Drones: a military, geopolitical and ethical revolution

In September 2019, kamikaze drones struck the Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. Within minutes, the kingdom's production was cut in half. The scene, filmed from a distance, looked less like a battle and more like a sudden industrial accident (except that it was an attack). The episode says everything about the change underway: unmanned aircraft, sometimes rudimentary, can now have strategic effects, without conventional aviation, without air superiority, sometimes without even a regular army.

In 20 years, drones have gone from being intelligence tools to strike and attrition vectors. The United States led the way in the fight against terrorism with the Predator and Reaper, demonstrating that a remote operator could conduct long-term surveillance and then strike quickly. Israel consolidated its industrial and operational expertise (reconnaissance, loitering munitions), while Turkey and Iran built networks capable of supplying effective drones at affordable costs. At the same time, the mass commercialisation of civilian drones has lowered the technological barrier: small quadcopters are being turned into sensors and improvised munitions. As a result, air power is becoming "democratised" and violence is accelerating.

The war in Ukraine served as a large-scale laboratory: a sky saturated with tactical drones, deep strikes by suicide drones, battlefield transparency that stifles manoeuvres, and constant adaptation through electronic warfare and industrial production. The turning point in Nagorno-Karabakh (2020) had already served as a warning: armed drones and loitering munitions can disrupt a conventional army if air defence and electronic warfare are not up to the task. In this new era, the question is no longer just "who has the best tanks or aircraft?", but "who sees first, who strikes first, who replaces the fastest, who knows how to neutralise swarms?"