“In the Iran context we see mass employment of low cost drones which has led to, from my perspective, a decisive shift in warfare,” says Brig Arun Sahgal (Retd) of the Forum for Strategic Initiatives, a Delhi-based think tank.
Speaking on The Gist, Sahgal underscored that “The key trends that I am looking at is what platform-centric superiority has given to cost and position dominance. When I say cost and position dominance just please remember that 24 systems, highly expensive systems of the Americans, have been destroyed.”
He pointed to the large number of radar systems which support the attack systems, being disabled or destroyed. So, for example, every ₹1 spent by Iran, the Americans are spending close to about 120 to 140 rupees.
Sahgal links US President Donald Trump going forward and backward on the issue of more attacks on Iran to the need to re-look his military’s inventories, do they have enough drone or counter-drone platforms in stock, what about spares?
In his view, Trump and his generals have found to their horror that whether replacing lost drones or repairing existing ones, the timelines are too extended.
Sahgal argues that the battlefield has now moved from precision warfare to saturation warfare.
“Hundreds of drones are being launched, and these drones are being launched as part of what I call a linear kill chain. Distributed kill webs are being created. It means that drones are fired and Interceptors are fired to engage them.”
He noted that US interceptors are being tracked and located by China’s highly sophisticated Beidou satellite navigation system comprising 34 satellites.
“The central doctrinal challenge is how to fight when adversaries cost of attack using drones and missile systems, is lower than our own cost of defence,” he said. “It’s a new mathematics of war, low cost, expendable, scalable systems, imposing high cost on finite precision oriented systems.”
The other issue is the use of mass drone swarms as the primary strike element. These attacks are blended attacks since they comprise drones, missiles, electronic warfare and cyber.
Tune in for more in this conversation with Brig Arun Sahgal of the Forum for Security initiatives.
