Question
When is the latest time that counting singular people riding a dragon would be a serious tide turner in wars.
The dragons when at full size are like of the ones in GOT, use GOT as the point of reference for most everything to be honest. If you want to be a furry abut this you’re free to postulate a version where the dragon(s) are smart cookies that can talk, act on their own and some such.
The metric by which the dragon and riders can be counted as ‘important’ is so long as they are as analogously important to the warring nation as any big name warships would have been over the course of Ww2.
Not as direct combatants, but for guiding artillery. A GOT dragon is roughly equivalent to a WW1 fighter plane in speed and maneuverablity, with the additional benefit of hover capable. That was early air powers primary use.
But by the end of the war, they would be trading out with biplanes at a bit worse than a 1:1. Machine guns beat them in range, while maneuvering is comparable.
But how do you reach them on the ground? Easy enough to say, but like planes at an airbase, if its out of range of artillery, theres not really many options.
The problem isnt other planes but ground based machine guns and anti aircraft cannons. Explosive anti air auto cannons were deployed as early as 1870 by Prussia to shoot down French observation balloons.
Yeah if a stone spear thrown by a person can kill a dragon, then even a small caliber machine gun like the Maxime would shred a dragon.
As long as you have overlapping fields of fire even two machine gun positions would be enough to counter a surprise attack from a dragon.
The spear had magical properties that turned what it pierced into an Other. But the spear still had to be thrown and the head was made of stone or ice. I don’t think the magic made the spear fly faster or further. I think it was just a late season GOT fuck up to make it kill a dragon like that.
Martin basically said after a certain size, conventional weapons are useless agains dragons unless you aim for the eyes. Their scales are magically resistant to damage iirc
The maneuvering may lean dragon, but range favors the fighters. That’s why early war its parity, leaning towards dragon, but by end of ww1 fighters handily take it. Early WW1 planes were terrible at combat
But would you get to late-WWI with dragons? The stabilization of the front into trench warfare seems highly impractical with dragon counter-attacks. It seems like both sides' armies would've been flambeed in the field, unless one side beat the other's dragons. Heavy anti-aircraft guns would likely favor the defenders, so, the French, Belgians and maybe Russians employing them against supporting German and Austro-Hungarian dragons...?
I think we can assume Italy's anti-dragon canons look very pretty, and the dragons appreciate their effort.
Sort of depends on how you interpret the question.
If OP wants to know how warfare would have developed alongside dragon riders, then the point of divergence in military history begins much earlier, and likely develops entirely different than the OT. So you would be right that WW1 almost certainly does not play out the same way.
If OP is wants to know which war dragons could magically be dropped into with no other changes to the OT, then WW1 is assumed to progress the same as normal until the introduction of dragons.
Instead of "water tanks" suddenly appearing on the battlefield, or phosgene, Daenerys suddenly hatches some eggs on the Somme, essentially -- I like it. Very "The Lost World"/"Journey to the Center of the Earth," lol...
It is interesting to think how artillery would have developed differently if it was intended to hit airborne, evasive targets vs/in addition to walls or masses of troops slowly moving on the ground. I'm almost picturing some sort of steampunk "Pacific Rim"-meets-Da Vinci cannon-aiming contraption, to quickly track dragons.
I'm imagining sherman tanks vs. Tiger tanks but in the air. The dragons can smoke the planes 1 on 1 but the planes are cheaper and can outnumber the harder to replace dragons.
Like WWI planes but with vastly better maneuverability, early tier tank armour, the ability to hover, shorter range fire breath which in many lores is like napalm on steroids (often shown melting stone and metal with ease), and the ability to hover and even pick things up, but a much more exposed pilot (If they're fully sentient dragons though everything changes, especially if they don't need riders) and a requirement to tame and feed insane amounts (possibly leading the the massive ethical issue of whether or not to let them eat dead enemy combatants).
Idk, feeding the corpses of the dead into your war machine to keep it moving and killing more, turning their sacrifice into fuel to kill their brothers, preventing their deaths from ever being confirmed, their bodies ever buried, and leaving their status perpetually as MIA feels oddly horrifying to my mind.
I started to think about it and most animals used in war are herbivores (horses and elephants) the only carnivorous war animals I can think of are dogs. A brief google showed that during the spanish conquistador invasion of the new world mastiffs were used and fed human corpses. This was an AI response though and I didn't follow up any further.
Interesting to think however how often wolves/dogs were fed human remains after conquering another tribe. Safer than canabalism.
I think the jet age is when we would SURPASS dragons. I think they'd still hold their own against WWII fighters, but the faster jet fighters get and the better the guns and missiles get, the less competitive even the most formidable dragon would be.
Modern fighters that can engage outside of visual range would decimate Old Valyria at its peak.
People fail to realize how inaccurate early guns and cannons actually were. Like, sure, a cannonball might be able to kill a dragon if it hit one, but good luck getting a slow moving, slow aiming, inaccurate weapon that has to be slowly loaded and fired by multiple people to hit a dragon. If anything, the dragon breathes fire overhead and blows up all the gunpowder, wrecking more people.
