By that logic, drones would decide wars on their own.
But they can’t take or hold ground—they just inflict damage.
So destroying equipment isn’t the same thing as actually stopping an objective from being achieved.
Ed
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That makes sense from a firepower standpoint—pairing drones with guided artillery just increases how effectively you can destroy things.
But it still doesn’t address the core issue: destruction isn’t the same as control.
Even with perfect targeting, you still need something on the ground to actually deny or hold an objective.
Ed
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You’re describing how to make an advance more costly and less efficient—not how to make it impossible.
Ed
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The battle of Kursk in WW2 is a good example of in depth conflict. Making an advance impossible is not a realistic expectation. The concept of making it costly enough for the opposition to be unable to hold what they took is a reasonable goal.
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I forget which WWII naval boardgame it was – it’s been several decades since I last played it – that had the Atlantic divided into sectors, and control of a sector was determined by having uncontested warship counters in a sector. The last action the German player could take on their turn was to deploy U-boats to various sectors, where they would serve to deny control of those sectors to the Allied player, but the U-boats themselves could not establish control. Similarly, all of the other branches of the ground and air forces can deny territory to the enemy, but it still – as it has for centuries – relies on the PBI to go out and occupy territory to control it.
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I agree—war has always been about making advances costly. Kursk is a perfect historical example.
But making something costly doesn’t make it obsolete. Tanks were still essential to achieve breakthroughs and hold ground, despite extreme losses.
Drones add a layer of attrition, sure, but they don’t replace the core capabilities of armored forces. That’s the distinction we need to keep in mind.
Ed
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Exactly—that’s the distinction. Drones and other weapons can deny or attrit, but control still requires boots on the ground—or tanks holding the objective. Destruction alone doesn’t win the battle.
Ed
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I first heard the phrase, “you need to hold ground to win a war”, or something like it, when I was very young. I believed it. I quoted it many times myself.
Now I am much older. I am much better read. I know a lot more about military history. Over the last week or so, I considered that maximum and came to a very interesting conclusion. It is wrong. It is wrong on offense. It is wrong on defense. In fact, attempting to hold ground is what gets military forces into trouble, again and again, throughout history.
It is the military force that does not care about ground, that remains solely focused on destroying the capacity of an enemy to wage war, that wins wars. Only when an enemy stops resisting the will of the opposing force is a war successfully concluded. That is done by destroying the capacity to fight. Ground is completely irrelevant.
Blow up all his weapons. Blow up his capacity to buy or manufacture more weapons. Blow up his soldiers. Blow up all the leaders who will not capitulate. That is the path to victory. No need to hold a single inch of soil. Find the enemy and kill him. Drones are excellent for such a war.
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You’re collapsing two different things into one.
Destroying an enemy’s capacity to fight is a method. It’s not the definition of victory. Victory is compelling the enemy to submit to your will—and that requires control, not just destruction.
If ground is “completely irrelevant,” then explain how you:
- Enforce surrender
- Prevent regrouping or insurgency
- Control population and infrastructure
- Secure any political objective
Without physically controlling anything.
You’re making an economics-of-destruction argument—if enough gets blown up, the war is won. But warfare isn’t just about removing capability, it’s about imposing outcomes. And outcomes require control.
History doesn’t really support your position either. In the Vietnam War, enormous destruction didn’t translate into a favorable outcome because control was never established. In World War II, the war didn’t end because Germany was “too destroyed to fight,” it ended when Allied forces physically occupied Berlin and dismantled the regime.
Destruction creates opportunity. Control is what actually ends wars.
And this is where your drone conclusion falls apart. Drones are very good at attrition—no argument there. But they don’t hold ground, they don’t secure populations, and they don’t enforce surrender. They’re a tool within a system, not a replacement for it.
If your entire model of victory doesn’t require control of anything, then it’s not really a model of how wars end—it’s just a model of how things get destroyed.
Ed
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I stated my position very clearly. Victory occurs when the opposing force is no longer willing to fight. I made no statement about economics of destruction. You did.
Holding ground does not compel an enemy to stop fighting. The United State military attempted to hold ground in Afghanistan and in Vietnam. It did not work. In both places, the people in charge repeatedly refused to destroy the capacity of the opposing force to make war. A whole lot of munitions were expended but critical targets were considered out of bounds, so the enemy continued to receive arms and fight. There were very good reasons why some targets were considered out of bounds, but those rules made it impossible to win, even though great effort and many lives were expended.
Policing a peace is a different matter entirely. If your enemy never submits you are not policing a peace, you are fighting an insurgency, which is a war. See above.
Drones are fantastic because they strike exactly what you want to strike rather than peppering a huge area and hoping to hit something important, and they are getting better at singling out targets all the time. (Please note, I consider most smart munitions drones, though some are in very primitive form.)
I admit, the more this gets discussed, the better drones get, the more I drift into the, “tanks are dead”, camp. A tracked weapon platform is useful, but I think the armor and crew will go.
