Prediction:Drone Warfare is Coming for Global Shipping

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization”

Ukraine is on a maritime roll, hitting all manner of Russian-linked merchant ships with its drones.

Enabled by technological developments that have made unmanned aerial vehicles extremely accurate across long distances, the Ukrainian campaign is a shift that has caused Russia significant harm — harm that it’s now trying to prevent by increasing protection of its merchant vessels.

But the novel attacks are also opening a phase of geopolitical crisis where merchant vessels at large are facing the risk of drone attacks. That, in turn, risks causing a maritime arms race.

The culmination was a remarkable 172 ships hit in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov within the course of just 12 days.

Drone tech will spread to independent groups. Some terrorist.
The US can no longer guarantee freedom of the seas. Globalized trade will be hurt.
Goods will cost more due to ships sunk and higher Marine insurance premiums.

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Drone warfare is already here… expect robot soldiers in the next 3 to 5 years… not just few, but 10’s of thousands…

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A crux macroeconomic shift that many will simply not be able to imagine, let alone accept as highly probable short of a miraculous attainment of Hugo Grotius’ visionary project in the near term.

My strongest reason to utterly detest the current USA administration is its utter blindness to the tremendous natural advantage that was provided by having a strong North American zone of safe trade, with low to no tariff barriers and relatively easily optimized transport links….

Stoopidness/blindness run rampant.

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Only a few days ago I was surprised to find that South Korea has installed semi- autonomous gun positions at the border with the North. There is, by protocol, still a human in the loop, but given a green light they can fire at will, at anything and do not require human approval for every individual target.

South Korea has developed and deployed automated/semi-autonomous sentry systems—most notably the **SGR-A1** (co-developed by Samsung Techwin/Hanwha Aerospace and Korea University)—along portions of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

Scary world getting scarier.

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The security of the multitude of soft targets inside the US:
Electrical substations, gas pipe lines n refineries, bridges, crowded places (malls, sporting events, etc)
and more.

Domestics can utilize this drone technology, too.

Therefore, a couple years ago, I bought a HODL position in ONDS.

I looked at Kraken Robotics, KRKNF, but didn’t take a position.
I been in and out of Big Bear AI, BBAI.

Anduril n Saronic are not yet public.

I own a couple PLTR shares.

Hope for :dove: but plan for :small_airplane::speedboat:
ralph

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Last year, prescient as I am, I opened positions in DRNZ, a “drones” ETF (get it?) and SHLD a more general assortment 50 to 55 global companies focused on military hardware, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and defense systems.

Seeing clearly that drones are a future growth industry, and knowing next to nothing about which companies do what, why, or where, I figured an ETF would give me a basketweight full. And likewise, paying attention to military hardware, et al makes my head hurt, so I picked another ETF to do the headache part.

Both have performed extremely, uh, mediocrely, if that’s a word; the first up around 3.5%, the second 2.8% - this during a time when drones are in the news daily, and when conflicts involving Russia, the US, Ukraine, and Iran dominate the attention of world leaders hour by hour.

The only defense stocks doing well are General Dynamics and Raytheon, neither of whom is particularly important in these fields (they are in others* see below). It appears that my investing thesis (drones, new tech) is flawed, while my Motley Fool posting thesis (the Pentagon is “old think” and out of touch) is a better indicator of what’s going on, financial wise.

Even with ginormous pallets full of cash about to be unloaded on them, it appears that most of it will go to outdated systems like “new battleships” and “warplanes that don’t fly” and we will eschew modern weapons such as are being used by those who need to stretch their dollars, not incinerate them wholesale.

  • Others: firms with lots of ex-generals as consultants, missile restocking for those which have aged out, not been used heavily, and so on. Somebody needs to light a fire there, and Hegseth should be the first one to feel the heat.
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