One of the defining takeaways to emerge from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been the rapid and extensive proliferation of drones as cheap precision munitions. All manner and types of weaponised unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have become integral to the tactical fight, underscored by the now daily release of videos by units on both sides employing these capabilities.

Both sides' rapid tactical transformation and adaption are exemplified by the growth of First Person View (FPV) UAS – or drones – as precision aerial-delivered munitions. Practitioners are underestimating, or ignoring, the disruptive impact of these weapons on land warfare and combined arms in the 21st century, just as armies struggled to comprehend the effect of the machine gun on 20th-century warfare. The Australian Army’s failure to aggressively embrace this battlefield innovation makes the Army increasingly tactically irrelevant.

What is an FPV?

What exactly is an FPV UAS? Imagining these weapons as ‘precision improvised aerial explosive munitions’ is perhaps more helpful. An easy way to visualise what makes an FPV and how it is constructed can be found in this translated component list provided as part of a free online course by People’s FPV to educate Ukrainians on how to build FPVs to donate to the military. A team of two (pilot and navigator), similar to a sniper pair, can employ the resulting munition to conduct repeated strikes from concealed positions. It is worth watching this video of a journalist documenting the work of a Ukrainian FPV team to understand how these munitions are employed.

The resulting FPV munition is more complicated to control than a typical UAS, with no GPS assistance or auto-levelling typically employed to assist the pilot and, therefore, requiring a great deal of skill. However, as a result, the munition is usually incredibly fast, small, and nimble. It is difficult to overstate the tactical utility that FPV munitions have demonstrated. For example, FPVs are capable of striking and defeating moving vehicles, moving within urban structures to target individual vehicles, and traversing thick forest to strike individual soldiers, hitting moving combat helicopters, reconnaissance drones, unmanned surface vessels out at sea, and even striking dedicated electronics warfare systems. Operators have also modified FPVs to drop grenades rather than explode upon impact. Despite the high volume of videos depicting successful FPV employment, the actual hit rate of each FPV is likely less than 50%, accounting for the varying skills of pilots. Nevertheless, FPV drones have reportedly accounted for over half (16) of the finite Russian, state-of-the-art, T-90M tank losses as at February 2024.

Cheap, Difficult to Stop, and Transformative

This precision capability is not new, with precision munitions becoming more prevalent and effective in land warfare since their first combat use over 50 years ago. What is transformative about FPVs and other weaponised UAS is their cost. As per the components listed above, it costs $377 USD for the components required to build an FPV capable of operating out to 12 km with a flight time of roughly 30 to 45 minutes.

Hobbyists are pushing this cost lower, with the cost of making a 7-inch drone that can range to 16kms (without the additional weight of a munition) totalling $150 USD. Adding a simple munition such as a US M67 Grenade only adds $335 to the theoretical unit price. For comparison, one Switchblade 300, a precision loitering munition with the equivalent range of most FPVs, recently purchased by the Australian Government, costs $52,000 per unit or roughly 100 individual FPVs for the same type of precision munition capability.

So far, both sides of the Ukrainian conflict have struggled to counter the threat of FPVs. Even Russia’s heavy investment in Electronic Warfare systems, both before and during the conflict, has not been able to significantly defeat FPVs. This is likely due to three reasons. First is their cost. If an FPV munition is cheaper than a 155mm artillery shell (~$ 3,000 USD), a unit can afford to employ FPVs even if their success is unlikely. They can rely upon the fact that the FPV only needs to succeed once.

Second, an FPV’s simplicity and leveraging of pilot skill also account for their enduring success. An FPV does not rely upon GPS, and skilled pilots can use even limited transmission bandwidths to guide their munition onto the target. Third, an FPV is, by its nature, an improvised system. Units can directly adapt their FPVs based on changing conditions, changing out frequencies, components, and employment methods to stay ahead of any countermeasures.

The difficulty Western militaries encountered in defeating Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lesson in how enduring an adaptable improvised capability can be. For now, the sword has remained far ahead of the shield and will likely continue to do so.

These munitions are proliferating beyond Ukraine, with documented use in Myanmar, Iraq, Sudan, and adoption within the People’s Liberation Army. The terrain and conditions of Ukraine do not determine their utility any more than existing Precision Guided Munitions are limited to one combat environment. The versatility and cost of these munitions are transforming the character of 21^st century warfare, just as the introduction of other tactical systems, like the machine gun, transformed 20^th century warfare. While the head of the newly created Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Service emphasises that these new munitions are not replacing infantry, artillery or combined arms, it would be folly to argue that these drones are not transforming the fundamental dynamics of the tactical fight.

