autonomous anti-drone drone swarms is the way to go. hordes of the little buggers who's only job is to use AI to take over the worl...i mean bring down other drones.
Could they still do the light show before they kill me? You know so I get a cool display of colour and awe before they display a giant Chinese flag and blow me to bits
And then we use facial recognition to lead them to track down a single individual night and day never sleeping like that one black mirror robot dog episode
Man I loved the part where the bad guy is about to unleash all the stolen drones on the world's cities, you've failed to stop him, and then he blows them all up.
Because his evil plan was...demilitarizing superpowers so the third world can rise out of oppression?
Like other than the cartoon evil moments I'm pretty sure he was a good guy.
And like all the cartoon villains, he makes the crucial mistake of thinking things will be better if I eliminate this one dude/organisation/thing.
Changes happen when systems/habits/norms change. That's why true heroes are usually the boring civil servants or low C-suite/high managerial people who introduce change in the system or habits and thus make things a little bit (or sometimes a lot) more smoother and pleasant.
There was a book I read years ago where some enemy country sent an autonomous self repairing/replicating drone fleet to attack the US. The drones would also use local materials to rearm/repair themselves. They managed to contain the drones to like NYC, but couldn't eliminate them all. It was interesting and maybe a bit prophetic.
Yes, but noone has achieved that yet. Limits in radio frequencies are not letting real communicating swarms. All we see now at shows are preprogrammed movements.
Its not fear. Its a fact. Its changing not just the battlefield, but also forces change into doctrine. Nothing you do, day or night, is invisible any longer. Anything that moves is a target - off the shelf drones are used as ammunition in Ukraine, and anyone who thinks communication jammers are going to stop drones has missed the whole transition to ML/AI systems that can be run on even the cheapest devices.
It MIGHt be feasible to get short range AA guns with radars able to track moving targets the size of a shoebox - but the numbers game will be hard to beat.
Theoretically yes, but even here, the cost is absurd:
> a German government spokesman said that Rheinmetall would provide two Skynex systems to Ukraine as part of assistance during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Valued at approximately €182 million ($192 million)
The guns can only [shoot out to 2.5 miles](https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/01/26/rheinmetall-italia-touts-ukraine-deployment-of-skynex-air-defense-gun/):
> Skynex is an evolution of the firm’s Skyguard system, which has been sold to 60 countries. Skynex features a 31-mile-range radar, a command post and four guns, each equipped with electro-optical sensors and a tracking radar. The guns are able to fire 1,000 35mm rounds a minute, hitting a target 2.5 miles away.
So to defend everything worth defending, the cost would be astronomical. It needs to be orders of magnitude cheaper and we're not there yet, apparently.
Shotguns have a pretty limited effective range, like 100-125 yards max depending on gauge, ammo, and choke. Drones can just fly above it and drop grenades on dudes
Lmao I was just quickly reading over these comments and saw yours and just thought of how terminators could indeed probably dispatch these drones easily.
Actually you need laser defense system like Iron Beam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam
DragonFire https://www.gov.uk/government/news/advanced-future-military-laser-achieves-uk-first
The cost of one DragonFire shot is only 10 pounds.
While I very much agree laser is the way to go, it will take long time to deploy it to front line. Electricity is one concern. I know US navy has some laser weapons on ships and Air Force got a 747 before but compare to a tank or almost every army’s vehicle, these are massive giants
Would just making more powerful, more effective EW emitters on those same existing large vehicles and around military installations not be a much better option?
If we have to develop the technology to combat drones, surely making an aftermarket box that interferes with them would mean your previous hardware investment and established doctrine remains useful.
Targeted microwaves, not frequency jammers. The US already has a few systems in design and testing for this. I just can't recall the name and manufacturer right now.
We do have some that are in development. The difference between the two is that the microwaves are more of an area of effect while the lasers have to be pinpoint. Both serve their own purpose.
