By some estimates, 60 to 70 percent of casualties in Ukraine now come from drones — cheap, disposable first-person view drones piloted from miles away. They dive into trenches, slip through windows, and snake into hatches of armored vehicles. The battlefield’s oldest insurance policy — cover, concealment, or courage might save you — is collapsing. This isn’t a tactical shift — but rather the start of a military revolution, tearing apart the old rules of war. It is not waiting for written doctrine to reveal it, but is being etched by the murderous fire in the drone-choked skies above the front lines in Ukraine.
What is unfolding is more than a new tactic — it is a systemic rupture in the conduct of modern warfare. First-person view drones are unleashing the most significant transformation in land warfare since the rise of the Spanish tercio in the 16th century. Just as firepower reshaped European warfare by influencing the creation of new formations like the tercio, first-person view drones force armies to reorganize, rethink, and relearn how to fight and survive. Modern armies should now realize that they can create their own 21st-century tercios by inserting drones into every infantry formation down to the lowest level. Those who fail to transform to adapt to this military revolution will not just lose battles — they will be shredded on the battlefield and suffer total defeat in war.
The Original Revolution: The Third Spanish Tercio
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the advent of the Spanish tercio ushered in a military revolution. The tercio was not only a tactical formation but also represented a transformation in the employment of violence. By integrating the traditional staple of infantry formations armed with pikes and swords with the emerging power of gunpowder weapons such as the early musket called the arquebus, the tercio forged a dominant force that reigned over European battlefields for nearly a century. The arquebus alone was unreliable and slow, but when supported by dense formations and combined arms tactics, it reshaped how wars were fought. This wasn’t just a shift in tactics — it was a full-scale military revolution that demanded standing armies, centralized control, and new systems of doctrine, logistics, and taxation.
By combining blocks of pikemen with lines of arquebusiers, the tercio fused shock and firepower into a system capable of dominating the battlefield. It departed from the muscle-fueled force of medieval warfare and embraced a new era driven by chemical energy — gunpowder. The tercio demonstrated that warfare was no longer solely about raw courage or a cavalry charge but the organized fusion of men and technology united to unleash a new era of lethality. Infantry without firearms weren’t only defeated — they were butchered.
Today, we are witnessing another military revolution, driven not by muskets but by machines. First-person view drones are changing the calculus of battle, placing surveillance and precision strikes in the hands of infantry squads. Like the arquebus, they are tactically fragile but strategically revolutionary, and when integrated into modern formations, they are reshaping warfare. The tercio’s genius was not just its weapons but its integration with existing infantry formations. The Spanish tercio taught us that victory belonged to those who mastered the system, not just the weapon. Today, first-person view drones demand the same rethink. Whoever masters this integration first on a massive scale will hold a significant advantage on the battlefield.
Some may argue that first-person view drones are merely the new tactical artillery, offering a cheaper, faster means to deliver a strike. However, this analogy overlooks the scale of the shift. Artillery operates in a linear, pre-planned manner, pounding coordinates. In contrast, drones hunt. They chase heat signatures through windows, dive into trenches, and strike from angles no mortar ever could. This isn’t just a new delivery system — it is a new predator on the battlefield, enabling dynamic and networked lethality. First-person view drones do more than simply deliver effects — they are actively reshaping how combatants see, move, and survive on the battlefield.
From 2025 on, ground forces without drones are extremely vulnerable. They’ll be hunted from the sky, tagged by sensors, and carved up by fearless machines. The old tercio was forged in iron, flesh, and gunpowder. The new tercio is built by pairing humans with drones — melding intuition with machine precision. And just like before, those who fail to adapt will be the first to fall.
Defining Military Revolution
Historians define a military revolution not simply by inventing a new weapon, but by its ripple effect across tactics, organization, doctrine, and strategy. These revolutions occur when societies are forced to rethink the very conduct of warfare. A military revolution compels not only new tools but also new formations, strategy, and the organization of armies. As Michael Roberts argued, revolutions in warfare occur when new technology compels a fundamental rethinking of how wars are fought and how armies are formed. Geoffrey Parker extended this view, showing how innovations like gunpowder and fortifications triggered vast changes in siege warfare, logistics, and state capacity. Clifford Rogers added a further layer, suggesting that true military revolutions erupt not from linear innovation, but from bursts of disruptive change that force the reorganization of entire military systems.
What we are witnessing is not merely innovation or gradual evolution — it is a disruptive shift that completely rethinks how wars are fought, how forces are structured, and how states prepare for conflict. Military revolutions do not occur solely due to the introduction of weapon systems. The essential lesson is this: a military revolution happens not when a weapon is invented but when that weapon reshapes the very logic of war. Innovation tweaks the tools, while revolution rewires the system.
