I think the more interesting part to think about is drones which were involved in this sinking. This is a very rapidly evolving area of warfare.
Right now we're using drones like we used early WW1 aircraft. As spotters for long range weapons and very occasionally as direct bombers. We haven't yet developed drones that shoot down other drones cheaply. So we can spot enemy formations, ships, tanks etc. without any cost effective way to stop the small spotter drones.
I see this changing soon. We will soon have small cheap drones that will take down nearby spotter drones and the balance will change yet again.
So don't throw away old tactics and equipment just yet. There's a gap where we have no reasonable way to stop drones that will soon be addressed.
I think the natural progression of war is going to be remote controlled systems. Drones are for flying.
Remote Controlled land and water units would also work.
There are multiple reasons why it's the future.
1. Cheap to make
2. Can be smaller since they don't have to have space for humans to sit in them, which might increase ability to carry things, longer range etc.
3. Because humans don't have to be inside of them they can also go a higher speeds, maneuver faster without human body limitations
4. If a drone goes down, the drone pilot can man another one. All that training and knowledge is retained. Human operated vehicles have a high probability of losing their occupants.
5. If 5,000 drones get destroyed, it's lost money. If 5,000 military personnel gets killed it appears much worse in terms of optics, value of life etc.
The next issue to arise in this paradigm is that autonomous machines are most analogous to mercenaries, with no fixed allegiance to the nation they are fighting for. Thus this army of 5,000 drones could alarmingly be converted to an enemy force in a way a normal army could not.
And the natural progression of war will lead to the toner wars. The drones will become so small that they become next mesothelioma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age: "Nell's older brother, who plays an important role in the beginning as her protector; he obtains the Primer for his sister by mugging John Percival Hackworth. Harv is forced to leave Nell when she is accepted by the Neo-Victorians, and is later bedridden by asthma caused by the inhalation of dead nanomachines ("toner") in his childhood."
I would expect that, at the low end, a drone's maximum velocity and its range would be proportional to its size. Really small drones would be perfect for loitering (unless it's windy), but less good for getting to a denied location (unless it's downwind). That seems to me to really limit the usefulness of really small drones.
Now they're talking semi-autonomous mobile weapons systems to accompany special operators. The drone wars will scale up from the bottom and scale down from the top to meet in the middle for a full spectrum of robot-on-robot mayhem. And thus SkyNet was born...
The era of remote control won't last too long though because of signal jamming. Autonomous systems that don't need constant control by a human operator is the next logical progression.
The problem with jamming is that in order to be effective the transponder has to be very "loud", which means it can be destroyed by a missile which is built to target the "loudest" object in front of it. Active radar can partially avoid these systems by turning off during inactivity, but jamming has to be continuous to really be effective
CDMA and other spread-spectrum radio tech was developed to counter signal jamming. If your comms is split amongst a range of frequencies and extractible with pseudo-random codes or other trunking scheme then you've raised the cost of jamming significantly.
There are a myriad of ways to work through signal jamming.Something designed to work in a battlefield can utilize one or several methods.
Most civilian devices aren't designed to do that because it's usually more expensive. There are also nebulous arguments about hindering law enforcement (but also counter-arguments about criminals eg "if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns").
I can imagine a semi-disposable drone-like device being used for fast and cheap reconnaissance. If cost of something with a camera and rough lidar can be brought to $200, then why not turn it into a 'consumable' item that can be deployed from out of a briefcase?
I feel like assuming that the device will be lost/destroyed can help optimize for short-term performance. Why not add a few grams of C4 to it, to make sure that it and its silicon are absolutely unrecoverable and in many pieces after its operational lifetime?
The animated image is cracking me the hell up. It just glides out of the tube like WHOOP!
But, that's actually very close to what I was thinking about! I was imagining something with a much shorter range, however. Something like 1km, compared to that thing's 10km.
You're almost describing the Russian Orlan-10, except you've got the cost off by an order of magnitude (they cost around $2,000 each).
$200 is an incredibly ambitious target that's unlikely to be hit, but it's also not necessary to bring costs that low. Our military budget is $800B/yr and our current drones cost way more than $2000. Simply bringing the costs down a bit would get us sufficient quantity.
Oh, that's much larger than I was thinking of. I was thinking somewhere on low-single-digit-km range, and probably sized to where carbon fiber + aluminum are still the best choices for the frame materials. Roughly, the size of 2 beer bottles?
The U S army worked on putting cameras in howitzer shells as far back as the 70’s, so short-ish range (10 miles or so), but cheap by military standards.
Though these days a cheap plastic drone might easily be less expensive if mass produced.
I suspect this is exactly what they are going for but at the same time, reliability is critical if you only have a handful of them you can't afford for some to not work, so by the time you use some prime components, they start costing "military" money instead!
I don't think the majority of deaths in combat have been from humans killing other humans that they can see with their eyes for a long time. Possibly well over a hundred years.
If killing someone through a camera is action-at-a-distance, so is blowing up an opaque metal box that you know probably has four humans in it, or firing your artillery piece at a grid square that probably has some humans in it, or dropping a bomb on a glowing blob on a thermal sensor that's probably a human. Even in daytime infantry-on-infantry combat, at a lot of ranges you're not shooting at people, you're shooting at piece of cover you saw gunfire emanate from. All of these partially-removed actions are also mainly what we're seeing drones do well at.
While one could design a killer robot to go inside buildings and shoot people while looking them in the eye, the complexities and timeframes of close-range combat make it seems like the very last place for robots to replace infantry.
Attended a dinner with dozens of active and retired pilots from three services. The highlight were two speakers who saw combat in the Gulf War I. Wing Commander’s SiL (F-16) pilot and son (SAR medic).
They loved the formers gun camera videos and stories. They squirmed and looked at their desserts when the latter showed up close and personal pics of the “Highway of Death”in Kuwait. Miles and miles of burned bodies in the sands.
Pilots don’t have to watch in 4k like the button clickers do.
Isn't the difference more about collateral damage? In the battle, you have at least an inkling of the person you are shooting being an enemy, if you are ordered to bomb a house and find out that a load of kids were killed as well as the target, it becomes much more traumatic.
It may or may not be easier to remotely kill someone else from across the world, but I suspect that drone warfare will evolve quickly so it’s drone vs drone. I suspect few people would feel bad about shooting down some pieces of metal and plastic.
