Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have propelled drones into the headlines. The word “drone” now stretches to cover everything from hobbyist camera rigs available on Amazon to the Predator and Reaper systems the United States has relied on to fight terrorist organizations over the past 20 years.

A common ancestor in the animal kingdom can give rise, under sufficient environmental pressure, to distinct species that demand their own classification. Drones have undergone their own rapid speciation: the one-way attack drone, the medium-altitude, long-endurance and high-altitude, long-endurance drones, the collaborative combat aircraft drone – these share a lineage and a label, but in terms of cost, range and use, increasingly little else.

Nowhere is this variation more consequential than in the category of one-way attack drones: systems designed not to return home like an airplane, but to fly directly into a target and destroy it, like a bullet or a missile. Russia and Ukraine have fired millions of these at each other since 2022, and Iran has launched thousands at United States military bases and embassies, Israel and other countries in the Middle East in 2026.

The world is now in an era we call “precise mass.” In the past, military power was often determined by size – the number of knights, soldiers, guns or tanks, depending on the era, that an army had. Since the Cold War, advanced militaries have emphasized precise munitions, such as cruise missiles, gaining advantage with fewer but more accurately targeted weapons. Inexpensive but technologically sophisticated drones bring mass and precision together.

Commercial manufacturing, precision guidance and advances in artificial intelligence and autonomy have democratized the ability of militaries and militant groups to accurately strike their adversaries. This includes first-person-view, or FPV, drones – a type of one-way attack drone with interfaces like video games – that groups aligned with Iran are already using to target American forces in the Middle East.

One-way attack drones

One-way attack drones have featured most prominently in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and in the Middle East today. The first category of one-way attack drones is longer range and can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to strike targets deep in an adversary’s territory. They are like extremely cheap cruise missiles – Iran’s Shahed-136 one-way attack drone, for instance, has a reported range of up to 1,250 miles (2,000 km) and costs between US$20,000 and $50,000 each. In comparison, America’s Tomahawk cruise missile costs $2 million each.

Russia acquired the Shahed technology almost immediately after Iran debuted it in 2022, creating its own version, the Geran-2, and has since used these drones to pummel Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure. Most recently, the U.S. military has followed Russia’s lead and reverse-engineered its own version, the LUCAS, which debuted in the earliest days of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. military operation against Iran that started on Feb. 28, 2026.

Since late February 2026, Tehran has fired thousands of one-way attack drones at targets across the Middle East. Iran’s one-way attack drones have hit buildings in Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and damaged the United States Embassy in Saudi Arabia. The UAE alone was targeted by nearly 700 Iranian drones in the war’s early days. Iran’s one-way attack drones have killed U.S. service members and destroyed critical American radar systems.

Because long-range, one-way attack drones are so slow, they are easier to shoot down than, say, a Tomahawk missile, but attackers can fire so many of them that they can overwhelm air defense systems.

The second category of one-way attack drones operates more like traditional artillery – typically from short distances, up to about 100 miles (160 km). Ukraine’s battlefield has showcased these systems extensively, where they generate 60%-70% of the casualties on the front lines.

FPV drones

One of the most common types of short-range, one-way attack drones is the FPV drone, sometimes built for a few hundred dollars each from commercial parts purchased online. In Ukraine, operators wearing video goggles fly FPV drones directly into Russian vehicles, fortifications and troops, and they feature guidance interfaces for remote operators that are not dissimilar to those of first-person video games.

FPV drones are not magic. Operating them requires a continuous data link between the operator and the drone, making them vulnerable to electronic jamming that can disrupt radio signals. To address this vulnerability, many Ukrainian FPV drones now use physical communication lines in the form of fiber-optic cables to avoid jamming, but the cables can be cut, and that limits the range of these systems. FPV drones with fiber-optic cables have ranges of about 12 miles (20 km). Effectively using FPV drones also requires skilled operators.

America and Israel’s war with Iran hit the pause button on April 7, but if it starts again and the U.S. deploys ground forces, they would likely face the kind of short-range, one-way attack drone barrages that have come to terrorize both Russian and Ukrainian forces alike.

The threat has proved so hard to stop that Ukraine has resorted to low-tech solutions: Hundreds of kilometers of roads are now covered with nets, donated by European fishermen and farmers. The nets stop FPV drones by tangling their propellers. Nets cover tanks and hospital courtyards and line supply routes and city streets. Ukraine’s government plans to install about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of them on key roads by the end of 2026.