We are now at the edge of another such rupture. First-person view drones, and the networks that enable them, represent not just tactical innovation, but the seeds of systemic transformation. As Christian Brose argues in The Kill Chain, the U.S. military’s dominance has long rested on exquisite, high-cost platforms — tanks, stealth fighters, aircraft carriers — each costing millions or billions of dollars to build and maintain. First-person view drones invert that model. For a fraction of the cost, small, intelligent, networked machines are beginning to challenge the supremacy of the traditional military-industrial complex.
This isn’t just about procurement. It’s about what kind of state apparatus war demands. As the tercio required a new fiscal and bureaucratic foundation, so too might drone warfare. The defense economy may shift from centralized production of a few elite systems to mass production of thousands of cheap, disposable platforms. Our current infantry and armored formations may also be on borrowed time. Just as World War I shattered the utility of massed regiment and division charges, drone warfare may render large, conventional brigade formations obsolete — too visible, too static, and too slow. The brigade, once the building block of modern maneuver, may come to be seen as outdated as a Napoleonic line.
In short, if first-person view drones are more than just tools — if they are changing what it means to see, survive, and strike — then we are not witnessing an innovation. We are seeing a military revolution.
The Tercio
The rise of the Spanish tercio in the early 16th century marks one such moment: when the advent of the arquebus, a weapon slow to fire and vulnerable on its own, was fused into a larger system of pike and shot that dominated battlefields for over a century. The lesson here is that weapons do not transform war alone; the system that arises due to the new weapon technologies does. The tercio was not just a formation; rather, it was a doctrine, a training system, and a state-backed engine of war that dominated European battlefields for over a century.
The tercio represented a comprehensive adaptation: it transformed not only weapons but also formations, doctrine, and state support structures. It combined firepower with cohesion. It made war deadlier and more organized. Today, we are witnessing an initial kind of transformation on the battlefield in Ukraine influenced by first-person view drones.
The Spanish tercio didn’t merely plug a new weapon into an old system. Instead, it constructed a new system around a new reality. That is what makes it the correct analogy for this moment. First-person view drones are tactically fragile, just like the arquebus, but when networked with infantry, sensors, and indirect fire, they transform the entire grammar of combat. The challenge now is not just to adapt to drones, but rather to organize around them. That’s what the tercio did. And that’s what the new first-person view drone tercio can do again.
As scholars like Michael Horowitz and Stephen Peter Rosen have illustrated, new technologies rarely transform warfare on their own. What matters is whether militaries can reorganize around them. The arquebus required the doctrine and formation of the tercio. Similarly, first-person view drones demand new operational concepts, new force structures, and new leadership willing to break from legacy thinking. As Horowitz puts it, states that adopt a military innovation but fail to change the way they organize to use it may spend a lot of money with little pay off. This is not just a test of technology, it is also a test of institutional imagination.
This isn’t just a case of historical comparison. The tercio helps us understand today’s moment because it shows how novel technologies like the arquebus then, or the first-person view drone now become revolutionary only when embedded into systems that rewire how war is fought.
Ukraine: The Eye That Kills
Nowhere is the transformative power of first-person view drones clearer than in Ukraine. What began as an improvised adaptation of hobbyist drones has evolved into a new combat doctrine — one being written in real time by infantry units at the lowest levels, not generals. Drones which were the tools of highly trained Air Force pilots operating from secure bases, have moved to the squad level of infantry forces. Today, first-person view drones are being wielded by the infantry of the line. They are cheap, fast, and deadly. Perhaps in Ukraine, we are witnessing the reemergence of the tercio, but instead of pikes and the arquebus, there are infantry squads with their first-person view drones.
This shift marks more than a tactical adaptation. It suggests a deeper reorganization of warfare, akin to the rise of the tercio in the 16th century. Then, the arquebus was a fragile but disruptive weapon that, when embedded in a disciplined formation with pikes and supported by state infrastructure, redefined how battles were fought. Now, instead of pikes and arquebuses, we see infantry squads networked with first-person view drones, radios, and tablets improvising new formations, new kill chains, and new rhythms of maneuver. What’s emerging in Ukraine is not just a new toolset, but the early scaffolding of a new doctrine. Perhaps we are not just witnessing the reemergence of the tercio — we are witnessing the birth of its successor.
Ukrainian and Russian troops alike now speak of the skies as haunted by constant, intimate threats. One combatant put it simply: “It feels as if there are a thousand snipers in the sky.” These drones are more than eyes but also executioners. Operators fly them into hatches of armored vehicles, through windows of barracks, and down trench lines to deliver explosive payloads directly on the vulnerable points of enemy formations.
By some estimates, drones now account for 60 to 70 percent of damaged and destroyed Russian systems in the Ukraine war. The traditional idea of a “safe” position — behind cover, in a trench, or in a forest — has evaporated. The battlefield is open, observable, and dangerous. First-person view drones’ mere sight or sound will send infantry and vehicles alike scurrying for safety. Their presence alone is perhaps the new suppressive fire of the 21st century.