This contributes another ethical quality though: if the other person can shoot back, you have a right to go all out in order to defend yourself. The same cannot be said for unmanned warfare, where the immediate danger is asymmetric.
I don't think it's possible to reconcile the battlefield with an ethics of self defense. You can pick a side that way, yes, but the doctrines of justifiable homicide simply don't hold up in battle.
“Rules of engagement (ROE) are the internal rules or directives afforded military forces (including individuals) that define the circumstances, conditions, degree, and manner in which the use of force, or actions which might be construed as provocative, may be applied. They provide authorization for and/or limits on, among other things, the use of force and the employment of certain specific capabilities. In some nations, articulated ROE have the status of guidance to military forces, while in other nations, ROE constitute lawful command. Rules of engagement do not normally dictate how a result is to be achieved, but will indicate what measures may be unacceptable.”
Soldiers won’t be allowed to destroy a house on the grounds that it can be used by a sniper, for example, but must have reasonable certainty that it is being used as such.
Couldn't the same be said of an artilleryman? Or a bomber pilot dropping ordnance on a position with no AA defense? Or a tanker shelling infantry with no AT gear?
This is also a way to think about the UFOs. If they are uncrewed, then it's quite possible it took them tens or hundreds of years to get here, and once here, to seek out US Navy maneuvers (cos that's where the most interesting electromagnetic spectrum is), and then toy with them to check our capabilities. And then report back. If the "UFO attack" on Washington DC in the early 50s was one series of contacts, then there's been decades for them pesky aliens to work up another wave of drones to come say hi and mess with naval aviators' heads.
Remote controlled drones only work reliably at short range. At longer ranges they stop working once the enemy knocks out your communications relays. Communications satellites are no longer survivable. In the future AI technology might solve the problem but outside of simple loitering munitions, AI can't do much today. In some scenarios we may see drones controlled by manned aircraft that are just a few miles behind and still within communications line of sight.
Maneuverability doesn't count for a whole lot in the real world. For manned aircraft the trend is to de-emphasize maneuverability in favor of signature reduction, ECM, and decoys. While it's theoretically possible to design a UCAV that could pull >9Gs, in practice it's totally pointless. That would make the airframe too heavy and expensive, and would adversely impact other more important qualities like endurance and magazine depth.
Drones are vulnerable because they have to transmit a video feed over many miles for a remote operator to be able to control them. And the enemy can easily detect that, and then launch a missile that homes in on that signal. That's why there aren't any stealth drones. Drones shouldn't work against a first rate 21st century military, but Russia has proven in this war that they are not in that group.
One way to make a stealth drone is to make it operate autonomously, without sending back a video feed. But nobody is comfortable with that for obvious reasons.
The approach the French have proposed for their next gen fighter jet is to have a stealth jet surrounded by a swarm of stealth drones. The pilot commands all the drones, and so any radio links would be short range and therefore hard for an adversary to detect.
> 2. Can be smaller since they don't have to have space for humans to sit in them, which might increase ability to carry things, longer range etc.
To an extent, but the large the drone is (so it's more capable of range and payload capacity), the less the relative manned penalty is.
> 3. Because humans don't have to be inside of them they can also go a higher speeds, maneuver faster without human body limitations
Similar to above: the bigger the drone, the more they get constrained by other factors than the human body. A drone the size of a F-15 isn't going to be significantly more manueverable or faster than a F-15, simply because the G limit is in part due to the fact that plane can only be so strong, and the engines can only supply so much thrust.
If a drone goes down, the drone pilot can man another one. All that training and knowledge is retained.
We have only to look to WWII to see the strategic value of sapping the enemy of their experienced pilots. Which, in turn, could mean that shooting down enemy drones is no longer a goal. Perhaps it becomes more like a carrier formation, with a drone formation defending the operators, and the aggressor looking to destroy the operators instead of the drones. Much like how a carrier is a far larger prize than a carrier fighter.
Counter example is the conscripted Allied armies at the end of WW2. In the last few months, the allies would much rather expend a mass of munitions rather than lose troops, especially front-line infantry, who were very hard to replace.
The marines, air force, and navy were all volunteers in WW2. The marines were front line. The army had a lot of volunteers, too, like the paratroopers.
The US military is all volunteer today, and is very parsimonious with the lives of servicemen.
Exactly. Drones only look powerful because they're a recent innovation (in terms of military procurement timelines).
They're being shot down with air defense missiles designed for helicopters, because that's the cheapest option we currently have.
Once RFPs, responses, and projects work their way to completion, everyone will have anti-drone air defense missiles that, while still expensive, will be better cost:capability calibrated.
The real difference that drone warfare seems to make is in persistence of ISR, which is why so much funding seems to be going into stealthy HALE platforms with stealthy networking and sensors (point to point and LPIR).
The correct lesson to take away from Ukraine seems to be that future battlefields will have key assets (tanks, ships, supply stores, HQs, etc) under threat to a greater depth behind front lines. And not because of a capability change (i.e. a drone can get there with a weapon), but because of a visibility change (a drone can loiter and identify the asset).
Creating a smoking hole in the ground at an arbitrary location is a capability most advanced militaries have had since the 1990s.
What's changed is the ability to find something valuable to place that hole on, at all times, anywhere, at a cost you can organically equip smaller units with.
Meanwhile, spotter drones are getting smaller and more stealthy. How do you detect, much less shoot down, a drone the size of a small bird or even an insect?
Ever C4 inside a grasshopper (as the grasshopper also need space to move), is going to be tiny.
Even if you made the grasshopper out of solid, but explosive plastic, a mini nuke would be far scarier.
I wonder, what the minimal size of a nuke is. I'm sure we have limits, due to materials, explosive force to cause the compression wave, etc, but I wonder the theoretical limited mini size.
I mean, what if an earwig could enter your ear, into your canal, then go boom, and turn your brain to mush?
