Former CIA chief Petraeus says drone swarms are the next danger — and growth opportunity

Unmanned systems will present the greatest danger and structural growth opportunity over the next decade, former CIA director David Petraeus said, pointing to conflicts in Iran and Ukraine as evidence of how warfare is rapidly evolving.

Speaking at the UBS Asian Investment Conference, Petraeus said the increasing use of drones in conflict zones showed both the growing danger of unmanned weapons and the urgent need to improve defenses against them.

“Much of this is going to be all about unmanned systems and the defenses against them, which have not been adequate in this case,” Petraeus said.

“It’s never going to be perfect, but it can be much better than what it is that we have seen.”

The proliferation of drone combat in the Middle East will push the region to invest in defensive and offensive capabilities.

Iran’s cheap Shahed drones have been a regular fixture in conflicts and proxy attacks across the region, while the U.S. and allies have often relied on more expensive air defense missiles to intercept them.

Public estimates place the cost of a Shahed drone at roughly $20,000 to $50,000 each, far below the price of ballistic or cruise missiles, which can cost millions of dollars.

“There’s going to be enormous spending on defense against what we’ve seen come from Iran, which is only a hint of the future war,” he added.

Petraeus pointed out that even a “modest” amount of drones has caused real problems, including cutting Qatar’s liquefied natural gas production.

The former four-star general, who also led the United States Central Command, said the future of warfare will increasingly shift towards unmanned systems. He added that in a year or so, warfare will evolve beyond unmanned systems to include autonomous systems fighting each other.

Autonomous drones can form swarms that overwhelm defenses through numbers while adapting to changing battlefield conditions by communicating with one another, instead of being remotely piloted by a human controller.

“Now you have swarms coming at you, and we really don’t have a defense for swarms.”

Drawing on visits to Ukraine, Petraeus said Kyiv’s armed forces were “just extraordinary” at producing their own drones and defeating Russian drones through measures including using interceptor drones, electronic warfare to disrupt control networks. Ukraine has also used pickup trucks equipped with machine guns connected to targeting computers to help intercept incoming drones.

Still, Petraeus warned that current countermeasures, such as individual drone interceptors, may prove insufficient against coordinated drone swarms.

“That gets really, really, really scary, actually, because autonomous systems mean … you’re not limited by the number of pilots that you have who are remotely flying these systems,” he said.

The rise of unmanned systems, however, represents a major investment opportunity, Petraeus said.

When asked which part of the defense value chain was likely to see the biggest structural growth, Petraeus said the answer was “unmanned systems of all types.”

The “big, even more transformative moment,” he said, would come when militaries move beyond individual autonomous weapons and begin deploying what he described as “autonomous systems of autonomous systems.”

In that scenario, he said, autonomous sensors could gather battlefield data and feed it back to autonomous command-and-control systems, which would then direct autonomous weapons systems with little or no human input.

The shift toward autonomy, he added, is partly driven by the difficulty of maintaining command-and-control links on the battlefield.

If drones or other weapon systems cannot rely on continuous communication with human operators, they would need to navigate, identify targets and coordinate independently.

“Autonomy is going to be absolutely the breathtaking development in the future,” Petraeus said.

He added that space-based communications, including systems such as SpaceX’s Starlink, would help connect unmanned platforms.

Petraeus noted that Iran’s Shahed drones did not rely on satellite communications, describing them instead as closer to “low-level small cruise missiles” than remotely piloted drones.

“All of this is coming soon to a theater near us,” Petraeus said. “The investment implications are absolutely enormous.”