Precision-guided weapons first appeared in their modern form on the battlefield in Vietnam a little over 50 years ago. As armed forces have strived ever since for accuracy and destructiveness, the cost of such weapons has soared. America’s gps-guided artillery shells cost $100,000 a time. Because smart weapons are expensive, they are scarce. That is why European countries ran out of them in Libya in 2011. Israel, more eager to conserve its stockpiles than avoid collateral damage, has rained dumb bombs on Gaza. What, though, if you could combine precision and abundance?

五十多年前，现代精确制导武器首次出现在越南战场上。自那时起，随着各国军队一直努力提高武器的命中精度和破坏力，这种武器的成本不断攀升。美国的GPS制导炮弹每发10万美元。智能武器因昂贵而匮乏，所以欧洲各国在2011年的利比亚战争中耗尽了智能武器。以色列急于保存弹药而不是避免附带性破坏，因此向加沙地带投掷了大量的常规炸弹。但如果你可以将命中精度和数量庞大结合起来，会怎么样呢？

For the first time in the history of warfare that question is being answered on the battlefields of Ukraine. Our report this week shows how first-person view (fpv) drones are mushrooming along the front lines. They are small, cheap, explosives-laden aircraft adapted from consumer models, and they are making a soldier’s life even more dangerous. These drones slip into tank turrets or dugouts. They loiter and pursue their quarry before going for the kill. They are inflicting a heavy toll on infantry and armour.

在战争史上，乌克兰战场第一次给出了答案。在本周的报道中，我们展示了战场上大量涌现的“第一人称视角”无人机（FPV）。这些小巧、低廉、搭载爆炸物的飞行器是由民用型改装而来，使士兵的生命受到更大的威胁。这些无人机悄悄地溜进坦克炮塔或防空洞。它们盘旋和追踪猎物，然后毫不留情地干掉猎物。这些无人机给步兵和装甲部队造成了重大伤亡。

The war is also making fpv drones and their maritime cousins ubiquitous. January saw 3,000 verified fpv drone strikes. This week Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, created the Unmanned Systems Force, dedicated to drone warfare. In 2024 Ukraine is on track to build 1m-2m drones. Astonishingly, that will match Ukraine’s reduced consumption of shells (which is down because Republicans in Congress are shamefully denying Ukraine the supplies it needs).

这场战争也使FPV无人机和海上无人机变得无处不在。据证实，一月份发生了 3000起FPV无人机袭击事件。本周，乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基创建了致力于无人机战争的无人作战系统部队。2024年，乌克兰计划制造100-200万架无人机。令人惊讶的是，这将与乌克兰炮弹消耗量的减少相适应（减少的原因是共和党议员可耻地拒绝向乌克兰提供必要援助）。

The drone is not a wonder weapon—no such thing exists. It matters because it embodies big trends in war: a shift towards small, cheap and disposable weapons; the increasing use of consumer technology; and the drift towards autonomy in battle. Because of these trends, drone technology will spread rapidly from armies to militias, terrorists and criminals. And it will improve not at the budget-cycle pace of the military-industrial complex, but with the break-things urgency of consumer electronics.

无人机并不是神奇武器，世上不存在这种东西。无人机之所以重要，是因为它反映了战争的主要趋势：向小型、低廉、一次性武器转变；广泛应用消费科技；向自主作战的转变。由于这些趋势的出现，无人机技术将迅速从军队传播到民兵、恐怖分子、犯罪分子手中。无人机技术的发展速度并不取决于军工复合体的预算周期，而是取决于消费电子产品取得突破的迫切需求。

Basic fpv drones are revolutionarily simple. The descendants of racing quadcopters, built from off-the-shelf components, they can cost as little as several hundred dollars. fpv drones tend to have short ranges, carry small payloads and struggle in bad weather. For those reasons they will not (yet) replace artillery. But they can still do a lot of damage. In one week last autumn Ukrainian drones helped destroy 75 Russian tanks and 101 big guns, among much else. Russia has its own fpv drones, though they tend to target dugouts, trenches and soldiers. Drones help explain why both sides find it so hard to mount offensives.

基本型FPV无人机具有革命性的简易设计。它们源于比赛用的四轴飞行器，使用现成的零部件制造而成，成本低至几百美元。FPV无人机通常航程较短，有效载荷较小，在恶劣天气下难以飞行。因此，无人机还无法取代火炮，但仍然能够造成巨大破坏。在去年秋天的一周内，乌克兰无人机协助摧毁了75辆俄罗斯坦克、101门火炮及其他大量武器。俄罗斯也有自己的FPV无人机，但攻击目标通常是防空洞、战壕、士兵。无人机说明了为什么双方都难以发起攻势。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


The exponential growth in the number of Russian and Ukrainian drones points to a second trend. They are inspired by and adapted from widely available consumer technology. Not only in Ukraine but also in Myanmar, where rebels have routed government forces in recent days, volunteers can use 3d printers to make key components and assemble airfrxs in small workshops. Unfortunately, criminal groups and terrorists are unlikely to be far behind the militias.