Smallest nukes were phased out by all major nations because there is too much risk of them getting lost, falling into wrong hands, being used without authorisation, etc. Several 'big' nukes were already lost and never found
There's a minimum critical mass for fission weapons that means they are never going to be earwig-size [1]. Fusion weapons require a fission trigger so they are no smaller than the smallest fission weapon. The only earwig-size nuclear explosive that might theoretically exist is one based on antimatter, but with present and currently foreseeable technology that is the stuff of science fiction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass#Critical_mass_of... Note that explosive compression lowers the critical mass, but it soon requires more than one gram of high explosive to trim the fissile material budget by one gram, so minimal-size devices are still in the range of kilograms.
The most obvious use case for a grasshopper/earwig size explosive is as a self-assembling munition. Users dial in the critical mass necessary for destruction of the target and program the members of the munition group to identify, track, and assemble at the target's weak point, insuring that at least one of the explosive initiators (primers) makes it into the assembled munition and once their internal mesh network confirms that critical mass, primer, etc are in place, a detonation is initiated.
The individual units could travel a circuitous route to the actual target without raising much suspicion and once in the immediate vicinity they could be programmed to rapidly converge on the target.
That's how I see it. With self-assembling munitions you have less waste of resources, you can target individuals in a command structure or individual critical components of their military infrastructure and you could do it with things that could be made to be relatively inconspicuous so that an observer could see them as a normal part of the environment. Until they converge of course and if this happens fast enough it can be difficult for the targeted entity to unravel exactly how it all went down.
Futurist predictions tend to most often be wrong because they fail to account for easier / cheaper ways of obtaining the same effect. This seems like such a case.
Why are you self-assembling anything when you can park a remotely operated machine gun along someone's driving route?
This just provides another tool in the inventory. You're forcing the adversary to plan for strategies to mitigate attacks like this. Everyone already knows about remote-controlled machine guns and those who feel threatened by the prospect of having something like this used against them are actively working to mitigate the threat.
With a self-assembling munition you have a new, novel method of conducting an attack that literally forces an adversary to use a zero trust threat model 24 hours a day against every little thing that moves once the adversary understands how it happened.
When the grass can suddenly come alive with dormant, self-assembling munitions that have suddenly detected that a target on their list is in the vicinity then it adds another layer of complexity to force protection since both human and material assets could be targeted at any time from any direction by something like a bug-sized bot that may not even register in your consciousness until it is too late.
During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union had nuclear artillery shells for 155mm and 152mm howitzers, respectively -- those would have a yield of about 100 tons on the low end, up to 2 kilotons on the high end. Higher-caliber artillery pieces, like a 203mm piece, could have a shell on the order of 10 to 15 kilotons, roughly approaching the Hiroshima bomb's power.
The American W82 155mm nuclear artillery shell[0] weighed 43kg (95lb), was 860 mm (34 in) long, and had a yield of 2 kilotons -- equivalent to 500 full WW2 heavy bomber loads.
These shells (as well as bombs and warheads with similar yields, carried by planes and missiles, respectively) are called tactical nuclear weapons -- meant for use on the battlefield, to break up enemy formations. Their blast radius is relatively small. It was theorized that if the Cold War went hot and a conventional WW3 broke out, if the Soviet Union was pushing NATO forces back, then the Americans would authorize the use of tactical nuclear warheads. This would likely cause a spiral of escalation, up to a strategic nuclear exchange.
I think anti-drone drones are going to quickly move to being autonomous. No one's going to worry too much about "accidentally" taking down a simple drone and the threat of just one kamikaze drone getting through is too high to chance a delayed human reaction. Plus jamming or other measures will make direct control more difficult. An army will likely have a few circling "CAP" drones overhead at all times.
I think you need to think about drone swarms or herds. Not all of the drones need AI or the same level of AI. Some drones will support the costs of a higher level AI and others will have lower AI capabilities and refocus resources on other capacities like attack. Simple drones in volume may be used to overwhelm defenses.
I agree, the anti-drone aspect needs to be low-latency. But I actually expect that soon, most drones will come with some anti-drones aspects, and some will will be multi-purpuse, capable of launcing some anti ground ordenance. For that part, they may come with a manual mode, for a while longer.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted - this entire operation should cause a major rethink of military operations based on new technology.
The proximal goal of any weapons system or operation is to deliver live ordinance to the target, preferably at minimal risk to those doing the delivering.
From WWI to WWII, the progress seemed to be to deliver larger volumes of ordinance, with some increases in accuracy. Since then, it's been longer range and higher accuracy, to the point now that we often need only a pair of 'smart bombs' or JDAMs to take out a target that used to take multiple full bomber loads. With highly accurate targeting, we can even deliver non-explosive ordinance just to minimize collateral damage. Of course Javelins, Switchblades,etc. make it close to 1-shot-one-kill on tanks and other heavily armored vehicles that used to be tough to kill.
Following the trend further, drones and AI recognition technology seem likely to make this even more effective. I'm sure everyone has seen the Slaughterbots video [1], but much loser in technology is killing swarms of small bots specifically targeting enemy equipment, and the loitering switchblade is already here - just add some recognition, maybe it recognizes, operator confirms, and the drone tracks it for the optimal strike moment. Add the swarm then seeks and destroys other examples of the same vehicle.... Small self-contained flying ordinance delivery drones being disgorged from larger carrier drones or aircraft - already in design & testing stages. This IS all going to change and fast, and the smart militaries are taking a LOT of notes on this battle.
> I see this changing soon. We will soon have small cheap drones that will take down nearby spotter drones and the balance will change yet again.
That's hard to imagine. You can do the spotting job with a $400 consumer device. No piece of autonomous weapons delivery hardware in the modern world exists with a price tag less than 100x that amount. Drones are simply too cheap.
If there's a reasonable countermeasure, look to ECM (though frankly modern broadband wifi is remarkably resistant there too, given all the "jamming" present in modern coffee establishments!) and not drone killers.
What I've imagined for the past decade or so, are spotter drones that are about the same size as the drones they are design to shoot down. These spotter drones could be built much like WW1/WW2 aircraft, just much smaller, with top speeds between 50-200knots for the smaller versions.
As a weapon, they could carry weapons similar to submachineguns, shotguns or light marchine guns, depending on the size of the target. Add an AI of about the same level of sophistication as the "autopilots" in cars, and they should be able to identify and shoot down hostile drones relatively cost efficiently. Produced at scale, the smallest versions (designed to shoot down comercially available drones, for instance), would not have to cost all that much more than the drones they are designed to shoot down, if produced at scale.