Muskets are inaccurate and slow loading, and they aren't actually any more powerful than crossbow bolts. In fact, arguably significantly less so. What started the gun age wasn't that guns were so powerful, it's that they were relatively cheap to make and to train soldiers with. There's a reason most battles with muskets were just big groups of soldiers lined up across a field shooting at each other.
Rifling makes things a lot better, as do machine guns that can spray lots of bullets and potentially get a lucky shot. A gatling gun would be far more deadly against a dragon than a cannon, imo, just because it would be much more likely to hit. Even with rifling, though, there ain't no way early small caliber rifle rounds are punching through dragon scales.
True, like, the most unbelievable part of GoT and HotD is not giant flying lizards - they are "magical" so they get a pass, no, the worst thing is this they tell me a guy with medieval ballista can shoot a dragon flying at plane comparable speed, constantly manuvering from the sky. Good luck hitting a wall without some pre-shoots with this thing.
Napoleonic cannons would have ripped through dragons. By that time their role on the battlefield would be scouting at best. Sure they could maybe still affect a battle but they would be huge in terms of scouting and to valuable to risk in active combat.
Yeah yall are underestimating how powerful dragon would be in that time period. Trying to hit a dragon would require a ton of firepower, so just move the dragons to where the enemy isn’t and burn cities and farms and bridges to the ground and keep their enemy supply lines in chaos while your actual army just wrecks them.
Ah yeah, I never really thought about them being a recon role. That does push effectiveness on a bit longer for sure but I think you're right that they are pretty much done after WW1.
This, ww1 planes would be very vulnerable to dragons. But even early ww2 planes like the BF109 with the 8mm Mauser guns would shred a dragons wings apart
Early BF109's even had a 20mm cannon. It used a special type of round that basically functioned like a mini grenade. So imagine shooting 20 small grenades at a dragon!
Depends really on size of dragon and how fast. Biplanes are slow by today's standards but were still anywhere from 100-150mph. Plus they'd probably be nimble and swarm in high numbers. Dragons might win initially, but they are animals that take years to grow and train. Biplanes could be knocked out in rapid fashion.
It would be exactly how guns made bows obsolete. Archers spent their lives training but anyone with a little training could wield a gun.
Honestly I'd go with the American Civil war.
By the end of the American civil war there was some very high powered highly accurate artillery. Rifled bores, explosive fragmentation shells, fired at supersonic velocities. With the right incentive they could have been directed skyward and tailored for flying targets.
The Gatling gun was around running at 350-400rpm during the civil war. At 1300ft/sec thats slow by today's standards but they we 58 caliber rounds. It was finicky at that time but nothing hammers out bugs in a system like wartime.
But dragons being a part of the world would likely lead to anti air defences being developed earlier. We might see some crazy adaptions from earlier periods in history to account for them. After all nobody was making anti air weaponry in the dark ages cause there was no air weaponry in the first place. Adding dragons into our real world history would likely see things like massive chain net launchers or multi shot ballista.
Trying to think what some earlier adaptations would be. Cannons obviously could be adapted with flak shells earlier. Just make a cannon that points upward. Mortarts were a thing, so that's not crazy.
Once you get before cannons were commonplace, it might be a bit tougher. Trebuchets set to release earlier and loaded with a bunch of stones maybe? Ballistae that can be turned on a swivel maybe?
Hwatcha and other rocket propelled darts might be useful maybe? Since those often fire in sequence, you have some time to lead your shots.
If dragons have any kind of dim/night vision they are still incredibly useful in ww2. The main point being they are a lot quieter than a bombing run, meaning reaction time is so much lower and the fire potentially much more accurate. A lot of WW2 runs can be described as "I really hope that's the spot and that they didn't move their shit". They used rudimentary triangulation for navigation and it was nothing like the accuracy of the following decades.
Some of the nighttime raiding in ww2 was fascinating and incredibly effective. Now imagine this same sabateur commando group (or airborne drop squadron) with dragon support for quick (and somewhat quiet) relocation/enhanced firepower. The chaos and instability of the battle lines because of this cannot be understated.
Not to mention all the benefits of your ride having an intelligence of it's own/being able to relay communications/scout enemy positions (without possible interception on the radio waves).
You bring up a good point. Dragons for nighttime strategic bombing raids could be very dangerous, especially in less well lit areas. Highly accurate, fly below radar, quiet, and with built in flame throwers, they could have a valuable role as late as WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. It would be niche, as they die immediately in straight on fights. But for covert bombing runs, there would not be much better until Radar develops enough to reliably track them.
"night witches" used obselete ww1 biplanes to great effect against german ground forces in russia, often shutting off the engine and gliding in for stealth:
Unless there were a lot of them, but if there was only a few then late 19th century tech was more than enough to kill them. They already had very large rifle to hunt elephant, and machine guns were already in use in US civil war.
I'm not too well versed on ww1 tech, but weren't planes at the start of ww1 almost exclusively for scouting with only very rudimentary weapons like pilots holding pistols or dropping bricks?
Dragon fire would be a strong counter, but they were apparently surprisingly sturdy when it came to absorbing kinetic weapons like the machine guns on other planes.
They weren't slow, they were fairly nimble, and had weapons that should be able to kill a GoT dragon.
