Evolving Warfare Weapons
By Gene Aronowitz
I served in the United States Marine Corps Reserves between the Korean War and the Vietnam War, but I was never a combatant. However, I’ve followed military operations closely and am concerned by what I see. The seemingly endless cycle of developing deadly weapons and then developing ways to counteract them has brought us to what I consider our dreadful and very precarious condition.
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization established in 1920 after World War I. It was intended to promote international cooperation and world peace. While it could mediate some minor international disputes, it was often disregarded by major powers and was unable to achieve its objectives. When it ceased operations, and many of its functions were transferred to the United Nations, established in 1945 after World War II to “maintain international peace and security, promote cooperation among nations, and help build a better world.” It does not appear that the United Nations has achieved its purposes. Currently, over 60 countries are involved in some sort of conflict.
In my opinion, the consequences of armed conflict are more dangerous now than ever before, and not just because of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. On June 1, 2025, Ukraine carried out an astonishing drone attack on military airfields deep inside Russia, destroying at least a dozen strategic bombers. It was a seismic shift in modern warfare. Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, can operate remotely and at a controlled, sustained level of flight. Deadly drones are relatively cheap, as weapons go, and appear to be readily available. Any militant splinter group intent on destruction will likely be successful to some extent.
The United States military is working diligently to develop and deploy counter-drone technologies. However, history has taught us that it will not take long for some country to develop a method to counter our counter-drone technologies. In a conventional sense, there’s no alternative to developing counter-weapon technologies, and we should not stop trying. When will all this stop? Large political organizations, such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), have been unable to end this perilous era of escalation, chaos, and uncertainty.
Call me naïve and simplistic, but I think it’s possible that people can get tired of beating up each other, physically and emotionally, and it’s possible that they can find that treating each other with honesty and respect is not only gratifying but also productive and effective. There are pockets of civility here and there, but they are sparse. These pockets would need to spread out to the whole world, as unlikely as that seems. But think about it: if some groups can do it, then, theoretically, everyone can do it, given a willingness to do so.
What the world needs now is civility – just simple civility.
A version of this memoir is included in the book 23 More Memoirs.