Checking in on the Military Singularity
The latest signs are that much more transformational
It is amazing — even for this alumnus of Art Cebrowski’s Office of Force Transformation — to see how the Ukrainian military (Ukraine!) is so decisively pointing all of us in national security to this new operational and tactical reality.
Let me be clear about the historical turning point I anticipate here: I see the looming Military Singularity, in which we leave behind troop-centric force structure and embrace an essentially post-human battlespace (because the robots/drones-v-humans “fight” grows too asymmetrically harsh for the latter), as essentially redefining — and in many instances, capping or even ruling out the utility of — conventional warfare.
Why?
Once the battlespace becomes too dangerous for both human troops and their manned platforms, as we witness in bits and pieces every day in Ukraine, then the whole package becomes two or more sides throwing unmanned (or barely manned, or even barely commanded by humans) resources into the fight.
It becomes the classic war of attrition with completely “attritable” assets — as in, no blood and only treasure involved.
Here’s the basic tipping point: when the combination of operational lethality and low cost effectively prices out the equivalent manned-platform cost and effectiveness. We’re watching that happen all over the dial in the Ukraine fight (with the Russias showing plenty of ingenuity of their own, along with this stubborn embrace of meat-wave tactics that grow more pointless by the day).
Once the strategic futility of drone-centric warfare reveals itself — and by that I mean it no longer allows for true and lasting territorial capture and yields only a no-man’s-land, in effect denying both sides control of the contested space, then what is the point of such conflict? Other than permanent area denial?
Or … wait for it … a hugely intimidating police state (the ultimate iteration looming out there)?
To me, then, the onset of the Military Singularity is akin to nuclear weapons killing great power war and, by that, I mean direct large-scale conventional warfare between nuclear powers, with proxy wars still on the table.
How? It simply reveals the entire pointlessness of it all : Who wants to rule a post-nuclear wasteland? segues into Who wants to turn Taiwan, or the South China Sea, or the Persian Gulf, or Ukraine’s eastern provinces … into a permanent drone hellscape?
Where’s the gain? Where’s even the glory? But, most of all, where’s the strategic economic payoff?
No money, no point.
Speaking of moolah, what happens to the Military Industrial Complex?
I tell you what happens: it gets disintermediated by a whole new class of suppliers and manufacturers that directly supply the battle forces, who, in turn, directly contract with them, bypassing the bureaucracy.
So it’s like switching from a world in which the Pentagon plans future wars and buys platforms over many years of development and leading to decades of anticipated utility to one in which Combatant Commands have their own acquisition budgets and companies are producing and delivering unmanned assets and their associated software tweaks in a just-in-time manner.
Inconceivable?
It’s already unfolding within the Ukrainian military.
DEFENSE NEWS: Ukraine to hand combat units $60 million monthly for new drones
By all recent standards, this story outlines a profound revolution in military affairs — direct acquisition by fighting forces during ongoing combat.
I’m not talking about simple slush funds by which field commanders get the right sunglasses or gloves for their troops from Amazon, or the in-situ up-armouring of humvees because the Pentagon is too slow to manage such feats. I’m talking about actual force structure being ordered up, and delivered to, commands in the field directly from the next generation of military suppliers like Anduril and Palantir.
And I don’t mean in next year’s budget. I mean they order up and get what they order on a (for now) monthly basis because that’s how fast tactics are evolving in Ukraine — by all accounts.
BUSINESS INSIDER: A Ukrainian drone commander says battlefield tech can change within a month, and the old style of yearslong military contracts can't keep up
Understand: this argument isn’t about who wins between Russia and Ukraine. That part’s almost meaningless now to the larger context.
From the DEFENSE NEWS story:
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence will provide its combat units with 2.5 billion hryvnia (US$60 million) of direct funding per month to procure their own drones, in a move to allow commanders in the field to buy the equipment they need rather than rely on centralized purchasing.
That is revolutionary all by itself.
But it matches the circumstances:
Ukraine has been a crucible for drone innovation as it fights off Russia’s invasion, with troops using unmanned systems for everything from intelligence gathering to strike operations, as decoys or for laying mines. Western militaries are closely studying the new ways UAVs are being used on the Ukrainian battlefield – including air-to-air drone combat, use of artificial intelligence, fiber-optic controls, bomber drones and more – to see what lessons to apply to their own forces.