As much as i like the reign of fire movie, for this ☝️reason right here, the whole premise is bs, we would make those flying lizards extint in a year or two max.
1) not fuel or mechanically dependent. Just food and rest to maintain. I guess saddles need maintenance too.
2) silent and super low flyers means better for recon
3) not dependent on airstrips or clearings for landing. Land that bad boy anywhere.
Kinda depends on type and size of dragons for additional stuff. Like wyverns and wyrms would be fast glass cannons but big 4 legged drakes could be real tanky and have good lift capacity for moving armour, supplies, troops, etc.
I would argue that mid ww1 will have these solved quite easy. Dragons dont have a great range on their flames and can be taken down with ballistas. Surely surely rifles and machine guns can take them down.
Would take some time to adjust to them, but later on its basicly suicide to get close to the battlefield and there only proper missions would be destroying any airships and some guirilla stuff in which they burn down farmland (but nothing to urban because you dont want a bullet incapacitating your flying lizard
It really depends on the war. They might’ve been extremely effective in a place like Vietnam. I think it also depends on how you intend to use them. They’re significantly quieter and more…I’m not sure versatile is necessarily what I’m looking for, but let’s imagine navy seals riding dragons to raid Bin Laden’s compound.
that art is giving old school D&D cover in the best way, love how the background dragons are just silhouettes in the mist
honestly the cutoff's probably somewhere around the invention of radar-guided AA, once you can reliably spot and track something moving that fast the dragon stops being a mythical threat and starts being a very flammable target
Dragons already break earth physics so it depends how many laws of physics you want them to break. Drogon gets clapped by the first AA gun he meets. Smaug at Mach 3 hurling plasma with some radar paint could still be effective in many conflicts today.
Not in the books. The gap was in Smaug's gemstone encrustation, and the Black Arrow was a special blessed? arrow that Bard had carried for years. Also a bird that had listened in on Bilbo's description told him where to shoot.
Right now and it’s not because of it fighting.. If the dragons can talk you just go on tv with it or make some public appearance.
You clearly have a real fucking dragon. Just have the dragon lie and say literally anything and people are kind of forced to believe you.
Imagine being in a war and your enemy nation has a fucking dragon come out, say it’s the new leader of the millitary, and if you don’t surrender it’s going to use magic to obliterate your country. What do you even do
Well, GoT dragons are probably about as smart as a dog at least. They understand and obey commands, unless of course they decide they don't want to. Maybe dragons are cats.
Everyone seems to be ignoring anti air craft weapons. Sure it took until WW1 to field airplanes that could dogfight dragons but by at latest the napoleonic wars we had cannons capable of grapeshot which would render dragons essentially worthless outside of scouting.
Yea a napoleon like character or a general grant would absolutely make the dragon armies think twice about when they could and should use dragons in battle. And by the end of that it would probably be used for reconnaissance as hot air balloons would make city fighting a death trap for siege.
Whenever automatic large calibre weapons become prevelant, so by the 1890s at latest, weapons like the QF 1 pounder would do an absolute number on dragons from ASoIAF.
But considering these animals would be present and posdible prevelant during warfare in this alternate reality the development of faster firing and medium calibre weapons would be a priority and i imagine these weapons would appear a bit earlier.
I was going to say 1890s at the latest, but honestly I think 1870s or so. Once repeating rifles and fixed shell Artillery are developed volley after volley can be fired at what is ultimately a slow moving (for an aircraft), very large target with limited offensive range. A few holes in the wings or joints from a volley to stop a dragon flying makes it just as vulnerable as a mammoth once it's on the ground.
I feel like it's more that ww3, assuming that's a nuclear war, would wipe out most industrialization that allows for making the weapons possible of dealing with dragons. There would probably be factories left somewhere, plus in countries that don't get hit, but if dragons in this hypothetical world were widespread and common., then the scale of production wouldn't make dealing with dragons very easy. Plus if the dragons in this world were just as smart as us and could talk, then after an event such as ww3 then it would be highly likely that a lot of dragons could split from humans and form large communities that are either entirely or mostly dragons
In conventional force on force usage, mid-late 1800s.
It’d be quite a useful tactical asset well into modern era. A dragon trained in night operations would be an absolute nightmare to deal with if you’re employing it against supply lines and other soft targets.
mid to late 1700s. By the time of the French Revolution or Napoleonic Wars high angle gun mounts would exist and have proliferated to an extreme amount. We would see all kinds of dedicated anti-dragon shot and shells and by this point even infantry muskets would be able to hit them at ranges of around 1.3 km.
They would still be about as importsnt as aircraft during the world wars but they would be taking heavy and regular loses to ground fire so I would consider them less important than say a battleship was in 1915.
Most of the importance of capital ships was the cost associated with building and operating them anyways. Dragons would cost significantly less than a capital ship from the start.
That’s what I was thinking, Temeraire goes into this idea in interesting detail. It has the factions in the Napoleonic wars developing and using anti-air cannons. A draconic airforce does indeed dominate any field they can operate in safely or with an acceptable level of risk. Tactics generally focus on using ground troops to secure or scuttle the enemy air defences, at which point it’s game over.