I'm imagining at least 3-4 size categories, lets say.
1) Tiny, able to shoot down most quad copters. Top speed of 50-100knots. Price needs to be low enough to allow tens of thousands to be produced. Could potentially also double as anti-infantry weapons by strafing.
2) Small. Able to shoot down switchblade-sized drones. Top speed of maybe 200 knots. Can be produced in numbers of thousands.
3) Medium. Sutable to hunt small UAV's, such as Buyraktar. Top speed of several hundered knots, maybe just below Mach 1. Somewhat more expensive than the Buyraktar, but can also carry some of the same ordanance, like a tiny fighter-bomber.
4) Full-sized, possibly supersonic. Basically the same as the Loyal Wingman concept. Designed to counter other full-sized drones as well as manned aircraft.
Basically, the removal of a pilot, allows aircraft to span a wide range of sizes, and I would expect all sizes to be produced, as it is uneconomical to hunt quadcopters with full sized aircraft, while it is impossible to hunt supersonic aircraft with switchblade type aircraft.
In a way, this would be analogous to naval vessels, with different sizes serving different roles, from corvettes, MTB's and attacks subs, through frigates and cruisers, to WW2 style batlleships or carriers.
Now, for the AI researchers out there, imagine the careers that can be built around providing AI's for these vehicles. To see your own AI locked in a WW2 style dogfight with a similar drone from another country, in a real-time feed.....
Human drone pilots are cheap and reasonably easy to train. The "AI" that you need is the targeting and guidance system. If I can see any enemy drone on a camera, all I need to do is get a lock and fire.
The problem is that precision guided munitions are fairly expensive. Drones are cheap, but giving them any kind of offensive ability increases the cost significantly. A switchblade drone only costs about $6,000 and there still aren't swarms of thousands of them. Maybe once the economics enable massing hundreds of thousands of drones, autonomous control will become more reasonable.
> The problem is that precision guided munitions are fairly expensive. Drones are cheap, but giving them any kind of offensive ability increases the cost significantly. A switchblade drone only costs about $6,000 and there still aren't swarms of thousands of them. Maybe once the economics enable massing hundreds of thousands of drones, autonomous control will become more reasonable.
Exactly this. How many drones can you get for the price of 100 F35's?
If you get that many drones, you want to have drones that can attack both enemy land units AND enemy drones.
This is just silly and unrealistic. You have completely neglected detection and targeting issues. What types of sensors would be needed? What field of view do they have? How much power do they consume? How much does that sensor suite cost?
You haven't actually answered anything. Sure it's theoretically possible to build a large, fast UCAV with advanced sensors. But it will be nearly as expensive as current manned fighters, and still not very useful at countering small, low-altitude drones.
Which is why I (a few posts up) argued that several size categories of drones are needed.
To counter the the small, low altitude drones, I argue for similarly small drones to be used. To counter a drone that costs $500-$5000 to make, one should build drones that cost $1000-$10000 (possibly a bit more expensive when adjusting for R&D and military inefficiency). These will not carry more advanced sensors than what you see on a modern car, primarily a few optical cameras.
Since one can built A LOT of such small drones (10s or 100s of thousand, if needed), they can be spread out along a frontline. They would be carried in a manner similar to switchblade drones or mounted on vehicles, and take off when a threat is detected in the vicinity. A drone (or a small swarm) would search for the enemy drone using primarily optical (including IR), and try to shoot it down WW1/WW2 style.
And, like manned fighters, they would not be restricted to purely defensive missions. These drones could also double as recon craft, do strafing against infantry or even carry small grenades or bombs.
Since these would be recoverable, it would be fine to use a $10000 drone to shoot down a $500 drone, instead of using a stinger missile.
Larger drones would be available in smaller numbers, but those would primarily be used vs larger drones and manned aircraft.
Optical and IR sensors are not adequate for the stated mission. The prices you stated are completely disconnected from reality. You're just making things up.
A Switchblade 300 costs $6000. Swap out the payload with a small gun as well as a better computer (to enable better AI).
Maybe make the wings a bit wider, to improve manouverability. The price should still be below $10000.
Provide one such unit per 20 infantrymen + a couple of units per artillery squad and other units that are particularily vulnerable, logistic vehicles, etc.
Russia said they're shooting down drones with laser weapons, which sounds kinda reasonable. Probably fairly quick to aim, and definitely very quick to deliver.
Colourless, instant laser is the Star Wars we deserve, not the Star Wars we wanted, though ;)
>Russia said they're shooting down drones with laser weapons
I tend not to believe this. In part because Russia is very comfortable with shameless lying, and in part because it's really hard to deliver enough energy with a laser to a moving target. That said, non-moving (hovering) drones would be very reasonable targets as you can illuminate for as long as it takes for an important part to melt.
BTW my favorite anti-drone tech are trained hunting hawks. Hawks are a weapon for a more...civilized time.
Weaponised hawks have many interesting properties. They don't emit radio waves, and not much infrared either, so are hard to locate and shoot down. They can loiter forever (well, limited by hawk's lifetime, whatever it is), are self-refueling, and, to some extent, also self-repairing and self-replicating.
I think the goal with this method could be to train the hawk to carry an object such as a net or dangling string that the hawk would drop into the propellers of the drone, thus disabling it.
One could also use a hawk as a platform to carry electronic means of disabling drones.
The problem with hawks and drones becomes one of teaching the hawk to recognize enemy drones since it is likely in future wars that all sides will use drones and that it may be difficult to identify who controls a particular drone without monitoring that drone to map its communication path.
It's cool to use a bird that instinctively hunts other birds but we need to understand that hawks are not hard to see and to eliminate so their utility on a battlefield is limited.
I upvoted you because you may be right. I don't really know if people are IRL training hawks for this purpose, but if they did maybe they could give them protection of some kind, like articulated metal "shoes". It's also possible that smaller drones' propellers just don't have the kinetic energy to damage a bird in any meaningful way. It's all speculation, but I still think it would be very cool.
The problem with laser weapons so far is that they have insufficient power and are fighting the inverse square law.
Heating to create sufficient damage takes multiple seconds in good conditions. They work great in field tests where the operator can keep the target aligned exactly for a while and the target operator isn't evading. Add mirror finishes, thermal shielding, automated detection and evasion, much of which is cheap, and that'll stay a demonstrator weapon for a long time.
