When the Sky Closes: Drones, Weather and the Enduring Utility of Indirect Fire

Sunday 8 February 2026

The modern battlefield is often described as transparent. Sensors watch everything; drones hover everywhere; algorithms promise to detect, classify and strike targets in minutes. In fair weather, this description is not wholly wrong. In poor weather it becomes a comforting illusion.

Rain, fog, snow, low cloud and high winds do not merely inconvenience drone operations. They expose the physical limits of airborne systems and remind commanders why older forms of battlefield violence, particularly indirect fire weapons such as mortars, remain stubbornly relevant.

Drones are creatures of the air, and the air is an unforgiving medium. Small and medium unmanned aerial vehicles rely on stable lift, predictable airflow and clear sensor inputs. Wind shear disrupts flight control. Rain and ice degrade propellers and airframes. Low cloud and fog blind electro-optical cameras, while moisture attenuates infrared contrast and degrades laser range-finding. Even when drones remain airborne, their value as reconnaissance or strike platforms diminishes sharply once target identification becomes uncertain.

This is not simply a technical problem to be solved by marginal improvements in sensors or software. Weather affects the entire drone kill chain. Launch windows narrow. Transit times increase. Battery life falls. Communications links degrade as precipitation and terrain interfere with line-of-sight relays. Most critically, decision-makers lose confidence in what they are seeing. A blurred image, a partial thermal signature or an intermittent data feed does not merely reduce accuracy; it erodes trust, and trust is the currency of real-time warfare.

By contrast the logic of indirect fire, in particular mortars, is almost willfully indifferent to weather. Mortars do not need to see their targets. They do not care whether the battlefield is shrouded in fog or hammered by rain. Once coordinates are known, whether from prior observation, sound ranging, radar, map reference or simple inference, a mortar bomb follows a ballistic arc governed by gravity, not visibility.

This difference matters profoundly in contested environments. Poor weather often coincides with moments of heightened operational risk: night movements, withdrawals, resupply under cover of darkness or assaults timed to exploit concealment. These are precisely the moments when drone coverage thins or disappears. Mortars, meanwhile, thrive in such conditions. They can suppress movement, deny ground, break up assaults and impose psychological pressure even when neither side can see clearly.

There is also a temporal dimension that favours mortars in bad weather. Drone operations are sequential and fragile. A drone must be launched, flown, tasked, its data interpreted and its effects confirmed. Each step is vulnerable to disruption. Mortars compress time. A trained crew can move, set up, fire and displace within minutes. In fluid or chaotic conditions, speed and simplicity often trump sophistication.

None of this is to deny the immense value of drones when conditions permit. In clear weather they extend vision, reduce uncertainty and enable precision at scale. They have reshaped tactics and forced adaptations across every branch of modern armed forces. But their dominance is conditional, not absolute. Weather remains a sovereign force on the battlefield, and it regularly reasserts itself.

The comparative merit of mortars in such circumstances is not merely technical but doctrinal. Mortars embody a philosophy of warfare that assumes friction, uncertainty and imperfect information. They are designed to function when plans unravel and visibility collapses. Their continued relevance is a reminder that war does not reward elegance alone; it rewards robustness.

In an age intoxicated by airborne sensors and remote strike, poor weather performs a brutal audit. It strips away assumptions and exposes dependencies. When the sky closes, the battlefield does not fall silent. It simply returns, for a time, to older, heavier and more brutally reliable instruments of force.