What’s the buzz?

What links the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, bee keeping and shopping deliveries in Milton Keynes? Drones obviously. Coming to a street, a sky, a war near you. Drones are reshaping our projections of the future. Beekeeping give us the word drone. Those idle males who’s only role in life is to wait for a virgin queen to take her nuptial flight and then for one to outpace all his rivals and by claiming his prize, pass his DNA to a whole new hive. The sound of that swarm in pursuit has been adopted to describe the monotonous hum, the drone of the geography teacher on a hot afternoon from our school days. Ironically, that sound has returned with a small electric motors that power the quad-copter type of mechanized drone. Confusingly drone is also a word applied too much larger, unmanned aircraft, boats and even submarines. 2500 years ago Sun Tzu could only have been familiar with the be variety of drones. However, amongst the most important cautions delivered through his Art of Warfare manual are the warnings to avoid besieging your enemy and to avoid cutting your enemy off from any means of escape. Both these strategies are expensive, exhausting and counterproductive. They take up your time and energy and force your enemy to oppose you with more vigor and determination. This is a lesson most notably either missed or ignored recently by Putin, Trump and Netanyahu and over a longer time by western leaders in general with respect to Iran. Over the past three years Putin’s attack on Ukraine has had the effect Sun Tzu predicted. Ukrainians have had to fall back on their own resources. Ingenuity and creativity to develop ways of resisting aggression from a much larger military force. Necessity being the mother of invention, the Ukrainians have mastered the design and production of offensive and defensive drone systems. Trump’s antagonism towards Ukraine has added additional fuel to this strategic endeavor. The net result is that Ukraine is now the world leader in military drone technology. It has built on previous developments made by another cornered and besieged nation, Iran whose technology had ironically initially been helping Russia. Netanyahu‘s latest aggressive foray into South Lebanon has been met by drones deployed by Hisbollah using tactics learned from Ukraine. It can only be a matter of time before Hamas in Gaza does the same. In the UK, the long awaited defense investment plan has belatedly been tweaked to shift funding towards building drone warfare capacity. 5,000,000,000 pounds has been ear marked for this. Ukraine is already an obvious development partner in this British endeavor. It will be far more politically contentious if there is a link up with Israeli companies involved in the production and use of drone technology in their highly criticized military activities in the Middle East. While we wait to find out what lies ahead we should reread Sun Tzu. As he says in peace, prepare for war, in war prepare for peace. #Drones #Militarydrones #Ukraine