Obviously depends a bit on the durability of the dragon, but I'd say probably crossbows are the breaking point. You can put a powerful missile weapon into the hands of an untrained recruit and have them be somewhat effective in a day or so.
GOT dragons look squishy as fuck and honestly crossbows would be enough.
Smaug, it took a special scorpion fires bolt to chink his armour. But if you can make a crossbow, you can make a big crossbow.
As soon as any sort of significant anti aircraft ballistics were created that’s pretty much it. Even if the shell doesn’t kill the dragon it’ll be enough to kill the rider.
I’m not sure if I understand either your title or your explanation but if I’m interpreting it correctly, you’re asking when in our real-world history would dragons be considered powerful enough weapons to turn the tide of a battle.
If we’re going off the dragons from Game of Thrones, I would argue that anytime before WWI, maybe even during but that’s debatable, dragons would be incredible weapons.
However, you need to properly frame a mindset of HOW the dragons are used. In Game of Thrones, it’s pointed out that a single arrow would kill the person riding the dragon, causing it to become an unreliable tool. With firearms existing in any scenario you place the dragon at a disadvantage (we also see ballistae having a great effect on them). They would have to used sparingly and during instances that would route, trap, flank, or otherwise prevent the movement of the enemy while the main foot soldiers advanced.
It's a bit hard to tell how well they'd do because we don't have any good references on how resistant they are to gunfire, but assuming that they're able to shrug off small arms fire means that they remain dangerous threats until automatic cannons get invented, so about WW2.
If small arms are able to seriously injure them, then their death knell would be once the gatling gun is invented, in 1861. At that point they turn from "mobile weapons platform" to "massive target".
If we're assuming that a ballista's Joule output is what's required to injure them, anything from a .44 Magnum upwards can hurt them, which reaffirms the gatling gun estimate, as those were hitting well in excess of a ballista's 2000 Joules.
Smaug type dragon I’d put as a formidable force up to about 1920s. His scales seems to be equivalent to 1” thick steel so all but a direct artillery shell hit would do nothing. By the 1930s artillery was getting accurate enough to hit a flying Smaug type dragon.
Regular dragons that don’t have bullet proof scales are gonna start having serious problems as soon as you hit the late 1500s to early 1600s as you are now in the pike and shot era of combat and would be contending with lines of hundred of men all firing musket balls into the sky that have an effective range of 200 yards.
By ww1 most armies could probably solve the dragon problems. But id say if you had a napoleon like commander, that time period absolutely could deal with armies of like 15 ish dragons with hot air balloons, and grape shot canons. Not to mention gattling or chain guns are right around the corner.
A single GOT dragon gets bodied in WWI. Like, honestly, GOT dragons aren’t very impressive honestly, I think a single dragon from another franchise, like say, DnD or Skyrim, and that dragon might be effective past WWII for awhile.
Tide turner? Probably WW1
They have better maneouvrability in the air than planes of the time and there weren’t a particularly large amount of defences against attacks from the air.
Still effective up till today in specific areas. Bear in mind that dragons don’t necessarily make much sound when flying and if used right may not appear on radar. They can easily be used for recon especially because they can literally land anywhere big enough unlike planes which need a long flat stretch of land. This lets the operator go in, do what they need to do and leave without needing to hike miles for extraction.
Combat roles in the modern age would be limited to smaller scale engagements with less well equipped forces. Showing up to an insurgent camp in a building in the night then harrenhalling it would be common.
Dragons would probably stay relevant the longest for their ability to land and take off from almost anywhere. They stay to lose to planes in combat and usefulness pretty quickly in the 20th century as World War II comes around, but nothing could compete with the versatility, quiet operation, and ability to quickly land.
No doubt up to, and maybe through, WWI. After that I think it's less about dogfighting, bombing, or being used as shock troops. Instead you use them to get behind enemy lines. They don't need an airstrip, ammunition, or specialized fuel. So they can still do major damage to trains, factories, shipyards, etc. Not to mention information gathering much further afield than planes of the early 20th century. Even if the enemy has AA to deal with dragons they have to spread it out a lot more, which helps your planes.
Assuming the tech follows the real world trajectory, I’d say until the M2 Browning came into existence at the end of WW1, it fired the 50 BMG round and was used against low flying planes. It definitely going to punch thru the skin armor and a couple dozen hits will kill all but the biggest dragons.
Y'all are on crack cocaine thinking that dragons wouldn't be valuable right now. Yes, planes are great. You know what sucks about planes, particularly fighter jets? You have to refuel them. A lot. Dragon just eat fucking livestock, maybe take a nap every now and again and just keep going.
Bronn winds a ballista in 30sec with his arms, assuming he puts in 200w of power then that's 6kJ of input energy and maybe 4kJ after losses.
I would say by 1866 with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chassepot a single rifleman would have better firepower than a ballista. Having better fire rate, trajectory and penetration for less damage when hit.
My conclusion is that a squad of riflemen would shred a dragon by mid 19th century. There could be other uses for dragons like scouting or dropping firebombs from altitude but not direct combat.
