Thread by @sfrantzman

Question:
Months ago we were told that Russia was "rattled"...that Ukraine was "boosted" by Turkish drones it acquired. A "big role" in Ukraine's offense...so today where are the drones? Or is this a lesson that these kinds of UAVs alone are actually not gamechangers?

One of the narratives, falsely understood I think, from the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict was that the Ankara-made drones were a gamechanger, when in fact it was other loitering munition technology, primarily Israel's, that was important alongside it

Ankara has a very close relationship with some media and it feeds stories to the media to pump up the sales...there are uncritical reports...like questions of "how do the drones work in contested airspace"?

It remains to be seen, perhaps the Ankara-supplied drones will score some successes. My sense is that if not paired with other types of loitering munitions and air defense and other technology, just having an armed drone by itself isn't enough in a regional or big war.

Drones are effective when used with total air power dominance, like Ankara basically does in Syria and Iraq where no one is willing to contest the drones. We were told that Ankara bested opponents in Syria and Libya with these UAVs. Again...maybe the wrong lessons were learned?

It remains to be seen.

For instance; washingtonpost.com/world/europe/n…

I am a supporter of drone power, I wrote a book on it #DroneWars; but what I''m saying is it's about incorporating a lot of them in multi-tiered system; theguardian.com/world/2020/dec…

I mean come on "A brief, bloody war in a corner of Asia is a warning about why the tank's days of dominance may be over" businessinsider.com/drones-in-arme…

You can read my book which hopefully gives some sense of the complexities militaries face as they acquire new UAV and drone systems; amazon.com/Drone-Wars-Pio…