Iranian forces could similarly deploy one-way attack drones against American convoys, personnel or parked aircraft in ways that are difficult to defend against. Additionally, just as American adversaries such as ISIS and al-Qaida used video footage of attacks to try to scare the American public, Iran is likely to use FPV strike footage – the operator’s-eye view of the attack, easily edited and uploaded – to try to shape American attitudes.

In March 2026, an Iran-backed militia used FPV drones to strike a parked U.S. Army medevac Black Hawk helicopter and destroy an air defense radar at the Victory Base Complex near Baghdad. The attackers then released footage from the drone’s perspective as propaganda, blurring out the red crosses identifying the Black Hawk as a medevac aircraft.

The new reality

Short-range, one-way attack drones have redefined the front lines; long-range ones have changed what it means to wage war at strategic distances. Iran’s battlefield record – thousands of drones launched, air defenses nearing exhaustion across multiple targeted countries, American troops killed – demonstrates what a mid-tier military can achieve with precise mass.

Any military that fails to invest in these capabilities – and in the ability to defend against them – places itself at risk, including the U.S. military.

Michael C. Horowitz is a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2022 to 2024 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Director of the Emerging Capabilities Policy Office at the United States Department of Defense. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in an article are solely those of the author and do not represent the official policy, position, or endorsement of any U.S. government department, agency, or branch of service

Lauren Kahn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

President Donald Trump has again threatened to oust Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, putting at risk a keystone of good economic policy and inflation management: central bank independence.

The president said on April 15, 2026, that he would fire Powell if the Fed chair stayed on in that role after his term officially ends on May 15. Powell has said he intends to remain at the helm after that if his replacement has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. Legally, Powell is allowed to do this.

Trump has promised to fire Powell a number of times, and his Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into renovations at the Fed building. Trump has also tried to oust another Fed governor, Lisa Cook, over allegations of mortgage fraud. In an unprecedented video response to the investigation, Powell called it and other actions “pretexts” for Trump’s ultimate goal of getting the Fed to lower interest rates.

While Trump’s actions are seen as particularly aggressive, as political economists, we are not surprised to see politicians try to exert influence on central banks. For one thing, central banks remain part of the government bureaucracy, and independence granted to them can always be reversed – either by changing laws or backtracking on established practices.

An economic power struggle

At the heart of threats to Powell and Cook – and other moves to undermine the Fed by the Trump administration – is a power struggle.

Central banks, which are public institutions that manage a country’s currency and its monetary policy, have an extraordinary amount of power. By controlling the flow of money and credit in a country, they can affect economic growth, inflation, employment and financial stability.

These are powers that many politicians would like to control or at least manipulate. That’s because monetary policy can provide governments with economic boosts at key times, such as around elections or during periods of falling popularity.

The problem is that short-lived, politically motivated moves may be detrimental to the long-term economic well-being of a nation. They may, in other words, saddle the economy with problems further down the line.

That is why central banks across the globe tend to receive significant leeway to set interest rates independently and free from the electoral wishes of politicians.

In fact, monetary policymaking that is data-driven and technocratic, rather than politically motivated, has been seen as the gold standard of governance of national finances since the early 1990s and has largely achieved its main purpose of keeping inflation relatively low and stable.

But despite independence being seen to work, central banks over the past decade have come under increased pressure from politicians.

Trump is one recent example. In his first term as president, he criticized his own choice to head the Federal Reserve and demanded lower interest rates.

Attacks on the Fed have accelerated in Trump’s second administration. In April 2025, Trump lashed out at Powell in an online post, accusing him of being “TOO LATE AND WRONG” on interest rate cuts, while suggesting that the central banker’s “termination cannot come fast enough!” And in August, Trump took the unprecedented step of firing Cook, which a court later blocked. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling in the case this year.

Moreover, the reason politicians may want to interfere in monetary policy is that low interest rates remain a potent, quick method to boost an economy. And while politicians know that there are costs to besieging an independent central bank – financial markets may react negatively, or inflation may flare up – short-term control of a powerful policy tool can prove irresistible.

Legislating independence

If monetary policy is such a coveted policy tool, how have central banks held off politicians and stayed independent? And is this independence being eroded?

