Gregory's Server
@cstross And, crucially, drones do not function as decisive mass; they may never, since drones are slow, as well as cheap.
We can see that in Ukraine very clearly; Ukraine struggles to convert their drone advantage into victory. Things are going well so far in the current excursion because they decided to abandon a political convention to exploit the opportunity to maneuver. "Assault troops shooting the shit out of disorganised rear-area troops" has been the ambition of cavalry for centuries.
@cstross So, yes, this is obviously an extension of several things (awareness, capacity for fire, contested volume) and it's a challenge to training and doctrine, but the analogy is the WWII European air war; resource intensive, causes a lot of casualties, and not in any way decisive unless or until one side collapses and stops being able to counter.
It's not predictive of future patterns because it's not an alteration of classical patterns, and those assert that there's always a counter.