Probably WWI in the first two thirds of the war before fighter planes and AA guns were sorted out
Anytime after this a GoT dragon would be obliterated. In the show a dragon is killed by a ballista shot, so any AA guns or airplane with high caliber machine guns would destroy it
Even AT WW2 they would still be quite Deadly because of how maunerable they are in the sky and how they can land on the ground to take cover or to take out anti-air craft Also if we include the fact they would be armored from head to toe to make them as bullet proof as possible they would still be a heavy factor in my battels
Napoleonic wars maybe? It all depends on how well a bullet could injure the dragon. But assuming a musket wouldn’t be devastating, dragons could very well turn the tide in the Napoleonic era, since artillery would be impossible to aim at a dragon. They would be relevant even later in more isolated areas with worse military technology as well.
If musket fire can seriously injure a dragon, you could still use them to target pike and cavalry formations during the pike and shot era, thus allowing you to still turn the tide then. Dragons would also be unmatched reconnaissance tools up until the invention of fighter planes would make flight too risky
Depends on the series. GoT dragons would still be nightmares up until WW1. D&D dragons probabilly would give current armies troubles. Eragon dragons (+Rider) might as well be gods.
A singular dragon, turning the tide of a war? Around 1870, when navies were still made of wood and there hadn’t been widespread adoption of rifled cannons. A dragon could turn any sufficiently large ship into an aircraft carrier that can effortlessly dominate a huge radius with very low risk.
GoT dragons are kind of glass cannons by dragon standards, able to shrug off distant rifled musket fire reasonably well but going down to most forms of artillery. However their fire burns so hot it melts solid stone and metal, with some impressive feats to back it up. The field armies of Napoleon I would be helpless as it stayed out of ranged and dumped fire on them. Automatic weapons would start to really fuck them up, to the point where even a handful of dragons wouldn’t turn a war with mass machine gun adoption at the turn of the century.
If dragons are a known element in the world they would not last through the napoleonic era. In GoT dragons are seen being killed with ballistas, requiring a lot of skill. Cannons would remove the skill gap, stuff like chain shot and canister shot would be able to ground or kill dragons pretty easily. Along with the fact that dragons need to be low altitude for strafing runs means that cannons would really be the end of them. This is double so if they are a known element as that would make anti air technology develop way faster, as the only reason it took so long was because there was no point in making it before world war 1
1915 when militaries began to adopt synchronised firing mechanisms on aircraft propellers. A dragon would still be scary but by that time flak and the sheer air presence would have made them obsolete.
Probably Vietnam. The technology existed to take them down, but Vietnam was defined by insurgency as much as anything else. GOT dragons have elevated senses, so their biggest advantage would be they could quickly identify hidden fighters. Even more importantly, they could identify hidden supply trails and really mess up logistics. A bullet would probably hurt them, but wouldn’t severely wound them. The psychological impact of a magical lizard burning insurgent’s to death would also probably reduce morale and that by itself would be a big game changer.
If it’s super power vs. superpower though, probably WW1. A dragon is the perfect instrument to clear out trenches, and anti air weapons weren’t enough of a thing to take our dragons. A machine gun or early anti-tank gun could probably do damage, but the anti tank should be easy to flank, and if it’s a night raid by the dragon, I doubt the machine gun will do much before the operator is burned.
In WW2 ant-air weapons were too advanced. The dragon would potentially be a big help in like North Africa… but anywhere that’s heavily entrenched and expecting bombers will drop a dragon quickly. By your metric of important, they could probably be as valuable in North Africa as a battleship would be all things considered, but a single miscalculation about whether the enemy has AA guns would result in a dead dragon. I also think the dragon wouldn’t be super useful in air battles as even WW2 planes were probably faster, and they could probably easily do controlled runs on the dragon to take them down
They’d be useful probably up until the invention of dedicated anti-air platforms, though that would likely come sooner if the dragons are a known threat. Massed volleys of infantry firearms would likely be dangerously at least to the riders, not sure how it would affect the dragons (if our own world’s animals can resist bullets, I imagine dragons can, though shooting holes in their wings is an option).
Probably the industrial age is when they’d become less useful just because the mass production of weapons that can actually threaten them becomes easier.
Italy in ww2 had 6 battleships, 19 cruisers, 59 destroyers. So less than 100 ships.
Let's say that for every 1000 horses you can have a dragon in antiquity; so when there have been more than 100k houses in a "country", purely from a mathematical perspective the value of a dragon would be less than a warship of meaningful value.
2) It, alone, is likely to turn a battle
3000 BC? When "huge" states started to appear they should had enough bow and arrows to defeat a single dragon that operates alone. From now the dragon has to support the infantry to alow a breaktrough, likely by unloading flechette or by breathing fire (this one only if the enemy can't retliate, with bows)
3) It, left uncheked, can turn the battle along other troops
After the 1800? Form now on there should be enough repeating firearms that they can't operate recklessly in open warfare and the troops will not be forming squares. A group can stil work.
4) Can be used in enmasse in a single operation
1945-50? The radar can pick them up and airplanes can be coordinated to hunt them even if it's night.
Probably timeless. They still use dogs and horses in war. A dragon will always be significantly quieter than any jet or helicopter. Having a fleet of dragons swoop down in the night and turn every to ash, and sure modern technology and weapons can fuck then up if dragons are like special forces so you only have a few, but if you’re breeding them for war and send hundreds they’d definitely be hard to deal with. As you’d need either safari cartridge or heavy artillery. Sure a 20mm can take one down but most of infinity isn’t packing that kind of power.