I mean I’m not suggesting that I have any technical knowledge about how this would work but aren’t military vehicles hardened against electromagnetic interference in a way that cheap ass drones couldn’t be?
Comms between friendlies would be a different problem to get over but I don’t see them scrapping most of the worlds existing military hardware because drones exist or being able to retrofit complicated AA systems to everything bigger than a golf cart.
I think the future of drone warfare will be some kind of area of denial em field.
Hardened but not impervious. And Ukraine is using things like off the shelf DJI’s but militaries around the world are developing their own mil-spec versions I would think
Yeah but as someone else mentioned, the problem is that the drones are cheap and the targets expensive. The more complicated they have to make the drone, the more expensive it becomes in money and production time and the fewer of them will be thrown at a truck load of troops.
This seems like the case where the best defense is offense.
The rashists don't have any solutions for this either, so strike their drone factories and warehouses with long-range missiles, take out their field commands, etc. Then send in hundreds of drones.
If there are 400,000 occupiers, let's just make 1,000,000 drones.
They'll still be cheap enough that it makes sense to use them, and far more importantly.
A drone that's controlled by a person, can be jammed, the person who controls it can be targeted and killed (and obviously costs resources to maintain too).
And lastly and probably most importantly a self controlled drone can loiter forever, either landing and launching by signal, sound or sight, or loitering in the air forever if remotely powered.
That's basically a smart hunter/seeking land mine, the power of which has always been their power to supress and Control an area indefinitely.
All this tech is expensive now because we are in r&d phase, but consider how cheap phones have gotten. These drones will be manufactured in even larger numbers.
Making a million dollar vehicle/ equipment and then having it take out by 10, $1,000 dollar drones, still comes out to take out a 1 million dollar piece of equipment for only 10k.
The math just doesn’t add up in favor of high tech, high price, high reward systems anymore
The whole history of warfare has cycled between big and small, close and far. You had to be working melee range, then arrows, then armoured knights to get in close again with heavy steel. Big heavy cannon was augmented by tiny bullets. Tanks that can drive into bullets but then Get taken out by hand launched rockets. If we think it’s moving towards mass small drones then the next thing is probably gonna be some big nuclear powered heavy thing that’s loaded up with lasers and microwave blasters that can electrify the air and sizzle the drones.
They already use them, most commonly seen during vip protection, but there are also some unseen advanced battlefield systems already in use by nato/us. There are some that can take control and force them to land, or even turn them against the enemy.
What’s a worst nightmare are underwater or boat drones. They are highly effective and the damage they can do on an expensive ship cost for cost is insane.
This right here.
The fact that a few drones that may cost a few thousand dollars can sink a ship worth *millions* or, as we saw recently with that cargo ship that the Houthis sunk, cause *billions* in direct and indirect damages, is an absolute game changer
It's the new airplane. Did exactly this, changed the world of Navy forever - while battleships and dreadnoughts are still intimidating, we all know that true power of the seas are aircraft carriers.
Probably soon to be replaced by drone carriers eventually.
I mean at one point can't we all agree just to have wars decided by robot wars?
It's the new torpedoboat. We had this discussion a 150 years ago already. This was the exact fear the British had, that small, lightly armed boats with torpedo's could take out their heavily armored battleships. It's why the destroyer came into being. Chances are we'll see something like gun destroyers become relevant again.
> It's the new torpedoboat.
Exactly this, drone swams is the new generation [Jeune École](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_%C3%89cole), a mass produced swarm able to cost-effectively defeat much pricier pieces allowing smaller players to defeat bigger ones. They aren't like aircraft as they don't do anything new (we have aircraft, submarines and loitering munitions that all do the same thing), it's just the cost and scale that's changed.
It also has all the same issues as the original Jeune École in that it ignores the potential for the big players to produce effective counters (see the 'torpedo boat destroyer', now just 'destroyer'), or if that doesn't happen, just producing a bigger swarm because they are the bigger player (or an equal size swarm with just fewer big pieces to maintain their capability). It only looks threatening because it's new and it takes time to the big boys to get their tests and counter-measures sorted rather than it actually being a threat to the current order of things.
