Iron Wings: Drone Warfare 1936-1945
The drone war is older than you think. Before the word existed, the great powers of the Second World War were already building machines to fight in a man’s place – radio-steered tanks, television-guided aircraft, and bombs that corrected their own fall. Iron Wings brings those real programs into Hearts of Iron IV: the teletank, the Fritz X, the TDR-1, Operation Aphrodite, and the desperate electronic war fought to jam them all.
- Remote Demolition Vehicles – tracked, radio-controlled demolition vehicles (Teletank / Goliath / Borgward) as a support company. A siege scalpel: devastating against forts and in cities, dead weight in the open.
- Reconnaissance Drones – radio-controlled recon aircraft attached at division level. Eyes over the next ridge without risking a pilot.
- Guided Glide Bombs – a Fritz X / Hs 293-style plane module that transforms naval-strike accuracy. Capital ships are no longer safe behind their flak.
- Assault Drones – expendable television-guided attack aircraft in the pattern of the TDR-1, including a carrier-capable variant. The aircraft is the warhead.
- Heavy Assault Drones – war-weary heavy bombers stripped and packed with explosives (Operation Aphrodite), built only by converting your obsolete strategic bombers.
- The Jamming Arms Race – an electronic-countermeasures ladder that degrades enemy guided weapons tier by tier, answered by wire-guidance and frequency-agility counters, plus a shipborne Jamming Suite module.
Recruit the men who actually built these weapons, each with a trait that speeds their signature program:
- Vladimir Bekauri (USSR) – father of the teletank, and a target of the purges.
- Max Kramer (Germany) – designer of the Fritz X guided bomb.
- Vladimir Zworykin (USA) – the television pioneer behind TV-guided weapons.
A web of event chains follows the technology: the Ostekhbyuro and the fate of its chief engineer, the night the convoys first met a bomb that turned in flight, the loss of a battleship to a single guided weapon, and the political fallout of Aphrodite. World-news flashes spread each breakthrough to the major powers.
All the real unlocks are delivered as hidden technologies, so the fragile surface is kept small.
- Götterdämmerung – the drone programs run as Special Projects. Without it, the same programs are available as long, costly decisions, so the mod is fully playable either way.
- By Blood Alone – needed for the Guided Ordnance plane module in the designer (a doctrine spirit covers the bonus if you don’t have it).
- Man the Guns – needed for the Jamming Suite ship module.
- Historical focus; safe in singleplayer and multiplayer. Not Ironman/achievement-compatible.
- Start a new game for the full experience – the historical scientists and the Soviet head-start are granted at game start.
War without pilots has arrived. The question is whether yours are ready for it.