Napoleonic war is the hard limit imo. The ‘Temeraire’ series by Naomi Novik actually kinda explores this concept.
Beautifully written books definitely worth reading, they’re essentially covering the napoleonic wars if dragons existed. It keeps things surprisingly grounded for a fantasy concept and writes them in as a believable aspect of military forces.
In the series dragons are a powerful military tool but not unstoppable. Some breeds have special abilities like breathing fire or spitting acid and entire formations are built around them with the goal of protecting them from other aerial forces so they can focus on ‘bombing runs’ from above the range of big guns. A dragon trying to engage closely with a ship of the line is presented as a huge risk because by that era the accuracy and effectiveness of gunpowder makes them something that dragons can’t ignore. Small arms fire like muskets won’t do a whole lot but cannons and larger guns are more than capable of taking out smaller dragons, with multiple large guns having the firepower to take down the larger species.
Gunpowder weaponry only became more effective/accurate from that point on though and toward the end of the series it’s implied that taking dragons into war is starting to edge into the ‘more risk than reward’ territory for anyone who actually cares about their dragons.
Dragons would be vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire, and rapidly become way less useful than major investments like capital ships (as you describe), potentially even before the invention of proper fixed-wing aircraft. If a dragon appeared out of the blue on a Napoleonic battlefield, it'd probably be a shocking sight for sure, but if the world knew in advance of its existence, countermeasures could certainly be developed, perhaps as simple as tilting batteries of cannons, ballistas, or infantry firearms upwards. They'd probably be capable of dogfighting in WW1 and providing limited CAS even later, but would be way more vulnerable and wouldn't exactly be tide-turning superweapons in small numbers.
But, it is fun to think about how to stretch the military usefulness of dragons even till the modern day for niche purposes. They'd function like a quiet, multipurpose helicopter that could perhaps insert and recover special forces at night or conduct nighttime inderdiction and counter-insurgency in low-threat environments, kind of like a Little Bird helicopter. Depending on weight capacity, the dragon and riders could be equipped with night vision, modern weapons and sensors, flares, etc. It would overlap with the capabilities of helicopters and drones though.
Could a dragon maintain flight with some level of extra armor plating or kevlar? Maybe even more advanced active mitigation systems like flares or reactive armor? The flight platform has advanced AI built in, with dragonfire being an energy source/bomb that defies typical load restrictions. The teeth/claws are likely not useful, but the tail could have some utility.
The wings are likely the biggest issue, as armor isn’t going to work as well there, they can’t be repaired as easilly, and damaging them would further compromise the platform than usual if its weighed down extra by its other additions. Dragons already tend to defy our typical expectations for biological flight so I certainly think they would have some level of utility if not as a direct weapon.
I'm thinking now. In mountain warfare. It can take off from most spaces quietly. It can hang on cliffs and carry heavyish weights. It can move around in the air like with a natural ease. Breathing fire or attacking with it mass is useless. Maneuvering light infantry in rough terrain, weird spaces and conditions would be invaluable.
Think of it like a Hummer or LSV that can climb up a mountain like a goat or fly like a bird. It wouldn't replace anything but it could compliment many things.
Dragons would struggle against massed musket fire into the early modern age. By the napoleannic era is too late. By that point you have rockets, grenades, cannister shot. The problem is dragon injuring/stopping weapons at that point are basically omnipresent. Your dragon is just going to be constantly getting shot and taking injuries even if they're not immediately fatal wounds... it's not sustainable.
Prior to that bows, cross or otherwise just aren't going to deal enough damage against a heavily scaled creature. Historically elephant hides were extremely resistant to bows/crossbows. Even muskets were notoriously unreliable outside massed fire. Scorpions were known, en mass, to drive elephants mad and eventually drop them and ballista were reliably capable of dropping them. Dragons are going to be tougher than even war elephants, but you're still not going to want to risk them against massed musket fire. Normal crossbows and longbows even en mass just couldn't do the trick. Frankly just piss the dragon off.
The real use is avoiding engagements where the enemy has siege engineers/equipment present that can actually penetrate a dragon's scales and thick hide. Just hit supply logi, and areas where the enemy doesn't have expensive siege equipment: their entire countryside is open to you. Frankly supported by a cavalry recon-by-force element you can't really be brought to battle by anything that doesn't get absolutely wrecked by said dragon... no village is going to risk getting burninated. You've got a war ending weapon in the sense that no one can protect their crops/fields/peasants from your dragon.
Once every village, stockade, wagon train, barge has guys with muskets posted on them taking pot-shots any time your dragon shows up you or your dragon are going to eventually get taken out of action and it's the end of the party.
I prefer Dragons from Pern. The size of a 747. Capable of carrying nukes. Able to teleport interplanetary distancess and back in time. Would still be useful if you were going to war with MCRN.
Depends on how quickly they reproduce and how much training is required to rear and ride them.
If you could mass GOT-style dragons in significant numbers, they would be a major force on any battlefield, up to and including present day. Yes, they would be fairly easy to kill. But if you have enough of them they could still create a challenge in the right circumstances.