I don't think anyone is worried about the claimed Russian lasers against drones (particularly since Russia tends to tout a lot of vaporware), but I'd be worried that since Russia is already happy to systematically commit and even advertise their war crimes, that they'd start using the lasers as blinding weapons despite the fact that it is also a war crime.
Laser weapons of this sort aren't manually operated. They automatically track the target while they are firing, and they are normally pulsed to allow higher instantaneous powers, which make mirror finishes useless (the pulsed power is high enough that the amount of power that isn't reflected is enough to heat the surface of the mirror finish enough to make it non-reflective). The target also becomes very bright while it's being engaged, making it much easier for electro-optical systems to track.
The multiple seconds to kill is dependent on the laser power, the higher the power, the longer it takes to kill. The LaWS tested by the USN was 30kW or so, but they're looking at lasers with 10x the power for operational use. So the 2 seconds to down a UAV turns into 2/10s of a second, which is probably beyond reaction time, even for automated detection and evasion.
Yes, I understand that much or all of the tracking is automated. That does not negate all countermeasures. If the laser is powerful enough to punch through a mirrored surface, then one can use a sacrificial surface, a scattering surface, heat shield, emission of a scattering fog/smoke/chaff, etc., etc., etc.
I've watched the successful tests, and I'm not impressed. sure, it can shoot down a black-painted sitting duck with no countermeasures in several seconds. Merely starting to do twisting and spinning aerobatic maneuvers would have foiled it by constantly presenting new surfaces such that no tracking would work (can't make the laser point at the same spot from the other side).
The point is that until lasers get to insane powers not yet available in any portable form, it is not at all a slam-dunk. This stuff was funded decades ago for the "Star Wars" anti-missile initiative. It could use all power in fixed positions on the ground, so as big, heavy, and sprawling as you want, and the target missiles couldn't significantly evade, and it was an utter failure. Sure, we've since seen orders of magnitude increases in strength, but we're still orders of magnitude away.
Scattering surfaces aren't going to be any better against lasers, they'll heat up and become black bodies relatively quickly. Neither will emitting smoke or fog, because we're talking about airborne items, and they won't stay surrounding the aircraft very well. Sacrificial or heat shields will help, but that's extra weight that reduces your payload, and for quadcopter type drones, you can't reasonably add those to your props.
SDI wasn't successful, no, because they didn't have the capability to make high power electrical lasers worth a damn back then. But the semi-operational AN/SEQ-1 was 30kW a decade ago, and technology has improved since then. Again, we're looking at an order of magnitude more power. And I don't think we need many more orders of magnitude to get down below the threshold of : can't do anything in the time you've got.
Lasers also suffer from easily deployed countermeasures. Anyone who has been passed by some truck rolling coal can attest to how trivial it is for anything running a combustion engine to be modified to foul the air around it to the point of zero visibility. In addition, flying projectiles like missiles, mortars, or ICBMs can simply spin such that the laser has to heat the whole circumference of the body rather than a single point in order to be effective, which they may be doing anyway for stabilization
Mostly the use of laser blinders is uncommon because a laser which can blind a person will also happily do that to you from a reflective surface or down a military sighting optic.
Just shoot some stringy gel into the propellers. I'm sure a material exists that can both tangle the propellers or block the inlets of jets which would make it effective against a variety of types.
You have to get the stringy gel to the propellers, which is most of the cost of a MANPAD. The warhead doesn't cost all that much, whether it's explosive or silly string.
>Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in. "What Lepage gun?" Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity. "The new three hundred and forty four millimeter Lepage glue gun," Yossarian answered. "It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air."
Thanks for this. Catch-22 is my all-time favorite war related book. There is so much in there to take in and enjoy. Absurdity, off-color humor, puns, social commentary. Heller was magnificent in this book.
I purposely left that detail out because I dont know. They have been hitting those junk Orlans which is what I meant. I guess you can bring down the mini drones with a rifle? Like OP says there are a bunch of radio jamming guns around which probably confuse DJI.
This post says they downed 65 "targets" in one day so I'm guessing they're the cheap drones. https://t.me/LastBP/9398
> No piece of autonomous weapons delivery hardware in the modern world exists with a price tag less than 100x that amount. Drones are simply too cheap.
for quadrocopters, you want a hunter-killer drone with some kind of a net or tape to jam the propeller.
for plane-like drones... guess something similar. gliders may be super hard to spot and will still be somewhat effective without a working propeller, so tough luck.
Net or tape? In a war? Why not suicide your drone into the target drone? If you want something reusable or longer range, a shotgun-like apparatus.
Gliders will be easier to spot because they won't be able to actively navigate through trees for cover the way the way a more nimble, powered drone could.
A suicidal drone is a guided missile. There are many options on the market for these already. They’re universally way more expensive than necessary to combat a cheap swarm. You want something that won’t bankrupt you while you’re mounting a defense.
I remember reading a concern of the US Navy that one of the few means of successfully attacking a (carrier group?) would be a drone swarm. Something where they're overwhelmed with just the sheer number of drones attacking.
This will continue to be true for at least the next few decades. There is no technology on the horizon that would allow for dramatic cost reductions in long-range drones with good sensors.
I would say the only defense againts small, cheap drones, are small cheap anti-drones. These would be able to shoot down the cheap drones at the cost of a few bullets and a gallon of fuel.
Drones are hard to detect due to small IR signature, and they are almost invisible to radar due the use of plastics and composites. So how will these small, cheap anti-drones detect them? How will they have enough fuel and maneuverability to successfully engage them? How will they shoot bullets (I assume you're saying they'll carry machine guns or cannon.)
I think once the detection methodology is worked out for ground forces (which aren't as constrained by power/weight issues as airborne systems), we'll see directed energy weapons (probably microwave) used to effectively fry these types of low performance drones. Whether the detection problem is solved is an entirely different issue than the weapons used once detected.
> So how will these small, cheap anti-drones detect them?
For the smaller ones, optics, combined with being produced in large numbers, to basically cover an area. Basically like a Tesla detects pedestrians. Additional information can be transmitted by radio from other drones (many of which can be ground based) as well as traditional sources, such as awacs or f35/f22.
