cost of these technologies. In recent years, you have a set of technologies, like drones, but coupled with intelligence information that's much more widely available, that has greatly reduced the cost of carrying out precision strikes. So in the past, if you wanted to carry out a precision strike like what Emma talked about, a strike on Moscow, you needed to be a great power with very robust intelligence capabilities, GPS-guided, long-range munitions. And now actors are able to do this on a much cheaper scale. And so I think that is what the fundamental difference is, that you have more actors armed with this equipment.

6:50Well, and Emma, just briefly give us a sense of how quickly drone technology is evolving.

6:58It's so fast. So at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia took deliveries of drones from Iran, Shahhead drones, which it then upgraded. And then there was a cat and mouse game, which is still going on, of who can outwit the other side. So each side started putting in more and more advanced antenna to get round jamming capabilities because you want to be able to defeat the enemy's ability to take you out. And then that's now developed into fiber optic drones, which are drones which cannot be jammed because they're connected to an operator by a very thin fiber optic cable, which sometimes can stretch tens of miles or kilometers.

7:42And it gets around all jamming entirely because it's connected to the controller. And the interesting thing about this is that we've seen kind of like a washing machine effect where like technology has gone in and it's being spun around and it's actually now ending up in other conflicts. So I reported with some colleagues recently about how these fiber optic drones are now being used by Hezbollah. And so this is a sign that, like, the innovations that we're seeing in Ukraine are ultimately ending up in places very far away from those front lines. Well, Eric, Iran damaged at least 20 U.S. military sites in the Gulf over the course of the U.S.

8:22and Israel's war with Iran. That's according to reporting by the BBC. What made that possible? So the development of these long-range drones, coupled with, in many cases, intelligence sharing that has been openly reported that Russia and other actors have shared intelligence with Iran that has enabled precision targeting. You have commercial satellite imagery now that is available at a scale that has never been available in the past, in which the world is imaged at an incredible frequency with incredible detail. And so you couple this information space with drones that have munitions on board that are able to carry out precision strikes, and you have this world in which a relatively weaker actor is able to hold at risk one of the world's largest militaries and damage incredibly expensive military assets.

9:10So I remember when I was deployed to the Middle East as a young Air Force officer, you know, 15 years ago, I was at Al-Yedid Air Force Base or Air Base. And, you know, being struck by an Iranian missile or a drone was not something that I thought about. But we can all now look at this video footage that we see on social media or in traditional media outlets, and you can see the power of which the Iranians have been able to hold U.S. assets and bases at risk. Well, last week we spoke to Mark Santora, who's covering the war in Ukraine for The New York Times. Here's what he had to say about Ukraine's latest weapons advancements.

9:41In the past couple months, they've developed what they're calling mid-range strike weapons, which are capable of precision targeting of moving vehicles and trains in that sort of rear area where the logistics move, where the men and material move. And that has caused the Russians all sorts of problems because they haven't found a way to defend against that effectively. Eric, help us better understand the challenges of defending against drone strikes and these new remote technologies. I think there's two fundamental challenges. First is drones in many cases are relatively small assets, so they are hard to pick up.

10:19They're hard to target, especially if you're thinking about these smaller first-person view drones, quadcopters that have been armed with small munitions. And then the second issue beyond size is just the number of these drones that are being flown. If you think about the Moscow attacks, there were dozens and dozens of Ukrainian drones that were flown towards this target area. And so one of the challenges that arises is that you have many actors using incredibly expensive weapon systems against relatively cheap drones. And that's just simply not sustainable. So defense experts normally think about something called the cost exchange ratio.

10:51And you want that to be in your favor. You want it to be cheaper to shoot down drones than the cost that the drones cost the other side. And so we're not at that point yet. We've seen incredibly expensive munitions being used by the U.S. and its allies to down relatively cheap drones. And we're seeing innovation by the Ukrainians and others to try to find cheaper ways of bringing drones down. But we're not at the point yet where all actors have the ability to bring drones down at a sufficiently cheap cost. When we think of defense on the ground, Emma, we often think of tanks. What role do tanks and other conventional machines of war play amidst all this new technology?

11:29It's a very interesting question because it's one people are debating here at this land warfare conference that I'm at. Tanks, people here at least, the land warfare commanders, I mean, they would say it, wouldn't they? They still believe that they play a role. But someone just said that, you know, you cannot send a tank now out into battle without some sort of air cover and protection. And that doesn't have to be a fighter jet, but it has to include, for example, some sort of drone surveillance system, ability to take out your enemy. Because what we've seen from the war in Ukraine is that a tank is a sitting duck and a drone can target it, as Eric was saying, very rightly, very cheaply and very, very effectively.

