Samir Srivastava is serving in the Indian Army. All suggestions in the article are solely of the Author in his personal capacity. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
Title: An Assessment of the Future of the Mechanised Forces in the age of Drones.
Date Originally Written: July 24, 2025
Date Originally Published: August 10, 2025
Author Point of View: The author is from the Mechanised Infantry Branch of the Indian Army. The author believes that the Mechanised Forces (as Armoured Corps and Mechanised Infantry are popularly known) still have a future in a battlefield dominated by Drones; but only if they adapt and change.
Summary: One may not have heard of a tank destroying another tank in the past few years but would surely recollect numerous instances where a drone has destroyed a tank. This includes the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict and the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War. So, is it curtains for the Mechanised Forces? Not quite yet.
Text: Lately, the drone has possibly become the biggest tank killer. The old dictum of a tank being the best anti-tank weapon is just that, old. It may be the end of the road for the Mechanised Forces as we know it, but there’s still hope if the Mechanised Forces choose to adapt. This assessment aims to look at this aspect.
What are Drones? Jargon aside, drones are aircraft. They are smaller, slower, easy to manufacture, low on technical complexity and most importantly cheap & unmanned. This makes them nimble, ubiquitous and dispensable unlike conventional combat aircraft. While Mechanised Forces are well equipped to deal with conventional aircraft however best of static and mobile air defence systems are falling short in addressing even the most apparent weaknesses of Drones.
Do Drones have Weaknesses? Yes, they do. Like conventional combat aircraft they need to be launched from somewhere, they need to be controlled by someone (not aboard but certainly somewhere near the business end) and need to be of some size to knock out a combat vehicle (unless one is just looking to put in a grenade through an open hatch). Unlike conventional combat aircraft, a drone is a one trick pony; because it’s airframe is capable of carrying only so much (propulsion, guidance and ordnance) and their effective range is at best one-tenth of a conventional aircraft. In most cases, drones operate within a short window – use it and/or lose it.
What is the Way Ahead? Mechanised Forces need to force the drone to become a conventional combat aircraft. Through design of Combat Vehicles coupled with changed techniques, tactics & procedures, either force the drone to become bigger in order to carry more payload or rob the drone of its battlefield autonomy by forcing it to collaborate with other drones thus consuming battery power, electromagnetic spectrum and airspace. This idea is expanded below.
Combat Vehicle Design? First things first – change how a tank or Infantry Combat Vehicle looks in all aspects – visual, thermal and electronic. Tanks and ICVs have, for over seven decades, generally had the same shape. Change this and both First Person View (FPV) drones as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled targeting can be defeated. Combat vehicles also need to shed weight. With a main battle tank, the primary threat no longer rests with another tank — do we really need 45–60-ton behemoths? Optimising the main gun will help reduce weight. Urbanisation has reduced target engagement ranges to a maximum of 1500 meters and this obviates the requirement of guns firing up to 4000 meters. Another way to shed weight is to reduce armour thickness; drones as they are now will not be able to fire a depleted uranium armour piercing round. A lighter tank/ ICV can go faster and farther, and that is the key to survival.
Speed and Dispersion? In his seminal work, Sean J. Edwards presented Swarm Warfare as something comprising of four stages – locate, converge, attack and disperse [1]. While this work was written long back, three of four stages are still relevant in case of drone swarms. Dispersal may be out since the drones are generally on a one-way trip. In this if we impair the drones’ ability to locate and converge, attacks either won’t happen or they’ll be ineffective. To evade being located, mechanised forces need to move fast. Drone launch pads can’t be everywhere and they too have a radius of action; move out of that as fast as possible and mechanised forces will be safe thus forcing drone operators to re-deploy therefore wasting time and giving away position. In the age of drones, Speed is the New Stealth. But speed alone is not enough. There is a requirement to disperse, with an ability to converge whenever required. Nothing very new but one truism that is more relevant today is that Massing is Suicide. Moving with speed and dispersing over a large frontage and depth will force the enemy to make more capable drones thus having to invest in heavier airframes or backup (logistics, electronics and software). The moment a drone gets as cumbersome as a conventional combat aircraft both in terms of design as well as logistics, its advantage vanishes and mechanised forces regain the upper hand.
Drone and Dusted? For about seven decades since end of the Second World War, air forces around the world continued to grow bigger and faster therefore more complex in all aspects – manufacturing, maintenance, Command and Control (C2) and operations. This complexity has now become a millstone. Drones are a game changer; Davids against Top Gun Goliaths. Drones have an advantage today because antiquated ideas of airpower persist even when there is a clear writing on the wall. To become what they are, drones have let go of a lot of characteristics of a conventional combat aircraft i.e.: speed, range, weapon array and complexity. If mechanised forces adapt, change size, shape and most importantly tactics, they will force drones to become conventional aircraft and consequently going by Friedman’s central idea, ‘level the playing field’ [2]. Mechanised forces in their existing avatar are something that was created to get over the impasse of trench warfare. They now need to take on a new avatar to defeat drones. So, if one was to ask, “Are Mechanised Forces Drone and Dusted?”, my answer is, “NOT YET*” (* – conditions apply).
Endnotes:
[1] Edward, Sean. Swarming on the Battlefield: Past, Present and Future. 24 Jul 2025. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1100/RAND_MR1100.pdf
[2] Friedman, T. L. (2007). The World is Flat. Penguin Book