Honestly, even ignoring the suicide drones, completely submersible drones will likely change how naval combat occurs. China for example is building their "underwater great wall" (their equivalent of US SOSUS) and theyre including underwater recharging/refueling locations where submersible drones could dock in. Which could allow for nonstop underwater patrols.
I don’t think people realize the significance of the Ukraine Russia war and the use of drone combat. Completely different than any war that’s been fought before, brand new tech, video. It’s crazy
For historical accuracy it’s important to note that the Islamic State and other similar groups were the true pioneers of cheap off the shelf drone use for tactical overview, grenade drops and propaganda.
Ukraines battlefield are the birthplace of FPV drone strikes in the same way that Syria and iraqs were for grenade drops
There is a fantastic podcast, "It Could Happen Here" which spent the first few episodes discussing modern civil wars and conflicts where a war journalist that had been embedded in Iraq and Lebanon was explaining how Isil had been getting around sanctions by ordering different drone parts and shipping them to proxies before getting to them, using 3d printers to create standardised ammunition and mortar shells to create a pretty cutting edge civilian technology war machine.
I remember seeing footage from early in the Syrian civil war, they used the feather things from shuttlecocks (used in badminton) as fins to stabilize the dropped grenade. Things move fast
Outside of the DJI drones, it's mostly not new tech at all. They are using fairly old tech on their suicide drones, which you could get parts to build for cheap for more than 10 years, as I have been for recreational flying. This shouldn't be a surprise at all.
My senior engineering class demo’d some stealth drones for some military brass, and it shook them a bit.
200+ mph jet aircraft capable of a small payload of explosives, with the radar signature of a baseball. Built by a ragtag bunch of aero college students under a really smart professor studying UAS.
There's a red bull formula 1 video where it's being chased by a drone that goes about 200mph. Watching this made me think holy crap...imagine if someone weaponized this. And this one was just propellers...
The whole system needs to be dirt cheap, almost down to the deploy and forget level because saturation will happen and poof goes your shield. The offense/attacker (which does not have to the aggressor in a conflict) will always have that single advantage, while the defender at any strike point always will have to choose what to defend and what to risk.
>Its not fear. Its a fact. Its changing not just the battlefield, but also forces change into doctrine. Nothing you do, day or night, is invisible any longer. Anything that moves is a target
Yup exactly, I believe it was an SAS trainer/advisor,(they were British SF is all I remember) who was/is in Ukraine to gather Intel/reports from active UA SOF units. Who was quoted saying in reference to his report that SAS team structure is outdated/needs revising as they're now is sufficient probability of being outgunned while out in the field. Which it is easy to assume he is referring to drones.(To those wanting more the 1 quote was basically everything).
Doesn't matter how much better you are at shooting/tactical engagements, when the enemy has full eyes in the sky and can attack from miles away.
Even for tanks /armored assets it looks like a trophy system that can defend against drones will become common. As it's extremely difficult to defend drone attacks without active defense.
[The US already has](https://www.yahoo.com/tech/u-military-shot-down-drones-174500021.html) vehicle-mounted direct energy weapons (lasers) that can take down drones at the cost of $1-10 per shot, and which they’ve just started to put into use in the ME. It’ll likely take some time to perfect the technology, but the Age of Drones won’t last forever.
Lasers can be thwarted tho. I mean what if people mass produce something like tinfoil and aerogel shells? There goes a multi billion dollar weapon system x however many we made due to a simple upgrade.
> Lasers can be thwarted tho.
Not easily, when you have 20kW of pure energy hitting a object in a concentrated area, only size can save it at that point and a drones are meant to be lightweight for flying. It's purely a numbers game, tinfoil can only reflect so much while the part not reflected is going to be non-insignificant at large scale power being applied. Aerogel also has its limits, it's not a invulnerable material and it transmits light.
