Beyond Attrition: Integrating Drone and Unmanned Systems into the Future of U.S. Warfare

About this episode

The episode discusses the integration of drone and unmanned systems into U.S. warfare, drawing lessons from the Ukraine conflict.

After more than four years of conflict, the war in Ukraine has produced an unprecedented body of data on rapid innovation, emerging technology, and the evolving role of drone warfare and unmanned systems on the modern battlefield. The pressing question for U.S. defense planners is which of those lessons can be translated to the U.S. way of war, and which, if applied too directly, risk misdirecting future force development. In this episode, host Dr. Arun Seraphin is joined by Anna Kim, Associate Research Fellow at the Emerging Technologies Institute (ETI), and Matt Dooley, President and CEO of Fidelium and Chair of the NDIA Robotics Division, to discuss their ETI white paper, "Beyond Attrition: Interpreting the Limits of Lessons from Ukraine for Future US Force Development." The paper examines what full integration of drone technologies, autonomous systems, and emerging military technologies into the U.S. Joint Force would actually require. The conversation explores why Ukraine's battlefield innovation and drone-driven "iteration under fire" model cannot be copied wholesale into the U.S. statutory and industrial environment, the enduring importance of combined…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Arun Seraphin

Guests: Anna Kim, Matt Dooley

Topics covered

• drone warfare
• unmanned systems
• U.S. defense strategy
• military technology
• Ukraine conflict
• force development

Keywords

• drone technology
• autonomous systems
• military innovation
• combined arms warfare
• Project Convergence
• Army Transformation in Contact

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Emerging Technologies Institute, Fidelium, NDIA Robotics Division

Books & works: Beyond Attrition: Interpreting the Limits of Lessons from Ukraine for Future US Force Development

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