War technology progress, human cost unchanged

Even though some of the footage from the cameras on the drones is wobbly, you can still see the terror on the faces of Russian soldiers as they cower in foxholes or try to run away from these Ukrainian craft which drop explosives with pin-point accuracy.

Watching these videos on YouTube – mainly from Ukraine, but the Russians do pretty much the same in turn – sent a chill down my spine and reminded me to be thankful that my soldiering days are way behind me now.

In my day, you could at least get away from weapons like rockets or rocket-propelled grenades – even rifle and machinegun fire… as long as you could find good cover.

I’ll never forget the sounds of shrapnel – from exploding mortars and RPG rocket-propelled grenades, set to “airburst” as we ran helter-skelter through the tea estate, searching for cover.

The sound is like angry buzzing bees as far as I remember. And, as the old soldiers would say, you are lucky if you hear it, because you never hear what actually kills you.

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After vaulting a fence with some athletic elegance, despite the bulk and weight of the MAG machinegun I was carrying, I slid in behind the trunk of a massive tree in the indigenous forest which carpeted that area.

From that safe vantage point, my mate and I could enjoy the pyrotechnic display, marvelling at the bad aim of many of the missiles and the eerie sound a Soviet 122mm Katyusha rocket makes passing overhead.

Today’s wars are being fought by drones and for hapless soldiers on the Ukrainian battlefield, there is no escape. Even hiding in a house or a foxhole offers no protection because a drone can follow you there and self-destruct, kamikaze style.

Not even the fastest armoured vehicle can outrun these modern marvels of flight – and many are the videos of kamikaze drones zeroing in on fleeing personnel carriers, whose occupants seldom have time to bail off the vehicle after noticing the drone.

Drones and sophisticated electronic innovation, including the use of artificial intelligence for offensive and defensive systems, were on display at this year’s Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD 2024) exhibition at Air Force Base Waterkloof in Pretoria.

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There are systems to deploy drones and bring them down, or render them ineffective by jamming the signals which control them.

South Africa was a world leader in drone technology more than 30 years ago. Unmanned aerial vehicles were deployed during the war in Angola in the late 1980s, for reconnaissance and artillery spotting… jobs where a human pilot’s life was not worth risking.

In 1994, in the run-up to the first democratic elections, I was sitting in an underground control room in Irene, Pretoria, when a drone was flying overhead.

It was showing images of an aircraft taking off in Johannesburg, more than 20km away – so clear you could see the registration letters on the plane

At a show like AAD 2024, it’s easy to be seduced by the wondrous technology and forget that most of it is designed to kill. And that a soldier, cowering in a foxhole watching the end of his life approaching inexorably, is someone’s son, someone’s husband or someone’s father.

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