At first people thought that drones favored defense, since Ukraine, in its war against Russia, was defending successfully with drones. But now Ukraine is using drones to attack Russia, and Russian oil refinery assets and warships. It is less obvious that drones are defensive assets on net. Furthermore, Russia is now using more electronic jamming, and more weapons that are drone-avoiding or drone-resistant, thereby limiting the defensive value of drones.
Overall, current drones seem to increase the vulnerability of fixed assets such as tanks or troop formations, or for that matter oil refineries or Moscow or Ukraine fixed landmarks. A very large and sophisticated U.S. aircraft carrier might be able to repel the drones (albeit at high dollar cost), but a bunch of tanks in an open field will not have comparable protection.
In the abstract, “mid-valued assets become more vulnerable” could favor either offense or defense.
The more obvious trend is that it favors nations willing and able to lose lots of mid-sized assets. That is either because a) the nation doesn’t care, because it is evil, or b) because the nation can replace them quickly, for instance by building more tanks or by drafting more soldiers.
So could it be that in the long run steady state (albeit not today) drones favor the more evil nations? Factor a) is clearly a marker of evil, whereas factor b) might be modestly correlated with evil. I consider this an unconfirmed hypothesis, but it reflects my thinking at the moment.
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