Ukraine, Red Sea, Middle East… The effectiveness of less sophisticated and cheaper weapons has redefined the notion of military power

In the various theaters of military operations, whether in Ukraine, the Red Sea or the Middle East, numerous events of war confirm that effectiveness and military power are no longer necessarily measured by the size of the wallet. .

This is the observation made by all the great powers, which has shattered the certainties of defense industrialists and precipitated the integration of “low cost” weapons into the defense policies of the largest countries. The effectiveness of an army is no longer measured by the billions of euros spent on an aircraft carrier or the latest generation of fighter planes.

If Ukraine has regained control of the Black Sea, it is largely thanks to the deployment of its “Sea Baby”, floating drones capable of transporting more than 800 kilos of explosives over 1,000 kilometers of distance. And if the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian navy, could not anticipate the two missiles which sank it, it is because upstream, an army of aerial drones ended up saturating its defense systems. Maximum efficiency, for an almost insignificant manufacturing cost, between 10,000 and 20,000 euros per drone.

American, British and French navies have spent fortunes in the Red Sea to protect commercial ships from Houthi drone attacks. The Westerners had no other option than to release their stock of anti-aircraft missiles, munitions which cost on average one million euros each. Western warships have therefore noted the financial chasm represented by the interception of these drones.

This is what the French admiral, Nicolas Vaujour, says in the podcast “Le Collimateur”, a program devoted to military issues. The observation is that the defense systems on board conventional warships are not suitable. “Our idea today is to strengthen the gun chain to lower the cost of strikes, to be able to intercept these drones earlier, without systematically using missiles. So, we told the manufacturers to give us all the models that seemed suitable to them. We carried out tests in Toulon not long ago, and there was one that clearly stood out from the crowd“, he explains.

The military therefore had to react and adapt very quickly. In the United States, a minority of soldiers have been campaigning for 20 years to break with this parameter, “to invest in old Fords, rather than Ferraris”, it is now done. The Response Initiative created this year by the American Secretary of Defense gives priority to the rapid and massive production of autonomous weapons, the birth of an authentic army of drones.