In Ukraine, being seen by a drone is often a death sentence. Drones not only hunt for targets but also stalk and relay target coordinates to mortar, artillery, or missile batteries. The moment that quiet buzz overhead spots enemy combatants, an invisible clock starts ticking. The time it takes for indirect fire to respond may vary. But once a drone sees a target, the coordinates of its position ripple down the kill chain and soon bring an orchestra of steel rain.
To counter this lethal threat, forces have begun draping nets, digging deeper, or using anti-drone weapons. But these are temporary solutions. As Ukrainian commanders note, adaptation is no longer enough — transformation is required. The battlefield has changed, and so should our strategies and tactics. These drones aren’t simply additive — they’re transformative. The battlefield has changed shape. What was once “no man’s land” between trenches is now a drone kill zone, patrolled by flying munitions that loiter, observe, and strike with terrifying accuracy. If the enemy sees you, they fix you. If they fix you, they kill you.
Precision Death, Mass Produced
The first-person view drone isn’t just a weapon but rather the democratization of airpower. Cheap, fast, and brutally effective, it’s becoming to the 21st century what the AK-47 was to the 20th: a tool of global violence that rewrites the rules of war. But unlike the AK, it doesn’t need line-of-sight, strength, or courage. First-person view drones are part of a broader shift toward precise mass capability systems like loitering munitions, small unmanned aerial systems, and more traditional drones like the Shahed that are rapidly expanding the range and persistence of battlefield surveillance and strike capability.
In the last century, a combatant could trust that terrain might save him — that cover, darkness, or distance might offer survival. Trenches, forests, and city blocks could be used as shields. The first-person view drone has shattered that faith. This is the revolution: firepower has gone viral. Anyone can buy the ability to see, hunt, and kill at a distance for a few hundred dollars. What once belonged to states now fits in a backpack. What once required an airstrip now launches from a ditch. Stephen Biddle’s “modern system” emphasized dispersion, cover, concealment, and combined arms integration to survive on the battlefield but drones are rewriting those rules. If cheap, disposable platforms can penetrate cover and locate hidden troops in real time, then even the modern system may be cracking under the pressure of pervasive, networked lethality.
From First-Person View to Lethal Autonomy: The Coming Drone Blitzkrieg
The Spanish tercio dominated European battlefields for nearly a century — not because of a single weapon, but because it fused emerging technology (the arquebus) with revolutionary operational art. However, like every advantage in military history, its supremacy was only temporary. The technological and operational advantage in war cannot be permanently owned, only leased. Adversaries are constantly working on the down payment on the next lease of supremacy.
By the early 17th century, European commanders began developing tactics to dismantle the tercio’s dominance. They introduced novel formations to maximize firepower, speed, and maneuver, which shrank the dense pike infantry formations, and expanded the lethal potential of firepower. The future of military power dominance belonged not to those who wielded new weapons first but to those who integrated them best.
The same pattern is emerging today. First-person view drones have transformed the small-unit fight by the constant overhead threat. But this is only the initial stage of first-person view drone-enabled combat.
The next stage will come fast with the advent of tactical and scalable lethal autonomous weapons. Autonomous weapons aren’t new — loitering systems like the Israeli Harpy or ship-based close-In weapon systems have long been able to detect and destroy threats without human input. But what’s emerging now is different — small, mobile, coordinated swarms of lethal autonomous drones operating at the tactical edge. These systems will extend human reach and operate independently in coordinated swarms, capable of shattering defenses and creating openings for rapid exploitation. What we are witnessing now is drone skirmishing. What comes next may look more like a drone blitzkrieg — fast, autonomous, and brutally optimized for lethality at scale.
A Fearless Machine, An Autonomous Future of Lethality
The Spanish tercio was powerful not only because it fused arms but also because it drilled them. The tight geometry of its formation required discipline under fire. Courage was currency. In a future war with lethal autonomous drones, the human limit of fear is being designed out of the system.
First-person view drones and autonomous drones will do much more than change tactics; they are eroding the psychological foundations of war. Clausewitz wrote that combatants had to overcome fear, fatigue, and confusion to function. But drones feel none of these things. While your best operator tires, the machine remains steady. It doesn’t blink, it doesn’t panic, and it doesn’t forget the target.
Autonomous drones don’t need live fire training to develop courage. The courage and ability to kill with cold, inhuman precision will be programmed in. Once imagined as support, autonomous systems will likely become the frontline tools of offense and defense. Autonomous drone formations will be immune to suppression, immune to casualties, and immune to hesitation.
Machines don’t feel fear, fatigue, or friction. They don’t suffer stress under fire. They don’t hesitate. As one combatant in Ukraine explained: “You can hide from artillery. But drones are a different kind of nightmare.”
