For two nights, up to five drones were spotted over landmarks in Paris. French police weren't able to track down the drones or the owners due to the difficulty of tracing their flight paths while on the ground. In response, a task force has been formed to focus on this "threat." Even the US secret service has been called in as consultants (although their track record with drones is pretty terrible).
This event demonstrates, yet again, that drones allow:
- easy (with gps navigation, they can fly themselves),
- low cost (hundreds, not thousands of dollars),
- survivable (not being caught) access to any site.
Of course, drones have limitations:
- short flight time,
- slow speed, and
- small payload (1-2 pounds).
The big questions:
- how can small, consumer drones to disrupt urban environments?
- given trends in drone technology, how could they be used for disruption and warfare in the near future (5-10 years)?
- how can drones be used to advance protest?
To fully explore the potential of this new platform for warfare, let's do something fun.
I'd like to open these questions up to the 60,000 who regularly read this site. Over the last decade, I've found that nearly everyone doing innovative work on military strategy and theory (all over the world), regularly read this site. This means the quality of the thinking on this project has the potential to be pretty great. So, put your brains in gear and write up a fictional scenario that will rock the world. Try to use brevity (less than thousand words would be great) and send it to me at:
I'll publish the best ones on GG or do something even more interesting with them.