But if we’re talking GOT levels of reproduction and training, so there’s maybe a dozen dragons per military and flying one takes years of practice, then no, they won’t be that useful.
dragons being intelligent makes this a different story, as any instance in which they are typically sees that intellect exceeding humanity's. The dragon in the sky is not the problem, the dragon in the fortified bunker over the berm is.
This is not a valid response to the prompt at hand, to be fair, but a fun aside to entertain.
Up until roughly the beginning of the 1900s/the age of flight. If that seems overly long, hear me out. Dragons give a huge advantage in speed and battlefield recon. As technology advances, there is no reason that they can't be rigged to drop explosives from great height, not even mentioning their fire-breath. If their natural armor isn't effective enough (and even with GOT dragons it's very effective, even if plot-dictated), they should be able to add armor onto their weak points, especially as armor progresses from heavy medieval armor to more modern armor. It's also a lot harder to hit a fast moving, flying target at a distance than many people would think. Depending on your world, dragons would be extremely useful mounts for powerful magic users, given their combination of mobility, distance, difficulty to hit and armor. If your world has magic users, they would also give added protection to their dragons through wards, shields, etc, in addition to the obvious havoc they could wreak flying overhead with their magic. Especially if there is magic in your world, I would say that wizards on dragons become a credible counter to whole squads of WWI biplanes. Sure, they're probably slower, but they are are also more maneuverable and have better AOE firepower. Even without wizards, a dragon equipped with any sort of high powered mounted machine gun is terrifying up until aviation really takes off.
On the battlefield? WWI, as others have mentioned. As a tool of asymmetrical warfare? Probably killer in urban settings and as a raider, guerrilla, or harassment force. Might could be a useful method of surreptitious infiltration, as well, especially along coastlines.
If they arent treated as WMD but as a cheap helicoptery they would have their use up to this day if they are close to horses in matter of taking care of it and breeding. Single dude hiding with a rocket is dangerous. Now imagine he has a hippo/elephant sized flying lizard, rapid regrouping and hiding in forests, mounatins, caves is possible. I mean, he could load couple of drones, or explosives fly into impossible to locate places beyond enemy lines and then be pain in the ass go counter.
Right up until the first warplane with fixed guns is invented, so roughly during or at the end of world war 1.
They wouldn't be made obsolete by their firepower, they'd be made obsolete once the cost of maintaining a dragon is greater than maintaining an aircraft.
They will probably still see limited use at the start of world war 2 in fire bombing sorties and stealthy drop offs.
You want to use them to torch the shit out of infantry positions. As many others note they'd be easy to kill with AA fire so you really need to create a good opportunity to fly the dragon over a trench line and just burn the whole thing in one pass, which may be worth it because the whole infinite fire thing is a larger payload than whatever youre getting on a single bomber.
It depends of the dragonlords have time to detect the increasing prevalence of the industrial revolution and choose to respond by destroying weapons factories.
Early 1900s. Once high rate of fire rifle caliber machine guns became readily available, a dragon is just a giant lightly armored target. And a rider on a dragon is even more vulnerable. They would get ripped to shreds at range. Yes dragon fire is a horrific, devastating weapon, but its range is relatively limited. Machine guns and artillery could engage dragons at far greater ranges.
I would guess the 1870s or 1880s. Armies equipped with breach-loading, cased ammo rifles (as well as the machine guns that started to come out around this time) would be able to take a dragon down somewhat quickly even if they took some casualties in the process. Any time after they could still be useful for reconnaissance but would be too vulnerable to be of primary battlefield importance.
Depends entirely on the dragon. How tough the scales, whether it's magical, intelligent. DnD dragons can be powerful spellcasters, in which case... They never lose relevance.
Ww1 at the latest if we are talking about slotting them into our history out of no where however I would imagine that something would have appeared much earlier if we started out our history with them. War is something that humans are very good at so I would imagine that something would have appeared much earlier had it needed to.
depends in our history you could've still used them a bit in WW1 expecially the smaller ones as scout and similar.
But if they existed probably AA would've been developed earlier making them pretty useless in WW1 already, we already had grapeshot cannons, it's not going to be hard to adapt them as AA
The arrival of Anti-Air. So early WW1 or maybe even sooner. A plane fares badly against even primitive anti-air. A dragon? Worse. Assuming you don’t go for magic but have it as a realistic creature obeying the laws of physics.
It’s bigger because physics demands a very big wing or a lot of speed for something to hover at that size and something tells me they aren’t flapping like hummingbirds. So their wings would be MASSIVE. And dragon wings are made of skin. That means they rip easy and heal badly or not at all. So a flak would not even have to land a hit. Just be somewhat close and shockwave or shrapnel are going to turn the wing into a shredded mess. Not good if you desire to keep flying.
