Separating enduring drone lessons from wartime conditions

Compared with the development of air warfare, what stage has drone warfare reached?

It is assessed as adolescent, with its lasting role still difficult to separate from effects produced by current wartime conditions.

Drone warfare is assessed as still being in its adolescence. A reported case of drones isolating a Ukrainian city raises the question of whether the effect would survive the arrival of effective countermeasures. Vehicle-mounted lasers are the hypothetical example used to test that assumption. The comparison with ambitious claims for air power in the 1920s asks which observations reflect lasting changes and which depend on the circumstances of a particular war.