This is the deeper revolution: We are approaching war without fear. That concept should give us pause. The first-person view drone is its latest and most chilling manifestation. The soldier’s heart once set the tempo of battle: courage, exhaustion, panic. The drone erases that rhythm. It doesn’t breathe or need water, and its endurance is only limited by fuel or batteries. The consequences of unleashing such fearless weapons on the battlefield could be far more devastating than we can imagine. Indeed, humanity may come to miss the restraining and mitigating effects of fear, fatigue, and stress on the horrors of combat. Warfare that becomes more relentless, offensively, means swarms that massacre without mercy; defensively, it means attackers pay a butcher’s bill in blood and machines.
Envisioning the New Infantry Platoon
Commanders in the 15th and 16th centuries faced a similar challenge to the one we face today: unleashing new firepower technology on the battlefield. The Spanish tercio was the product of commanders like Gonzalo de Córdoba, who experimented with new formations to break the dominance of medieval cavalry. Later, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Maurice of Nassau refined these ideas even further, reorganizing their infantry to maximize battlefield firepower, mobility, and flexibility.
We stand at a similar inflection point. Our basic building block, the infantry platoon, was designed for a world of rifles, machine guns, and mortars. But if drones change the character of contact, how we organize and fight at the platoon level should also adapt. Once we establish how to fight with this new technology at the platoon level, we can build the next-generation DNA of warfare at the operational and strategic levels of war.
Building the Drone Squad
The rifle platoon of the future might fight in a completely different way. Instead of the traditional three rifle squads and one weapons squad, tomorrow’s platoon might be built around two rifle squads for maneuver, one weapons squad, and a newly created 9-man drone squad dedicated to controlling the airspace over the fight. This drone squad could break down into four two-man teams. One team would focus on drone defense, countering enemy drones. Two hunter-killer teams would go on the attack, launching their drones to hunt targets, especially enemy drone operators. One overwatch team would operate to scan the battlefield, feeding live video to the platoon leader, and coordinating fires. Drones will be as essential to the platoon fight as machine guns or mortars. The infantry of tomorrow will do more than hold terrain. They will now also own airspace.
Conclusion: The Next Military Revolution
The battlefield is being reshaped — not by steel or courage, but by cheap drones and tireless surveillance. This new geometry of war — persistent vision, disposable strike platforms, and real-time kill chains — challenge every assumption of the 20th-century military system. Infantry and armored formations built for maneuver now face a sky of death. The air is no longer empty, but rather, it is hostile terrain.
The drone era is much more than evolution or innovation. Instead, this is a military revolution. Blitzkrieg, carrier warfare, railroads, and rifles were powerful innovations — but they operated within existing military frameworks. They enhanced speed, logistics, and range, but did not require the complete rewiring of the battlefield’s core logic. By contrast, drone warfare is forcing changes not just in how we fight, but in how we organize, train, lead, and equip. It demands new formations, doctrines, and ways of seeing and surviving war.
As past military historians have remarked, true military revolutions force societies to rethink the conduct of war itself. Drones don’t just plug into old systems — they dissolve them. What once required regiments and airstrips now fits in a backpack. What once demanded courage now requires only bandwidth.
This is a revolution.
The Spanish tercio taught Europe that tactics and technology should evolve together. First-person view drones teach us the same lessons faster and with far deadlier consequences. Whether in trench networks or battlefields in Ukraine, old formations are breaking down, and something new and ever more terrifying is emerging in their place.
This is no longer a science fiction prophecy of future war. Instead, it is the reality of war today.
The lesson of the tercio is that when new weapons demand new formations, tactics, and strategies, those who adapt survive, and those who don’t die. We are living in another such moment. First-person view drones are not an accessory to modern war but rather will become its new core. Whether in the hands of state formations or backpacked by insurgents, they are changing what it means to fight, win, and die.
For centuries, firepower rode on human shoulders. Now it rises weightless, unburdened by fear, untouchable by flesh.
We cannot wait for the next war to write the doctrine. It’s already being drafted in blood in the skies over Ukraine. The machines are already learning. The only question is whether we are.
Antonio Salinas is an active-duty U.S. Army officer and Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Georgetown University. Following his coursework, he will teach at the National Intelligence University. Salinas has 26 years of military service in the Marine Corps and the U.S. Army, where, in this capacity, he led soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the author of Siren’s Song: The Allure of War and Boot Camp: The Making of a United States Marine.
Jason P. LeVay teaches joint doctrine at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and is a doctoral student in the Security Studies program at Kansas State University. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington and holds graduate degrees from Yale University and the National Intelligence University.
The views and opinions presented herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, or any part of the U.S. government. The appearance of, or reference to, any commercial products or services does not constitute Army or Defense Department endorsement of those products or services. The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute Army or Defense Department endorsement of the linked websites, or the information, products or services therein.
Image: Midjourney
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