Which is all about the relative price points:
Drones can be made more profitably in Ukraine than anywhere else in Europe, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier in January. The country raised its drone manufacturing capacity to 4 million units a year, the president said at a defense industry forum in October, compared with production of about 300,000 drones in 2023.
Because, once that price advantage is tapped, that ensures a self-generated acquisition supply chain:
Domestic production accounted for more than 96% of the drones used by the armed forces, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said last month. The Ministry of Defence, together with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, had contracted 1.6 million UAVs of various types in the first 10 months of 2024, with 1.3 million drones delivered, it said in October.
This is David being able to manufacture new stones at-will, putting whichever relevant Goliaths on permanent notice.
Ukraine has become THE proving ground du jour, but the dynamic will spread like wildfire, either solving or exacerbating existing tension points.
How I have published on this subject in the past:
More examples …
FUTURA DOCTRINA: Ukraine Drives Next Gen Robotic Warfare; A wave of change is coming for military institutions everywhere, but the implications for the Pacific theatre are particularly interesting.
From Mick Ryan’s fabulous Substack:
From the start of the 2022 Russian invasion, uncrewed aerial vehicles have been used in a wide range of missions by both the Ukrainians and Russians. As the war has progressed, the Ukrainian navy began to experiment with, and has now mastered, the development and employment of uncrewed maritime strike systems. A range of small boats and semi-submersibles have been employed to strike Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea, forcing the Russians to restrict their operations in the western parts of that body of water.
This explosion in the use of autonomous and remotely operated systems in Ukraine has seen both Ukraine and Russia develop the ability to not only produce millions of drones annually, but it has seen the development of a rapid adaptation battle, where drones are developed, deployed and evolved with an increasing tempo.
Check out Ryan’s list of “transformative events”:
The Battle of the Black Sea Oil Platforms: December 2024 … While Ukraine has been employing successive generations of uncrewed naval vessels (also known as uncrewed surface vessels or USV) to push the Russian Black Sea fleet out of the western parts of that body of water, two elements of this attack stood out. First, the USV used in the attack were of a type not previously seen in any public media … The second new feature observed in this attack is that the USV appears to have launched at least one, and possibly more, FPV drone that conducted a quick reconnaissance of the platform. These drones then shifted to attacking the sensors on the platform, and the Russian personnel installing the sensors.
The Battle of Lyptsi: Late December 2024 … Ukrainian forces had conducted their first ground attack exclusively using robotic systems. According to the Kyiv Independent, the attack utilised dozens of uncrewed ground combat vehicles (UGV) and FPV drones. Ukrainian troops used UGVs armed with machine guns, while other UGVs laid or cleared mines along sections of the frontline near Lyptsi. The UGVs were supported throughout the mission by FPV drones. This combination of ground and aerial recon and attack capabilities means that the operation was air-land robotic mission …
USV’s as Anti-Aircraft Systems. In several engagements in 2024, Ukrainian Sea Baby drones were observed firing anti-aircraft guns and missiles at Russian helicopters, damaging the aircraft and injuring the onboard personnel. Then, in early January 2025, the Ukrainians were able to shoot down two Russian helicopters employing a similar methodology …
The Crimea Strikes: 6 January 2025. In early January, three Russian air defence systems were attacked by the Ukrainians. The attacks, which took place in coastal areas of the occupied southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, were apparently executed by Ukrainian naval drone carriers.
Each of these milestones is jaw-dropping on their own, but note the speed and frequency of their arrivals!
In historical terms, this is the mother-of-all Spanish Civil War effects.
Already, we’re seeing AI-commanded kamikaze drones.
EURASIAN TIMES: AI-Enabled Kamikaze Drones Start Killing Human Soldiers; Ukrainian, Russian Troops “Bear The Brunt” Of New Tech
No kidding, the troops “bear the brunt”!
I like the website presentation of the story almost as much as I dismiss the subtitle:
I mean, check out the G.D. ad that runs with the story — as in, get yours now while supplies last!
The bit from the story that chilled me involve a dry description of what one type of Ukrainia-fielded kamikaze drone can accomplish:
The V-BAT, which goes by the name MQ-35 in the US, can complete its mission, start to finish without an operator in the loop. A single operator can control a minimum of 5 drones, aircraft flight paths are not plotted by humans, they are always generated autonomously in real time.
The US company Shield AI, which makes the drone, just opened an office in Kyiv.
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