The online edition of Business Insider has released [...] Michael Peck's article "The century-long reign of the machine gun is over, a Russian strategist argues" outlining a number of theses from an article previously published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta by Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, "This It's already another war." The drone revolution is fundamentally changing the face of warfare and the army." However, for some reason, the author of Business Insider focused on the strange contrast of drones to machine guns, although the latter were not mentioned at all in Ruslan Pukhov's material. The translation of the text of "Business Insider" is given by the resource ИноСМИ.ги
(c) Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters
The heaviest infantry weapons - mortars and machine guns - are outdated, BI writes, citing Russian strategist Ruslan Pukhov. He believes that drones will replace them, as a result of which infantry units will become more compact and lighter.
Michael Peck
Today's infantry troops are typically armed with machine guns, automatic grenade launchers, mortars, and anti-tank missiles. However, all of them, except for automatic carbines, will soon become obsolete functionally, and infantry units will become lighter and more maneuverable, according to one Russian military strategist.
Drones with a first-person view have already begun to crowd artillery and group infantry weapons, says Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, in an article for Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Pukhov believes that the fighting of the future will be conducted by small detachments of operators of attack drones with a first-person view (FPV) and infantry with the support of reconnaissance drones and electronic warfare. "Accordingly, the most important area of military affairs will be the fight against the enemy's FPV drones," he warned in his bold and in some ways even provocative reassessment of the land war. Where drones cannot "reach" - for example, targets deep behind enemy lines - will be hit by long-range guided missiles.
Since the First World War, when infantry suffered heavy losses during the assault on enemy trenches and machine-gun nests, they received portable heavy weapons to reduce dependence on artillery and other external fire support. After the light machine guns of the 1915 model, the infantrymen successively received mortars, anti-tank rocket launchers, grenade launchers with anti-tank missiles, and more recently, drones.
Light machine guns - such as the American assault M249 manufactured by FN Manufacturing LLC or the German MG42 from World War II - have become an integral element of infantry. Due to their high rate of fire, they form the basis of firepower and provide the shooters with maneuverability. However, as a rule, these weapons are for direct fire and require direct sight of the target. But the problem is that if you see an enemy, then he sees you too, and he can return fire.
Tactical drones can be launched from behind the front line, out of sight of the enemy. In addition, in Ukraine, troops no longer move through open spaces, especially in large groups. Instead, the fighters remain under the protection of fortified positions and launch thousands of drones daily to patrol the front line, while targets they detect are destroyed by kamikaze drones and artillery.
"For centuries, direct line-of-sight fire has been the basis of defeat in combat, and the fundamentals of tactics have been built around ensuring the effectiveness of such fire. Now there is no need to see the enemy (target) right in front of you," says Pukhov.
"Theoretically, it can be seen from any distance and hit with the same precision. The survival rate of remote dispersed platforms for firing from closed positions and their calculations is much higher than any weapon for firing in line of sight," he added.
The idea that the infantry would abandon machine guns and mortars and use only drones horrified American military experts. "If someone had said to me, 'Look, we'll give you as many drones as you want, but you'll give up the M240 heavy machine guns for it,' I would have replied that you're crazy," RAND Corporation researcher and retired U.S. Army Colonel Gian Gentile, who commanded the armored reconnaissance in Iraq.
Drones are vulnerable to electronic warfare and air attacks, and they are also hampered by bad weather or smoke. An infantry unit armed with only drones from all heavy weapons would put all the eggs in one basket. However, these "eggs" are quickly consumed: in 2023, Ukraine reported that it was losing 10,000 drones per month, mainly due to Russian interference. At the same time, a heavy machine gun with a rate of fire of over 100 rounds per minute allows only two soldiers to create a kill zone within 600 meters of their position.
Pukhov also believes that drones and other means of destruction from closed positions will also lead to the obsolescence of tanks. "All the firing tasks solved by a tank in combat can now be assigned to much cheaper, more effective and stealthy means of precision destruction from closed positions - from FPV drones to guided artillery shells and tactical over-the-horizon missile systems such as ALAS or Spike-NLOS," Pukhov wrote.
According to Pukhov, drones will also replace artillery. "Drones, firstly, are a universal means of destruction, and secondly, they are already capable of operating over the entire range of artillery," he notes. Indeed, fiber-optic FPV drones are invulnerable to electronic warfare and hit targets 15 kilometers from the front line - historically, artillery was covering this area.
Theoretically, this is fraught with a devastating double blow. A huge number of cheap drones with a first-person view can literally flood the front line. And longer-range weapons, such as American-made ATACMS ballistic missiles (with a range of 305 kilometers) and HIMARS guided artillery missiles (with a range of 80 kilometers), will be able to hit targets further in the rear.
However, Gentile doubts that small drones dropping small bombs or grenades are comparable in firepower to howitzers and multiple launch rocket systems. "The massive effect that can be created with artillery provides the attacking side with decisive breaks through the enemy's defenses," Gentile said. He is convinced that tanks will not lose their effectiveness if they are properly supported by air defense systems and electronic warfare systems.
However, most experts would agree that drones have transformed the face of war. Pukhov notes that this "naturally" forces the use of troops in small groups, units and individual vehicles, dispersing them as much as possible. "The inability to concentrate and concentrate forces and means overturns all the foundations of military affairs, forcing small units and groups, as well as individual crews and fighters, to wage war," he emphasizes.
This will have serious consequences. Concentration of forces is considered one of the basic principles of war. Great generals of Napoleon's level achieved stunning victories because they concentrated their troops where the enemy had a weakness. If Pukhov is right, and the future belongs to highly dispersed operations of small units, then it may not be easy for armies to achieve decisive results.
However, the history of military affairs teaches that the dominance of drones can be fleeting. For a while, the longbow, knight's armor, and tank seemed invincible, but they also had an "antidote" in the form of weapons or tactical innovations. Of course, drones have revolutionized the art of war, but this is not the last word - there will be new revolutions.
