DAVID ALWAYS BEATS GOLIATH:

While her ally Jon Snow advances troops south by land, Daenarys moves her Unsullied infantry by sea to rebase her forces at Dragonstone, a fortress which offers a convenient staging ground for her ultimate goal: the capture of the capital of King's Landing, held by the villainous Cersei Lannister. Daenerys flies over her fleet with her two dragons, confident in her supremacy as Cersei has no air force, and her infantry and cavalry lack effective anti-dragon weapons.

Cersei's advisor Qyburn, however, has developed and mass-produced huge crossbows called 'scorpions'--ballistas which have the range and penetrating power to harm Daenerys's dragons. In the real world, ballistae were first developed by the Greeks and Romans as a form of naval and siege artillery (they played a role in Caesar's conquest of modern day France and Great Britain) and had an effective range of a few hundred meters.

Cersei's pirate-ally Euron Greyjoy deploys his ballista-equipped fleet to ambush Daenerys' forces, and knocks the dragon Rhaegal out of the sky with a surface-to-air barrage. Daenerys attempts an attack run on Eurons' fleet, but is forced to disengage in the face of heavy incoming fire.

Though the danger posed by the ballistae to Daenarys' dive-bombing attack is credible, the long-range volley which kill the dragon Rhaegal at high altitude is less so.

Though Euron uses an island to conceal his ships from Daenarys' fleet in an enfilade firing position, Daenerys should have had a huge spotting and scouting advantage simply because she can fly far overhead. Furthermore, as Euron's non-magical weapons are constrained by laws of physics, they should have a relatively short effective range, as they lose penetrating power over longs distances and lack guidance systems, a high rate of fire, and a blast effect. Usually one or two of these qualities are found in real-world anti-aircraft weapons.

However, Daenerys' fiasco makes more sense when considering how militaries often suffer their heaviest losses when surprised by relatively new technologies and tactics or which they haven't developed countermeasures.

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