Armed Drones as Emerging Military Technology: Reviewing Strategic and Security Implications

Abstract

Armed drones have become a prominent feature of contemporary warfare, yet their strategic significance cannot be explained by technological characteristics alone. This article presents a thematic narrative review of the literature on armed drones as an emerging military technology, with particular attention to military innovation, diffusion and proliferation, organizational adoption, capability formation, and broader strategic and security consequences. The review focuses primarily on scholarship published from the post-2001 expansion of armed drone warfare through 2026. The literature reveals a clear shift in the central questions guiding research. Early studies were dominated by debates over whether drones represented a new Revolution in Military Affairs and by concerns surrounding targeted killing, remote warfare, and the political costs of force. Subsequent research turned toward diffusion and proliferation, asking why drones spread, which actors acquire them, and whether wider access alters the distribution of military power. More recent work has focused increasingly on the organizational and doctrinal conditions under which technological access is converted into effective military capability. Across these debates, possession alone proves to be an inadequate measure of military significance. Organizational capacity, learning, integration, doctrine, networks, and supporting structures shape whether drone technologies can be employed effectively and sustained over time. Their diffusion to armed non-state actors further illustrates the uneven relationship between technological access and strategic effect. What ultimately shapes the security consequences of drone proliferation is not access alone, but the uneven capacity of states and non-state actors to translate technological access into organized, sustainable, and strategically relevant military capability.