Broadly, central banks are protected by laws that offer long tenures to their leadership, allow them to focus policy primarily on inflation, and severely limit lending to the government.

Of course, such legislation cannot anticipate all future contingencies, which may open the door for political interference or for practices that break the law. And sometimes, central bankers are unceremoniously fired.

However, laws do keep politicians in line. For example, even in authoritarian countries, laws protecting central banks from political interference have helped reduce inflation and restricted central bank lending to the government.

In our own research, we have detailed the ways that laws have insulated central banks from the rest of the government, but also the recent trend of eroding this legal independence.

Politicizing appointees

Around the world, appointments to central bank leadership are political – elected politicians select candidates based on career credentials, political affiliation and, importantly, their dislike or tolerance of inflation.

But lawmakers in different countries exercise different degrees of political control.

A 2025 study shows that the large majority of central bank leaders – about 70% – are appointed by the head of government alone or with the intervention of other members of the executive branch. This ensures that the preferences of the central bank are closer to the government’s, which can boost the central bank’s legitimacy in democratic countries, but at the risk of permeability to political influence.

Alternatively, appointments can involve the legislative power or even the central bank’s own board. In the U.S., while the president nominates members of the Federal Reserve Board, the Senate can and has rejected unconventional or incompetent candidates.

Moreover, even if appointments are political, many central bankers stay in office long after the people who appointed them have been voted out. At the end of 2023, the most common length of the governors’ appointment was five years, and in 41 countries, the legal mandate was six years or longer.

And the Fed chair position has traditionally been protected by law, as Powell himself acknowledged in November 2024: “We’re not removable except for cause. We serve very long terms, seemingly endless terms. So we’re protected into law. Congress could change that law, but I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”

In the 2000s, several countries shortened the tenure of their central banks’ governors to four or five years. Sometimes, this was part of broader restrictions in central bank independence, as was the case in Iceland in 2001, Ghana in 2002 and Romania in 2004.

The low inflation objective

As of 2023, all but six central banks globally had low inflation as their main goal. Yet many central banks are required by law to try to achieve additional and sometimes conflicting goals, such as financial stability, full employment or support for the government’s policies.

This is the case for 38 central banks that either have the explicit dual mandate of price stability and employment or more complex goals. In Argentina, for example, the central bank’s mandate is to provide “employment and economic development with social equity.”

Conflicting objectives can open central banks to politicization. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate of stable prices and maximum sustainable employment. These goals are often complementary, and economists have argued that low inflation is a prerequisite for sustainable high levels of employment.

But in times of overlapping high inflation and high unemployment, such as in the late 1970s or when the COVID-19 crisis was winding down in 2022, the Fed’s dual mandate has become active territory for political wrangling.

Since 2000, at least 23 countries have expanded the focus of their central banks beyond just inflation.

Limits on government lending

The first central banks were created to help secure finance for governments fighting wars. But today, limiting lending to governments is at the core of protecting price stability from unsustainable fiscal spending.

History is dotted with the consequences of not doing so. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, central banks in Latin America printed money to support their governments’ spending goals. But it resulted in massive inflation while not securing growth or political stability.

Today, limits on lending are strongly associated with lower inflation in the developing world. And central banks with high levels of independence can reject a government’s financing requests or dictate the terms of loans.

Yet over the past two decades, almost 40 countries have made their central banks less able to limit central government funding. In the more extreme examples – such as in Belarus, Ecuador or even New Zealand – they have turned the central bank into a potential financier for the government.

Scapegoating central bankers

In recent years, governments have tried to influence central banks by pushing for lower interest rates, making statements criticizing bank policy or calling for meetings with central bank leadership.

At the same time, politicians have blamed the same central bankers for a number of perceived failings: not anticipating economic shocks such as the 2007-09 financial crisis; exceeding their authority with quantitative easing; or creating massive inequality or instability while trying to save the financial sector.

And since mid-2021, major central banks have struggled to keep inflation low, raising questions from populist and antidemocratic politicians about the merits of an arm’s-length relationship.

But chipping away at central bank independence, particularly in the name of lowering interest rates to boost the economy, as Trump appears to be doing by threatening to fire the Fed chair and his attempted removal of a member of the bank’s Board of Governors, is a historically sure way to high inflation.

This is an updated version of an article that was originally published on June 14, 2024.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.