Three recent wars highlighted the use of drones in 21st-century warfare. Houthi and Iranian attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure and military in Yemen brought the war between Iranian proxies and the UAE-Saudi coalition to a stalemate by 2015. Azerbaijan used drones massively against Armenia in 2020 and 2023, and a deluge of drone-focused combat footage flooded the internet after Russia’s February 2022 re-invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian songs cheering on the Turkish Baykar company’s Bayraktar drone went viral as drones devastated Russian armor. The Kremlin is playing catch-up quite successfully. The Russian military used swarms of drones, many of them Iranian-made, in attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure targets.
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