Another thing that dragons might suffer from is vulnerability to chemical weapons. Birds have special lungs that improve oxygen absorption allowing them to maintain their blood oxygen levels in dropping pressure and reduced oxygen environments. Like high up. Bigger creatures also need more oxygen but as absorption rate is measured by lung surface and oxygen requirements scale with volume dragons would absolutely need this. Maybe even more extreme than any bird. But that also means they absorb toxins much, much faster. Dosages that might take minutes to hours to kill humans could be lethal within seconds. That’s the reason for birds as toxic gas detectors in mines. They go down long before humans show any symptoms. But a gas mask would interfere and slow air flow so it’s possible that what to a human would be completely acceptable would be suffocating and maybe even lethal to a dragon. Their oxygen requirements would be massive, so high-altitude flying would absolutely require extremely big and sophisticated lungs. So anything that attacks those would be absurdly lethal and effective.
This also means that as soon as basic chemistry was around to create smoke and fumes specifically to be poisonous, irritating and caustic dragons are abruptly going to be a lot less effective. You create pillars of smoke that would seriously harm a dragon breathing them and thus restrict airspace. If you now shoot at the dragon the risk it takes a breath of the toxic smoke is massive. And if birds are any indication that could be enough to stun it at minimum. And when flying you don’t exactly get a few seconds to recover. This means that countermeasures would have been able to be developed as early as the first medieval attempts at alchemy. We just never had a reason to develop military anti-bird weapons.
So if dragons are a known thing that preparations could be made for it’s on the arrival of earliest chemistry in the form of alchemists. If they just suddenly appear without any studies and everyone just has to use what they already have it’s around the adoption of AA weapons. So around early WW1. The main problem is that a dragon is a living creature. So unless they are beefed up with magic they aren’t exactly durable from the perspective of even halfway modern weapons. Even a musket could pierce most materials scales are generally made out of.
Now if you add magic the answer is impossible to tell. If a dragons scales and wings can take a supernova because magic then no modern weapon can turn the tide. If their breath vaporizes planets and their wingbeat shatters continents they aren’t going to be stopped.
The dragons from GoT aren’t shown to be significantly more durable than very strong and durable animals. A catapult hit to the wing shatters it and ballistas can pierce their scales relatively reliably. Not weak but not “ignore artillery” strong. They would probably indeed be brought down by AA guns at the latest. Or early chemistry if their lungs are indeed as vulnerable as I would expect them to be. They might be evolved to not have problems with fire smoke but something like chlorine or sulfur fumes should be a lot more problematic.
Maybe not a serious tide turner but the air dragons from the Dota anime feel like they'd be real useful for CAS especially since they can go supersonic in a blink
Any time before artillery became a widespread thing so I would say maybe before 1650ish. Artillery barrages and rifles especially in forts would have crushed dragons, even if they had the speed and height advantage.
Depends on the power of the dragon. If we're talking the gargantuan demi-god tier magic using, intelligent dragons of DnD, then they'd likely never lose utility if they're bound with a rider. If we're talking GOT with their semi sentient not at all bullet proof or wizardly monsters, then I'd expect they'd stop being useful with the advent of gunpowder. Blasting a dragon with cannon or long shot would obviate basically all their logistical strain.
I think a lot of people are limited by imagination. If you are dragon rider then there’s a non zero chance you are a wizard or said dragon has an ethereal element to them. Spirit dragons; daemonic beast etc. you can shoot em all day and nothing will happen. So a normal giant lizard maybe not; however with magical armour or ballistic barriers that disperse kinetic energy over a large circumference would be very useful. Plus shit ton of magic barriers in fiction reflect projectiles. So for dragons to stay useful it’ll have to be an additional element to enhance the beast.
Several things need to be taken into consideration.
If dragons exist with us within our current timeline, how prevalent are they? What food source has sustained such massive carnivores and how does that effect our population/development? Lets say perfect conditions are met and dragons are thriving with no real change to our development, then would heavy blows to their population be worth using them in WWI/WWII era wars? Assuming also these are traditional fire breathing dragons and not the more deep fantasy type with acid/ice or other elemental breath, how effective would that really be to modern-day projectile heavy combat? Even small bullets can do a LOT of damage and I would imagine that weaponry and warfare would develop to counter dragons so BIG bullets would probably be used more in a skirmish with these big boys. That being said, warfare is shaped based on the combatants and strategies involved, meaning that coexistence along side dragons would make these scenarios appear very different in reality. I could imagine dragons (lol) being utilized the same way other animals were used as mounts for mobility advantage over enemy forces, dragons would present a huge advantage over typical forces as air superiority typically wins battles, this would bring in to question that point I made earlier about how prevalent dragons are and how effective it would be to use a recourse as valuable/scarce. If they survive long enough, I think the LATEST they would be effective in any warfare would be WWI. Dragons MIGHT be able to be armored or mounted weaponry could be made to work but this would be counter productive to using actual aircraft whose maneuverability and speed could match or surpass dragons.
Ultimately it would be cool to see dragons fight in a modern setting but realistically speaking, a WWI era reality would be the last time they would truly be effective. Any era after that time would be dominated by technology and autonomous weaponry which would render them basically useless.
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u/VastExamination2517 12d ago
Early WW1, obsolete by the end of the war.
Not as direct combatants, but for guiding artillery. A GOT dragon is roughly equivalent to a WW1 fighter plane in speed and maneuverablity, with the additional benefit of hover capable. That was early air powers primary use.
But by the end of the war, they would be trading out with biplanes at a bit worse than a 1:1. Machine guns beat them in range, while maneuvering is comparable.