Larger ones would operate more like traditional aircraft with more internal sensors, including radar.
> How will they have enough fuel and maneuverability to successfully engage them?
Just assume that the anti-drone starts out basically as a copy of the drone it is supposed to kill. Then add 50% cost to make it a bit lighter an more manouverable. Their range doesn't need to be huge, they can be scrambled when needed. (Bigger ones can do in air refueling). A few can fly CAP missions at a time, during low threat situations.
> I think once the detection methodology is worked out for ground forces (which aren't as constrained by power/weight issues as airborne systems), we'll see directed energy weapons (probably microwave) used to effectively fry these types of low performance drones. Whether the detection problem is solved is an entirely different issue than the weapons used once detected.
Maybe some day energy weapons will be effective enough and cheap enough to distributed like that. Then we will see what countermeasures are effecient. (Mirrors, faraday cages, etc). For counter-drones, I think they should be within what can be done with tech available today. They simply have not been built due to lack of need.
But concepts that would fall under this class are under development. One relativly large example is Baykar Bayraktar Kızılelma:
LOL, you lost me when you mentioned Tesla detecting pedestrians.
Optically detecting something small at range is very difficult. When cued by other devices (radar/IR) EO systems like what the F-14 used to carry can zoom in and identify a target at range. With drones you won't have that cueing. Their IR/radar signature is generally too small unless you're talking Predator size UAVs.
And the more you add to a drone, the heavier and more expensive it becomes. Radios, advanced sensors, etc etc.
Why would I assume an anti-drone would look anything similar to a "normal" drone? Does a SAM (surface to air missile) look anything like a fighter aircraft it counters? Does an anti-tank mine resemble an armored vehicle?
And you can't just hand wave and say add 50% to the cost to make it lighter and more maneuverable. That's just ridiculous. Modern aeronautics is a mature industry, and just throwing money at something doesn't magically improve flight characteristics.
And range? Just hand-waving here as well. Range (what the experts refer to as persistence) is hugely important. If you don't have persistence, then to "scramble" as you so eloquently put it require high performance, which leads to higher weight and higher cost, as well as less maneuverability.
And in-flight refueling? That's only been demonstrated on very high performance USN UAVs, and those are basically jets, not drones. The idea that these (or any drone) is even close to flying CAP missions is unrealistic.
Currently there is no technology to build what you describe. None.
And your link to the Kızılelma just illustrates how far away this is. This is a stealthy/low RCS supersonic aircraft with an AESA radar. This is what aerospace engineers call "not-cheap."
And I wouldn't dignify the Russian "attempt" as more than someone strapping a shotgun to a hobbyist RC plane and calling it a weapon. It suffers from all the critiques I've previously outlined.
I think you are missing one key point: numbers. Let's say a drone costs $10000, and you buy as many of them as it costs to buy+operate 100 F35. How many do you get?
The key is that you have tens of thousands of these things (more of the smaller ones), and distribute them along the front, near the infantry. Maybe instead of a hand mortar or a machine gun, some platoons would carry a couple of these. Or vehicles of all sizes could have a couple of these mounted simmilar to APS's, kind of like how naval vessels carry helicopters.
Then you make sure that the detection capability is networked between the drones, as well as with other detection systems (land based, awacs + fighters).
This way, detection is not done at rangs of 100's of km, but of 100's of meters, in the same ballpark that a car detects objects.
Also, for the same reason, this means that you don't need a combat radius of 1000km. A combat radus of 100km may be enough.
If you need to deploy them further away, one could have setups where they are deployed as munitions from other aircraft (anything from a B52 to a large UAV).
>And you can't just hand wave and say add 50% to the cost to make it lighter and more maneuverable. That's just ridiculous. Modern aeronautics is a mature industry, and just throwing money at something doesn't magically improve flight characteristics.
A lot present days UAV's are made witha a lot of focus on cost. That's how they (some of them) cost only 10% of a stinger missile. That's also why you don't want to use a stinger to shoot down a cheap UAV.
But, obviously, these cheap drones have a lot of tradeoffs to keep the cost down. Maybe they use aluminium instead of magnesium or composites as materials? Maybe the electronics is a couple of generations older, and both a bit heavy and unsophisticated? Maybe engines are off-the-shelf versions, and not state of the art.
Except for the most advanced drones, I would expect it to be possible to pay some extra $ to get somewhat higher performance, such as 10% more speed, 5% faster turn/roll rate, 20% more advanced electronics, with enough weight saved, to be able to add a gun and maybe a better radio.
Also, keep in mind that many potential enemies are not nearly as advanced technologially as the USA. Even compared to Russia, the USA has better tech in most fields, and compared to North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and many other potential enemies that may deploy large number of drones, USA may definitely deploy more advanced tech. With China it may be harder/more symmetrical.
> And in-flight refueling?
UAV's would exist at different sizes (I described this in another sub-thread). Only the ones that are basically the size of a fighter plane would have in-flight refueling, like the Kızılelma.
In turns of numbers, 90-99% of the UAV's I imagine in this model, would be closer to that Russian one in size, or smaller, except that the software would be mature. These are the ones that would be able to counter enemy UAV's that are too cheap to be be worth a stinger missile.
You're missing the point. A drone like you're describing, (the Kızılelma) is not a $10k in any world. That's going to be $5-$10M each. The AESA radar alone will be $500K. So you can't just make up a fantasy price and say $10k buys you an effective drone.
The communication network you're describing doesn't exist, and would be highly susceptible to jamming, spoofing or hacking if it did. You can't hand wave away the current state of technology because the idea sounds cool. That's just sci-fi you're describing, not realistic technology.
Basically what you're describing is something that's not currently available, nor possible in the near future. It's the same story that comes out from HN about how fighter jets are obsolete because a drone can fly more Gs than a manned aircraft.
Ok, so I suppose I only stated the premise fully in the other thread, which is my fault. My premise is that 3-4 types of drones are needed, of different sizes.