12:14And what we're seeing in the war in Ukraine now is that there's effectively like a kill zone along the front line where nothing really can move because if it moves, it's dead. And so that is the zone in which Russian forces are trying to push forward and also the Ukrainians are trying to push back. But if anything moves, it's gone. We're speaking to Emma Burroughs, security, defense and intelligence correspondent for the Associated Press in Europe. Also with us, Eric Lynn Greenberg, associate professor of political science at MIT. He's also the author of The Remote Revolution, Drones and Modern Statecraft.

12:53We're also hearing from you. Evidently, it is not the superpowers winning. Iran is adapting much faster than the United States can. They're using$4 ,000 drones and mass producing them. Meanwhile, all we have are multi-million dollar missiles that cannot be transported, cannot be launched at mass scale like these drones. And it's just so much more efficient than anything that Russia or the United States has. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. Coming up, more on how the economics of war are changing and how the legal limits of war are being tested. That's just ahead.

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14:48Welcome back to the 1A podcast. We're discussing how modern warfare is changing. Guy in Pensacola emailed, will someone comment on the Trump class of battleship that has been described as outdated technology? In December, President Trump announced the Navy's intention to develop a new class of large battleships. Emma, what can you tell us? I have to say that's not my area of expertise, but I think it probably speaks to the point where many commanders right now are looking at their forces and trying to assess their force to deal with the threats of the future and not of the past. And that's happening in the United States and that's happening across Europe.

15:32One of the issues that leaders are dealing with is that technology is moving so quickly. And if you have a very long procurement cycle, for example, traditionally sometimes it can take tens of years decades to produce weapons by the time you actually deliver that weapon it's potentially going to be out of date and so one of the things that many forces are looking at right now is how do you balance the need between having a force and weaponry which is fit for purpose right now but you don't heavily rely on that and you allow yourself room for maneuver in the future so that you can procure the assets that you need when you need them.

16:22And that's a question I think that most people are still struggling with. Eric, can you give us any insight into the Trump class of battleship that's been described as outdated? So I'm not an expert on naval warfare, but I think in addition to the points that Emma made, one of the challenges is that you have these historic classes of military assets that have normally been viewed as these flagship capabilities. So things like the aircraft carrier, things like large naval vessels or large airbases that have typically been a status symbol for large militaries, something that's seen as projecting military power very visibly.

17:00These, because of the host of technologies that we've been discussing, are now potentially at risk of being struck by far cheaper technologies. And I think that's one of the reasons why many defense analysts and pundits have essentially said that these large assets are really perhaps outdated for the types of fights that we're going to see in the future. Well, Emma, in your reporting, are you finding that these technologies are actually changing who is winning? I think that right now what we can see is the person who wins is the person who can innovate the quickest. And not just innovate, but also use those innovations and scale them on the battlefield.

17:41So we see with Ukraine that Ukraine has taken its base and it was a centre of coding and learning in the Soviet Union. So it had a very good base of computer specialists and coders and technology and they have leaned heavily on that to create Europe's by far standout flagship defence industry. And so I think the lessons that other European nations should take for that is it's not just about the thing that you're creating. It's not just about one particular drone and those capabilities. It's about the ability to adapt to new technological challenges and implement those quickly to create new capabilities which can be deployed quickly on the battlefield.

18:38And I think that's what we've seen Ukraine do. We got this question from Aaron in Hebron, Kentucky. What effect will drone warfare have on the military industrial complex and its cost structure? Eric, could you answer that question? Sure. I think what we've seen in recent years is a shift in the drone production space away from large, what we might call defense prime contractors, to smaller companies that are able to produce different types of drones, cheaper drones, smaller drones, much more rapidly than the large defense firms. So earlier in the U.S. conflict with Iran, we saw the first operational deployment of a drone called the Lucas.

19:19It's a low-cost, one-way attack drone that was based on a reverse-engineered variant of the Shahed drone that Iran has widely deployed. And what's unique here is that this particular drone is not built by a large defense firm, but actually a much smaller company. So I think that's one way that we're going to see a shift in the drone production space. Another way that I think we're going to start seeing a shift in the drone production landscape is you're going to start seeing a number of states that are not traditional weapons exporters all of a sudden growing in importance on the international stage.

19:53So if you think back a decade or so, you probably would not think of a state like Turkey as a large weapons exporter, especially in the air domain, or Iran, for instance. But these states, because there's so much demand for drones, are now exporting these in a way that enables them to gain political and military influence around the world. We got this from Alexis, who asks, I have heard absolutely horrific things about the environmental impact of drone debris. Of course, all wars leave behind a mess, but the filaments and everything in drones are disaster. Who is going to go out and pick all that up?

