Lengthy & interesting article in the Comment section of today's Times.
Attack of the drones shouldn’t kill off tanks
Intro:-
In 1932 Stanley Baldwin warned that “the bomber will always get through”. Mercifully, it was not so. The invention of radar and speedier fighters yielded victory in the Battle of Britain. But a new breed of bombers is arousing similar alarm. Over the past year cheap Turkish drones have mauled enemy tanks and weapons in Libya and Syria, smashing through Russian arms that cost ten times as much. “Even if half the claims are true, the implications are game-changing,” acknowledged Ben Wallace, Britain’s defence secretary, in July.
A war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-held enclave, seems to support that case. By the end of last month independent estimates suggested that Azerbaijan had destroyed or disabled more than 160 Armenian tanks using a combination of inexpensive Turkish-made drones and Israeli-produced loitering munitions (essentially missiles that roam the battlefield). On one day this month Armenia and its proxy forces in Nagorno-Karabakh appear to have lost 50 armoured vehicles. These are staggering figures for a small country.