I'll quote it here for convenience:
> I'm imagining at least 3-4 size categories, lets say. 1) Tiny, able to shoot down most quad copters. Top speed of 50-100knots. Price needs to be low enough to allow tens of thousands to be produced. Could potentially also double as anti-infantry weapons by strafing. 2) Small. Able to shoot down switchblade-sized drones. Top speed of maybe 200 knots. Can be produced in numbers of thousands. 3) Medium. Sutable to hunt small UAV's, such as Buyraktar. Top speed of several hundered knots, maybe just below Mach 1. Somewhat more expensive than the Buyraktar, but can also carry some of the same ordanance, like a tiny fighter-bomber. 4) Full-sized, possibly supersonic. Basically the same as the Loyal Wingman concept. Designed to counter other full-sized drones as well as manned aircraft.
Also, the hypothesis is that drones will take up a significant share of the military budget. Let say you start with ~$20 billion, what will it buy. Thats $5 billion for each size category when split evenly, one could get something like
Size 1 (price = $10000) : 500000
Size 2 (price = $100000) : 50000
Size 3 (price = $1000000) : 5000
Size 4 (price = $10000000) : 500
(EDIT: I realize that these categories are a bit smaller at the higher end than in the other thread, anyway it is primarily an order-of-magnutude estimate.)
Total number 555500 drones. Since these vary in size from roughly a quadcopter to close to a manned fighter, they provide capabilities of airial enemies of all sizes (unless the enemy is deploying insect-sized drones). It also comes with very significant air-to-ground capability and (if properly networked) extremely good sensory capability, even if the smaller 2 categories only have basic optics + perhaps some IR.
Even if you deploy only 10% of this, you can have a few of size 1 at every km of the front. (Also, by the time $20B has been spent, the first iterations may already have become obsolete.)
> The communication network you're describing doesn't exist,
We may not be fully there, but this is already a huge trend, and basically already implemented for the higher end of the air force (F35). Some protocols are already ready, some are under development.
Ideally, the drone capability described above should be co-developed with JADC2:
> Basically what you're describing is something that's not currently available, nor possible in the near future.
I suppose we just plain diagree here. I think the basic technology for this kind of capability is already there, but still evolving quickly. In other words, this arms race has already started.
In fact, with the current exposure tech like this is already getting, I would be surprised if funds and effort is not already being directed to this as we speak.
> It's the same story that comes out from HN about how fighter jets are obsolete because a drone can fly more Gs than a manned aircraft.
Not just HN. Manned fighters are not obsolete. But more and more people in the industry seems to think that Gen 6 will be dominated by unmanned aircraft. For instance, this is part of the marketing for Kızılelma.
This is also not new. F35 was designed to be able to function as a kind of a drone host, and even with the capability to be converted to an UCAV*. This is also much of the reason why it was provided with as much compute- and sensory power as it was. In other words, even during the early design phase of the F35, enough people were predicting the end of manned fighters within the F35's lifetime for that to be included in the design.
* This is from my memory from when my country selected the F35 as our fighter, I'm not sure I have more recent sources on hand.
I don't have time to keep getting into the fantasy math here for your drones, but just wanted to correct you about the F-35. It was never part of its design to either be a drone host or to be optionally manned. And saying it has the capability to be converted to a UCAV doesn't mean much; the USAF has done that for fighters starting with the Century series up to the F-16.
In fact, this capability was baked in from early development through the MADL data link, sensor fusion capability and powerful processing power (at the time).
Here is an excerpt from the article "Lockheed Martin has not yet officially confirmed the development of a pilotless or optionally piloted version of the F-35, but it is my understanding that they have had plans for an unmanned variant for some time now, with F-35 programmers having long ago confirmed to me that the fly-by-wire functionality was designed-in as inherent feature for later exploitation in the design of an unmanned model. I would suggest that if the
Committee is not aware of such options, they be thoroughly investigated with Lockheed with a view toward exploring potential technical problems such as the lag time between commands and their execution, and the impact that removing the human from the F-35 design would have on flight characteristics. If, on the other hand, future unmanned operation has already been factored into the cost-benefit analysis by Defence decision makers and its investment partners, I would suggest that this logic be made clear to the public, especially given that it is not the only aircraft manufacturer converting its fighters for
unmanned operation:"
So, I suppose it was unoffical, but the same information seemed to be given to Norwegian decision makers when we joined the programme in 2008, and there was also rumors in 2006:
Laser is probably good for defending high priority targets, especially from fast flying (including hypersonic) missiles and drones.
For defence against swarms of quadcopters with hand grenades, flying low through forests, cities or trenches, I think anti-drones are the only way.
Anti-drones can also intercept enemy drones over neutral or enemy territory, through valleys, or other places a laser cannot reach. Furthermore, while a mirrored surface can protect against lasers, it will not defend very well vs bullets.
Anti-drones can also double as drones (like fighter bombers), ie just have a manouverable drone that has some kind of forward-pointing gun in addition to whatever ordenance, spy camers, etc it might carry.
Actually... Anduril (Palmer's company) actually has one that's called the Anvil that does exactly what you're talking about: https://www.anduril.com/hardware/anvil/
The fortunes of the front lines in WW1 varied directly with which side had air superiority at the moment. Not because the airplanes were effective at ground attack, but because of aerial reconnaissance. The defeat of Germany came because the Luftwaffe was defeated.
> The defeat of Germany came because the Luftwaffe was defeated.
It was a lot more complex than that. Lots of factors were in play, including introduction of combined-arms warfare that included aircraft but more significantly the tank. More generally, see the Hundred Days Offensive [0]
I'll stand by what I wrote, because although the airplanes of the day were ineffective at attack, they were extremely effective at reconnaissance which showed where to put your firepower.
My understanding of the WW1 tank was it showed promise but was not decisive.
Air superiority during WW1 had an almost negligible effect on the outcome of the war. Can you name a single battle where aerial reconnaissance was decisive, or provided more value than artillery, machine guns or proto-tanks?
Even in WW2 where air power was far more powerful, it's still debated how much it contributed to success.
> Even in WW2 where air power was far more powerful, it's still debated how much it contributed to success.
The allies certainly had tactical air superiority in the last few months of the war, which hammered German Armour, but didn't in itself wipe out dogged resistance. The Luftwaffe was pretty scarce over the battlefields because it was occupied trying to stop the bomber offensive over Germany itself. The bombers themselves didn't really begin to properly dismantle German manufacturing until 1945. So air power did contribute to success in the end, but not as anticipated before the war.
