Or Vietnam, post war Japan/Germany, the Philippines, the civil war & Wild West, any native American tribe etc.
The issue is about endurance. Are you okay with losing the majority of battles and having x10 the casualties? Not to mention all the left over bombs and chemicals causing deformations long after. A philosopher once said everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.
Are you okay with losing the majority of battles and having x10 the casualties?
The thing is that having 10x the casualties tends to create more fighters.
This is why Israel needs to commit total genocide in order to “win” in Gaza and the West Bank. Every time they kill a legitimate Palestinian fighter–versus an uninvolved civilian–they’re killing someone that had a family, and friends, people that knew the person, people that loved the person, had probably heard about the injustices (real or perceived; mostly real in the case of Palestinians) from them, and knew why they were taking up arms. These people don’t end up being cowed by the violence. Then you add in the people who have their whole families killed by indiscriminate bombing, and no longer feel like they have anything to lose except their shackles.
We know this already. We’ve known this since WWII. The Axis and Allies both through that bombing civilian population centers–London for the Axis, Dresden for the Allies–would break the will of the people, but instead it hardened them. The concept of total war and mass casualties simply Does. Not. Work.
You can’t win wars like this through military force alone, unless you’re willing to commit total genocide.
The thing is that having 10x the casualties tends to create more fighters.
Until it doesn’t. Case in point is that large empires exist. Greece has the 300 story, yet were part of Rome and The Ottomans. China has Tibet. US has native lands. I get your point but freedom fighters depend on sponsorship (Haiti bring an exception) and they do exhaust. Still my point is that super powers can be defeated, its just at a very high cost.
Because if Ukraine has taught us anything, it’s that drones are definitely only limited to large and advanced military powers. There’s no way a civilian would ever be able to make something like that
Ukraine isn’t fighting the bulk of their war with drones, so it isn’t really an appropriate comparison. One of the main reasons they’re still in the fight is the plethora of highly advanced munitions that have been provided to them by NATO members. Lastly, drone warfare has become less and less effective over the last year against Russia. There are lots of countermeasures that can be implemented to take out drones. Hell, if you jam radio signals (which is easy to do), remote controlled drones become virtually useless outside of preprogrammed kamikaze tactics.
Just to clarify, I don’t say that to discredit them being a viable and deadly weapon in guerilla warfare. They’re very effective in certain situations and quite dangerous. Just pointing out they’re not the end-all-be-all of modern warfare.