Generating Effects - by James - War By Other Means
War By Other Means
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Generating Effects<br>How To Consider Strike Options
James<br>Jul 07, 2026
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Frame from a Ukrainian FP-2 strike UAV involved in Ukraine’s ongoing middle-strike campaign
The drone argument has been one of the longest-running—and most exhausting—debates in military circles over the past four years.1<br>Thanks for reading War By Other Means! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
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My contention here is that we’re having this conversation on the wrong grounds.<br>We have overly focused on the sort of techno-hype that is often associated with unrealistic Silicon Valley marketing—think AI-controlled military operations and drone swarms—than on looking at what we should actually be considering when integrating drones into military operations: effects.<br>To start with, I think “drone” and “UAV” tend to both be poor terms of art for even understanding what we’re talking about.2<br>The only thing that a commercial off-the-shelf FPV drone used at the tactical level to target singular personnel and long-range strike UAVs that target fixed sites like refineries have in common is that they do not have pilots.<br>Yes, they are both technically “UAVs,” but the effects they generate—and therefore the function they perform—are radically different.<br>A small FPV drone serves the same fundamental function as a battalion-to-company-level fires asset does. When you’re talking about systems in this class, what you’re really saying is that you need a fires capability for immediate tactical threats you encounter on the line of contact.<br>They can be guided either by radio or by fibre-optic cables, giving them a precision-strike capability that isn’t exactly the same as mortars or artillery3, but comes with drawbacks like susceptibility to electronic warfare, C-UAS capabilities, and weather that can completely ground operations.<br>Contrast this with the “middle-strike” drones that Ukraine has been fielding this year. These are a class of strike assets that are capable of ranging something like ~250 km while retaining capabilities for what is referred to as a “dynamic” strike4.<br>This is more akin to a poor man’s airstrike.<br>Given the limitations of these platforms, they’re unable to support heavier warheads associated with stand-in strikes conducted by manned platforms, and are thus much less capable of generating the same level of damage that a traditional bomb would. They can reliably destroy a truck, but hardened shelters are likely well outside their scope.<br>The next class would be long-range strike drones. Think a Shahed or an FP-1 drone.<br>They’re a substitute for cruise-missile capabilities and are primarily intended for fixed sites in an adversary’s rear. Factories, refineries, bridges.<br>They’re cheap, but like middle-strike drones, they lack the warheads associated with traditional cruise missiles and are limited in what they can achieve.<br>You also have the C-UAS class of drones, like Ukraine’s Sting interceptor drone or Raytheon’s Coyote.<br>You might be seeing a theme here, but these fill the role of being a cheaper and less capable air defense asset. They tend to be slower and are designed for point defense of assets, and can reliably intercept adversary drones—but lack high-end capabilities to intercept cruise and ballistic missiles.<br>I can keep going here and point out things like loitering munitions or the thousand different variations of ISR UAVs5 as well, but I think I’ve broadly made the point.<br>Drones are not a new class of military capability; they’re cheaper versions of systems we already have—and their value depends entirely on the kind of war we expect to fight and what effects we need to generate.<br>I don’t mean this to say that none of this matters.<br>I’m just saying that we need to stop talking about this as the next great revolution in military affairs and look at it for what it is. Systems that create battlefield effects. No different in function than what came before.<br>Which gets to the question of what we should be thinking about when we consider future procurements.6<br>The answer is that it depends.<br>It depends on what effects you want. It depends on the resources you have on hand. It depends on where you plan on fighting. It depends on how you plan on fighting.7<br>Do we want to generate strike packages of smaller quantities of highly capable strike assets? Or do we want to saturate an adversary with cheaper long-range strike UAVs?<br>Can we attain air superiority, or do we need attritable systems to fill in for this role?<br>Will we have fluid maneuver war, or will we need mass proliferation of tactical FPV drones to substitute for more expensive company fires?<br>Can we expect ABO and overflight from our allies, or will we be fighting at a distance?<br>Are we fighting in the Taiwan Strait, the Suwałki Gap, or the Sahel?8<br>These choices all come with resource trade-offs in terms of what we spend our defense budgets...