Air power did little to destroy German industry, that is correct. But, and this is a big but, it was very successful at denying the German military gasoline, without which its military machine was crippled.
The Air Force was very, very effective at supporting the ground troops. Whenever the soldiers got stuck on the ground, they'd call in the P-51s to wreck whatever was blocking them. The tanks and Wiederstanden were highly vulnerable to air attack, as well as getting their supply lines cut off.
The Kriegsmarine's super battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz were destroyed by air attack. Japan's super battleship Yamato suffered a similar fate.
Germany ran out of gas because it didn't have a domestic source, and couldn't seize it in the Middle East, nor in the Caucasus region.
The Army Air Corps was decent at interdiction missions (trains etc.) and hunting tanks when given free reign; but they were tied to escort missions for far too long. Considering how much money and manpower was invested in the 8th AF, the returns were marginal. German industry was accelerating production until the very end of the war, and proved very resilient to strategic bombing.
The Bismarck, Tirpitz etc were all a waste of resources and never did much to influence the war other than to tie down the Home Fleet. The sinking of the Yamato and its sister ship Musahi were non-consequential to the outcome of the war.
Germany's oil supply came largely from Ploiești which was destroyed by Allied bombing. The lack of gasoline, particularly high octane gas, crippled the Luftwaffe. High octane gas, in plentiful supply, led to Allied fighters having a huge performance advantage over the Luftwaffe fighters.
The battleships did not influence the war because of air power. Without airplanes, the battleships would have carpeted the Atlantic seabed with the convoys that kept Britain in the war. The Yamato also became ineffective because of air power.
My grand-uncle flew in B-24s on the Ploesti raid (Operation Tidal Wave). It had no effect on Axis petroleum production. It's considered one of the biggest failures in WW2 airpower.
Airpower had minimal affect on stopping the Kriegsmarine from wreaking havoc in the Atlantic. The German fleet was too weak, in fact the sacrifice of the Hood led to the demise of the Bismarck. If it wasn't a torpedo from a Swordfish jamming the rudder, the rest of the Home Fleet would have crushed it eventually. The Graf Spee fared no better in the South Atlantic.
The Yamato (and Musahi) were part of a mistaken Mahanian strategy for a single decisive battle (akin to Tsushima) that would settle the entire Pacific campaign. What really one the war in the Pacific was the USN submarine fleet which put a stranglehold on Japan.
> Airpower had minimal affect on stopping the Kriegsmarine from wreaking havoc in the Atlantic.
This seriously underestimates it. Airplanes were effectively used to locate and track U-Boots and other ships, vectoring in a destroyer to sink them. Airplanes located and tracked the Bismarck, airplanes crippled it so it could not maneuver, and then the British navy pounded it into oblivion. Without Allied airplanes, the Bismarck could have sailed into any convoy and sunk it all with near impunity.
I.e. with aircraft, the Kriegsmarine could not hide. Neither could the Tirpitz.
The US wrecked Japan's fleet at Midway, all done with air power. Aircraft did a lot of the sinkings in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
It's discussed in detail in the two volume set "Winged Mars" by Cuneo. The crux is being able to see where the enemy was weak, and you could deny the enemy seeing where you were strong. That's what the focus (pun intended) of the air war in WW1 was all about.
> Even in WW2
Not in the books I read about WW2. See the battle of Pearl Harbor, Midway, etc. Air power ended the U-Boot threat. The Battle of the Bulge was over for the Wehrmacht the moment the weather cleared and the Air Force could fly. The destruction of the German oil fields was decisive for the Allied victory. See the Battle of Britain - Hitler abandoned plans to invade Britain, knowing he could not do so without air supremacy. Eisenhower knew that D-Day would not work unless the Luftwaffe was suppressed. Air power ended Rommel's campaign in Africa (cut off the Afrika Korp's supplies).
Pearl Harbor was a temporary tactical success, but a strategic failure. The IJN failed to destroy the fuel storage at Pearl, or to block the harbor. They also failed to destroy much of the maintenance and repair facilities.
Midway would have been an abject failure for the USN if it weren't for the codebreakers. The B-17s at Midway and most of the other aircraft were pretty useless in the battle itself. This was one of the closest naval engagements in the war, and the US was lucky to come away with the victory. But in the end, the defeat of the Kido Butai wasn't a necessary requirement for defeating Japan.
The Battle of the Atlantic was also more dependent upon code breaking than aircraft for success. Combined with the convoy system, the U-boats effect peaked in 1942. After that it was all downhill. Air power in the form of B-24s and escort carriers helped, but were not instrumental.
And the Battle of Britain, there was no chance Germany could ever successfully invade the British Isle. They simply didn't have the Navy to cross the channel.
Air power helped in many campaigns, but was not instrumental in the outcome of the war.
> They simply didn't have the Navy to cross the channel.
The plan was to crush the RAF, which would then have made it easy for the Luftwaffe to prevent the Royal Navy from stopping them from crossing. Ships without air cover are nothing but big, fat, juicy targets, which was proven time and again in WW2.
For another example, a single Stuka sank a Russian cruiser in WW2.
The objective of the attack on Pearl Harbor was to destroy the aircraft carriers, not the battleships. The attack was a failure because the carriers were not there. Midway was the next attempt to destroy the US aircraft carriers. Instead, it destroyed Japan's carriers, and that was the end of Japan's naval ambitions.
B-17s were never designed to attack ships. Frankly, I have no idea why they were at Midway. Maybe long range reconnaissance.
I suspect that kind of thing is prohibited by some secret convention among all more or less significant powers. otherwise, the opening act of this very war could've been a hundred cruise missiles wiping out the Kyiv's elites
there is some Ukrainian city where the Russians had attempted to kill the mayor. the missile had struck the exact part of the building where his office was located. the mayor had survived because he overslept
Right now we're using drones like we used early WW1 aircraft. As spotters for long range weapons and very occasionally as direct bombers. We haven't yet developed drones that shoot down other drones cheaply. So we can spot enemy formations, ships, tanks etc. without any cost effective way to stop the small spotter drones.
I see this changing soon. We will soon have small cheap drones that will take down nearby spotter drones and the balance will change yet again.
So don't throw away old tactics and equipment just yet. There's a gap where we have no reasonable way to stop drones that will soon be addressed.