20:27Emma, what are you learning about the both short and longer term environmental impact of using more drones in war? It's a very good question because drones extend the fallout of a war far beyond a war's front lines. We've seen that very clearly in the war between Russia and Ukraine, in that drones have ended up thousands and thousands of miles away from the front lines. I think, speaking from a European perspective right now, nobody is thinking about that question, and it's a good question to be thinking about. Because right now, Russia and Ukraine are still engaged in a very hot war. But, you know, it's a good point.

21:11the the battlefield in ukraine is is is sort of obliterated it's a no-man's land and it's full of various different types of debris ordnance uh uh explosives and drone debris is is one of those things i i i wonder if that's a question that perhaps will uh come more to the fore if if places further west in Europe or indeed in the United States suffered the same kind of sustained drone warfare that Ukraine has. A couple of weeks ago, we had Wall Street Journal national security reporter Robby Grammer on the program. He'd recently returned from Estonia. That's a NATO member that borders Russia. While there, he visited a center where NATO troops are being trained by Ukrainian specialists in drone warfare.

21:58Here's what he had to say. This drone center had this massive garage with a bunch of Ukrainian and Russian drones down on the battlefield that they brought in and these, you know, military specialists could tinker with it, see how, and a lot of these Ukrainian drones that are carrying out a large bulk of these just massive casualties against the Russian side, you know, they're 3D printed, they're jerry-rigged, they're, you know, put together effectively with scotch and duct tape on some level, but on an industrial scale in a way that's really astounding. And what's funny is, you know, NATO conducts these military exercises to train their troops, flex their muscles.

22:36They're worried about Russia setting the sights on NATO borders after Ukraine. And these Ukrainian specialists come in, they have them in bed in these exercises, and there's just these Ukrainian specialists who can absolutely smoke a full NATO battalion in these training exercises with a series of drones. Emma, again, you're at the Royal United Services Land Warfare Conference. What lessons are other governments and militaries around the world taking from the wars in Ukraine and Iran. When they hear about this changing picture of warfare, you were also in Estonia recently. Yes. So I was on the same trip with Robbie and also went to that drone center.

23:14And I think the lessons that everyone is taking is that everyone has to learn from the Ukrainians. Before that trip to Estonia, I had come from Sweden, from the island of Gotland, where I was watching military exercises, which had the Swedish forces, the US was also there, and the Ukrainians had been invited as well. And I spoke on the sidelines to the Ukrainian drone pilots, whose skill is absolutely crazy to see. It's like watching a wasp with this drone zip across the sky. And they told me that they effectively killed, in inverted commas, the Swedish forces and they said that the exercise had to be reset three times so that the forces could work out what had gone wrong because they hadn't managed to shift their mindset enough to deal with the realities of drone warfare and so I spoke afterwards to the head of the Swedish Armed Forces General Michael Clayson and he said the way to get better and to be fair to the Swedes this is what they were doing is to listen to the Ukrainians and to train from the Ukrainians.

24:22It is one thing having a really great industrial base, really great know-how. But the thing that everyone here is talking about is what they can learn from Ukraine and trying to bring that experience from Ukraine to forces in Europe and indeed the United States so that they can experience it practicing without having to do it in real life for the first time. But Eman, you've also been tracking another way Russia is fighting war at great distances, sabotage campaigns. What do those operations look like? This is another form of Russia's warfare against the West. So I run a project at the Associated Press tracking Russian malign activity across Europe.

25:05And we've created an interactive map, which now has 192 officially attributed different incidents to Russia. So it's sabotage, arson, attempted assassinations, cyber attacks, vandalism, propaganda. And all of this behavior is designed specifically to stay below the level of triggering the discussions for NATO's Article 5 collective defense clause. But it's a way of creating distrust in society, getting people to think more negatively of their governments. A lot of it involves propaganda, so stirring up dissent creating AI videos to split different communities. And it's something that's very, very difficult for authorities to get a hand on.

25:57And it's something that delivers Russia a win every single time. Because even if a plot fails, it requires huge amounts of Western law enforcement resources to investigate it. And even if a plot fails, Russia still works out what it can do better next time. So it's all about testing defenses and draining resources while remaining below the level of Article 5. We're speaking to Emma Burroughs, European security correspondent for the Associated Press. Also with us, MIT professor Eric Lynn Greenberg. He's author of the book, The Remote Revolution, Drones and Modern Statecraft. Let's bring another voice into the conversation.