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You’re getting closer to the real issue, but you’re still separating things that aren’t actually separable.
You said victory occurs when the enemy is no longer willing to fight. I don’t disagree with that—but what compels that outcome?
Because historically, there are only a few ways that happens:
- You destroy them outright
- You break their will psychologically
- Or you remove their ability to continue by controlling what they depend on
That last one is where your argument runs into trouble.
Holding ground, by itself, doesn’t automatically win a war—I agree. But control of ground is how you:
- Cut off movement and resupply
- Deny safe haven
- Control population and leadership structures
- Prevent the enemy from reconstituting
Without that, you’re relying entirely on trying to kill your way to victory—which is exactly what ran into limits in both the Vietnam War and the War in Afghanistan.
And that’s the key point: those weren’t failures because we held ground. They were failures because we never achieved durable control over the system that sustained the enemy. The enemy could disengage, recover, and continue fighting.
Which brings this back to your drone argument.
Drones absolutely improve precision—no disagreement there. But precision doesn’t solve the core problem:
You still have to answer how the enemy is prevented from:
- Reorganizing
- Re-arming
- Re-entering the fight
If your answer is “keep striking them,” then you’re describing continuous attrition, not a concluded war.
At some point, if you want the fighting to actually stop, something has to change on the ground—literally. Either the enemy loses access to the means of resistance, or someone physically imposes a new reality they can’t contest.
That’s why armor hasn’t disappeared. It’s evolving, just like everything else. A protected, mobile platform that can enter, survive, and control contested space still solves a problem drones don’t.
So I don’t think the question is “are tanks dead?”
It’s:
If drones are as decisive as you’re suggesting, where is the mechanism that actually ends the war—rather than just continuing to fight it more efficiently?
Ed
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Japan lost without stepping foot onto the mainland. No ground gained to hold or control.
I understand your point of needing to control ground. We occupied Japan after the war was over. You have to have boots on the ground to “own” the land. Once you leave you don’t own it.
Doug was right about not getting wrapped up in holding ground. Hitler held on to Stalingrad…at what cost. Ground is taken or given up as a way to conduct war. Sometimes giving up ground is a way to gain extra ground. If you give ground and the enemy overextends then the opportunity to take back and even gain ground exists. Think the ebbs and flows of North Africa or Russia.
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Indeed. Japan lost because they saw the potential to be exterminated as cities vanished one by one. Of course, it remained secret that we didn’t have a third bomb ready to go, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki were pretty clearly examples of what to expect sans surrender.
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Germany foresaw what was going to happen during WW2 and some army officers tried to kill Hitler to stop the war and prevent the destruction of Germany. Hitler and his inner circles fanaticism led to the total destruction of Germany with the Russians only blocks away before he killed himself.
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The war ends when one side loses the political will to continue. When the ability to win is lost. When the costs far exceed the gains possible. When gains are no longer possible. When the winning side decides to cease hostilities.
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Japan isn’t a counterexample — it actually reinforces the point.
By 1945, Japan had lost its navy, its air power, its supply lines, and its ability to defend itself. Its cities were being destroyed, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria removed any remaining strategic depth.
An invasion — Operation Downfall — was imminent, and Japan had no realistic way to resist it. They could no longer protect their territory, move forces effectively, or prevent occupation once it began. At that point, surrender becomes the only viable outcome.
That follows the same pattern: destruction reduced their capabilities, their strategic position collapsed to the point they could no longer defend or operate, and then the decision to surrender followed.
And if we look at the modern battlefield in the Russia–Ukraine War, where drones are being used at scale, we see the same thing.
Drones have increased the rate of destruction, especially against armor, but they haven’t replaced the need to take and hold ground. Both sides are still using and requesting tanks because you still need protected, mobile firepower to advance, defend, and exploit positions.
Drones can destroy vehicles and equipment, but they don’t prevent an army from reorganizing, reinforcing, or continuing to fight unless that destruction is followed by ground pressure that removes those options.
Wars are decided when a force can no longer operate effectively in the field — when it can’t move, resupply, reinforce, or defend what it controls, and when it cannot stop the enemy from advancing or occupying its territory. That is what actually ends the fight, not destruction by itself.
So whether you look at WWII or Ukraine, the pattern holds: increasing lethality changes how costly war is, but it doesn’t remove the need to physically control the battlefield or force the other side into a position where continuing is no longer possible.
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then you have a war of attrition like WW1 in with no end in sight
so what can a drone do that a long range anti tank missile cant?
Hitlers obsession for wonder weapons actually worked in favor of the allies a good example was the Me262 the the Luftwaffe wanted to use it as a interceptor and Hitler insisted on using it as a fighter bomber has the Luftwaffe has there way WW2 would have ended as a win for Germany
We knew they had to land and refuel. They are no more fierce than a piper cub when refueling.
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