FPVs represent the advent of affordable, de-centralised, precision fires proliferated to the lowest echelons. Ukraine has reportedly begun to conduct assaults with a 1 to 1 ratio between assault infantry and drone teams supporting them. While artillery or air support has not been replaced, the previous adage that only exquisite long-range fires could hit a moving target or that you could not affordably target an individual soldier with a precision munition is quickly being overturned.

These mass affordable improvised precision munitions will transform the combined arms system and become a critical element of this system, just as crucial as infantry or artillery. Worryingly, the longer Army waits to embrace this transformation, the more likely it will find itself without a vital component of the modern combined arms system in battle.

So why hasn’t the Australian Army embraced FPVs?

Given that FPV drones can allow the proliferation of affordable precision fires to the lowest echelons, the question is, why hasn’t the Australian Army embraced this technology since its emergence and proven effectiveness over the last two years? With Army currently only having one unit dedicated to employing UAS and no units dedicated to employing weaponised UAS, the answer is not cost – but authorities, risk, and culture.

A large part of the price difference between a Switchblade 300 and a simple FPV is assurance. An FPV is a precision munition reduced to its fundamental components, often not even having an “on/off” switch. It possesses no guidance software, instead relying upon the skill of its pilot. Its control software is almost always open source, and the munition is repurposed. It is improvised, with operators and creators continually adapting their design to the changing tactical environment (a snapshot of this process can be found here).

This simplified and improvised approach is antithetical to how the Australian Army has grown accustomed to operating its capabilities. It seeks to remove perceived risk across all its capabilities, especially to individual safety. It would much rather purchase a munition at $52,000 instead of building one for $712 if that additional $51,288 represents a complete assurance of the capability working precisely as intended.

The $52,000 total cost represents an attitude that accepts nothing less than as close to perfect as possible surety regarding a munition. It is telling that most of the discussions and publications within Army have been about how to defend against improvised UASs, such as FPVs, rather than how to leverage and employ the approach. If FPVs and other weaponised UAS represent a transformation as fundamental as the machine gun to 20th-century warfare – a high likelihood – the first thing Army should do is acquire its own machine guns, rather than hoping to rely on some yet-to-be-determined countermeasures.

The problem facing Army is that this culture of risk aversion and assurance, above all else, is no longer appropriate. As the National Defence Strategy lays out, Australia faces its most challenging strategic environment since the Second World War. Part of this challenge is that Army is accustomed to broad regional technological superiority. This position enabled it to retain a qualitative edge and pursue complete assurance and slow introduction of technology.

Today, however, it can no longer assume this qualitative advantage and can be confident it will not hold a quantitative advantage in the land battle. As the National Defence Strategy points out, in the face of such an environment, Army must change how it does business and ruthlessly pursue asymmetric methods to generate military advantage.

Its decision to embrace the Switchblade 300, a technology created over nine years ago, symbolises an Army failing to embrace what is required for this changing strategic environment. Faced with a fundamental change in how land battles are fought, it has decided to do what it has always done, but better.

What to do

Army must instead embrace FPVs and the step changes they represent in how Army needs to approach the land battle and its capability. It should establish a UAS strike unit within a Combat Brigade as soon as possible, leveraging the existing expertise within Army. This should be deliberately outside the innovation ecosystem created by Army.

Instead, its mandate should not be to invent but to take what is already combat proven elsewhere and wrap the resulting best practice techniques, tactics and procedures in a policy and doctrine framework appropriate to Army to deliver combat capability fast. Critically, this unit must come with a mandate to use weaponised, cheap UAS in a live fire exercise within a year of its establishment.

It must be empowered with special authorities to make this happen. It should be mandated to design the safety and policy architecture required to make this live fire exercise happen rather than merely adapt how Army has operated up to this point.

Crucial to this effort will be reframing a regulatory structure that considers UAS as quasi-aircraft rather than the disposable munition that they are. An artillery shell is also a dangerous object that flies long distances, but the airspace and management requirements are far less onerous than a UAS. This framework imposes senselessly demanding safety architectures and precludes the type of innovation and iteration required to achieve mass precision with weaponised UAS.

Similarly, it should be invested with a directive to collaborate across the Defence enterprise and industry to make the weaponised FPVs and UAS it needs within the unit. This approach must prioritise modifying existing commercial systems and munitions and leveraging extant supply chains rather than developing new platforms. Minimum viable assurance and cost, driven by what has already been demonstrated to work in combat, should be at the heart of how it approaches problems.

It must start with combat-proven capability in mind and redesign how the Army approaches the problem. If the Army does not start approaching how it does business this way, it will find itself on a future battlefield defined by affordable, decentralised, precision fires at the lowest tactical level, facing a qualitatively and quantitatively superior enemy and having to catch up in conflict.