俄罗斯和乌克兰无人机的激增反映了第二个趋势：它们是在广泛可用的消费科技的启迪下改造而来。不仅在乌克兰，而且最近在政府军被叛军击败的缅甸，志愿者在小作坊里使用3D打印机来制造关键零部件和组装机身。不幸的是，犯罪团伙和恐怖分子不太可能比民兵落后太多。

This reflects a broad democratisation of precision weapons. In Yemen the Houthi rebel group has used cheap Iranian guidance kits to build anti-ship missiles that are posing a deadly threat to commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Iran itself has shown how an assortment of long-range strike drones and ballistic missiles can have a geopolitical effect that far outweighs their cost. Even if the kit needed to overcome anti-drone jamming greatly raises the cost of the weapons, as some predict, they will still count as transformationally cheap.

这反映了精密武器的广泛民主化。也门的胡塞叛乱组织使用廉价的伊朗制导组件来制造反舰导弹，对红海的商船构成了致命威胁。伊朗本身也证明，各种远程攻击无人机和弹道导弹可以产生物超所值的地缘政治影响。即使无人机的抗干扰组件会极大增加武器成本，但有人预测从变革的角度，无人机仍不失为廉价的武器。

The reason goes back to consumer electronics, which propel innovation at a blistering pace as capabilities accumulate in every product cycle. That poses problems of ethics as well as obsolescence. There will not always be time to subject novel weapons to the testing that Western countries aim for in peacetime and that is required by the Geneva Conventions.

原因归功于消费电子产品，每个产品周期的功能积累推动了创新突飞猛进。由此产生了伦理和技术落后的问题。对新型武器进行测试是西方国家在和平时期的追求，也是《日内瓦公约》的要求，但并不是总有时间这样做。

Innovation also leads to the last trend, autonomy. Today, fpv drone use is limited by the supply of skilled pilots and by the effects of jamming, which can sever the connection between a drone and its operator. To overcome these problems, Russia and Ukraine are experimenting with autonomous navigation and target recognition. Artificial intelligence has been available in consumer drones for years and is improving rapidly.

创新引发的最后一个趋势是自主化。如今FPV无人机的使用受到熟练飞行员的数量和干扰效果的制约，干扰会切断无人机与操作员的联系。为了解决这些问题，俄罗斯和乌克兰正在试验自主导航和自主目标识别。人工智能技术应用于消费级无人机已有多年，并且正在迅速发展。

A degree of autonomy has existed on high-end munitions for years and on cruise missiles for decades. The novelty is that cheap microchips and software will let intelligence sit inside millions of low-end munitions that are saturating the battlefield. The side that masters autonomy at scale in Ukraine first could enjoy a temporary but decisive advantage in firepower—a necessary condition for any breakthrough.

一定程度的自主性在高端弹药中已实现多年，在巡航导弹中已实现数十年。新颖之处在于低廉的微芯片和软件将智能化融入战场上无数的低端弹药中。在乌克兰战争中，谁先掌握大规模的弹药自主性，谁就会获得短期但决定性的火力优势——这是战争取得突破的必要条件。

Western countries have been slow to absorb these lessons. Simple and cheap weapons will not replace big, high-end platforms, but they will complement them. The Pentagon is belatedly embarking on Replicator, an initiative to build thousands of low-cost drones and munitions able to take on China’s enormous forces. Europe is even further behind. Its ministers and generals increasingly believe that they could face another major European war by the end of the decade. If so, investment in low-end drones needs to grow urgently. Moreover, ubiquitous drones will require ubiquitous defences—not just on battlefields but also in cities at peace.

西方国家吸取这些经验比较迟缓。简易低廉的武器无法取代大型的高端武器平台，但彼此将形成互补。五角大楼迟缓地启动了“复制者”计划，旨在制造数千架低成本无人机和弹药来对抗中国的庞大军队。欧洲甚至更迟缓，其部长和将领们越来越相信，到本世纪末，他们有可能面临又一场大规模的欧洲战争。如果是这样，当务之急是增加对低端无人机的投入。另外，无处不在的无人机需要无处不在的防御力量——不仅在战场上，而且在和平时期的城市里。

Kalashnikovs in the skies

空中的卡拉什尼科夫冲锋枪

Intelligent drones will also raise questions about how armies wage war and whether humans can control the battlefield. As drones multiply, self-co-ordinating swarms will become possible. Humans will struggle to monitor and understand their engagements, let alone authorize them.

智能无人机还将引发关于军队如何发动战争以及人类能否控制战场的问题。随着无人机数量的激增，将来可能出现自主协同作战的无人机群。人类将很难监控和理解无人机作战，更不用说命令它们了。

America and its allies must prepare for a world in which rapidly improving military capabilities spread more quickly and more widely. As the skies over Ukraine fill with expendable weapons that marry precision and firepower, they serve as a warning. Mass-produced hunter-killer aircraft are already reshaping the balance between humans and technology in war.

美国及其盟友必须准备好应对这样的世界：迅速提高的军事能力扩散得更快更广泛。随着乌克兰上空充斥着兼具精确性和火力的一次性武器，这值得世人警惕。大规模生产的猎杀式飞机已经在改变人类与技术在战争中的平衡。