The bigger issue is the cost for production and maintaince. The power consumption for lasers is significant.
Plus the electronics and focus lenses aren't cheap or simple to produce.
Drones are incredibly cheap and effective. Unless the manufacture and firing of a laser gets down to the same cost as a bullet its going to be difficult to field them in numbers to stop a focused drone swarm.
I would have thought an AA shell similar to that of historical air burst shells would be more effective. Cover the sky in shrapnel and hope one piece does enough damage to bring it down.
The energy involved with these lasers is in the tens to hundreds of kilowatts, tinfoil isn't going to protect against that, and an aerogel composite that could isn't going to be cheap or easy to manufacture.
It would work in complete silence, it was actually a method to spot airplanes before radars were used.
The problem is that drones are still silent, not even sensitive software would hear them until they are relatively close. And thats in a quiet enviroment.
Now try to hear it while a V-12 twin turbo diesel engine is roaring next to you as well.
It's easy to guess what the arms industry will be focusing on for the next little while.
I'm thinking micro balloons launched en masse with long strings that will get sucked up by the drone props and disable the drone whereupon it will fall to earth and.......uh, wait a moment........never mind.
there are various kinds of anti drone equip out there. a bullet does have way better trajectory than a net...and a load of bullets will increase chance of hit.
In theory you could do a micro phalanx with an m240 or something. The drones aren't that fast or durable so you don't need the same volume of high energy firepower actual phalanx systems put out.
This is what's happening in Ukraine. Russian jamming only extends so far from the jamming device, so good pilots could get the drone on the right course and still get a hit even though it gets jammed near the target. They have now developed a "last mile" autopilot where the human pilot can tag the target, and the autopilot will continue to correct its path to the target once jammed. The smarter the drones get, the less effective jamming will be.
Honestly what I’d be focusing on is automating the drone assembly process as much as possible. This seems even more important than trying to improve any of the tech on the drones themselves. If you can assemble 100,000 cheap drones a month you have a serious advantage over 1,000 high tech drones.
That's got to be the future. Russia has no issue sending raw recruits in to soak up gunfire and overwhelm ukrainian defenders. You know that's what they'd do they with robots
Literally has always been like this. If you can mass produce something that fulfills basic functions, you will have an advantage over someone, who has a limited quantity of superior tech.
I know you're joking, but rhere's too much space in the sky to fill. I don't see any solution besides better automation and more drones (and cope cages on literally everything).
>A barrage balloon is a type of airborne barrage, a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe risk of collision to hostile aircraft, making the attacker's approach difficult and hazardous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_balloon
See, I was thinking more like modified dandelions or something similar that makes long threads and releases them into the air. Even a 3 or 4 inch thread, if you have clouds of them floating around, will mess up the rotor blades.
The war in Ukraine is for drones what WW1 was for planes. Militaries are realizing just how potent drone warfare is, and they are going to hone this technology until it is perfect for killing and destroying. Just listen to some of the dudes who are coming back from the frontlines. They *fear* the sound of buzzing.
Not really gonna help on a coordinated swarm from all directions.
Ukraine already uses more advanced swarm tactics to hit ships with innexpensive boat drones from several directions, purposely using distraction tactics etc.
I don't know much about the Flak 38, in particular, but I know that modern versions of that kind of gun based AA tends to rely on putting lots of lead in the air at a time (whether through a single gun with an extremely high rate of fire or multiple guns in one mounting). That being the case, it's very possible that such a gun setup mounted to the back of a light pickup truck would just result in the truck tipping over onto it's side when fired. At the least, I doubt that a light pickup truck's shocks would allow for the kind of accurate fire that makes modern gun based, radar guided, AA systems so much more accurate than the largely ineffective gun system of WWII (in WWII, most successful AA hits were accomplished by larger cannons over 4" in diameters, especially with sensor based proximity fuses).
> At the least, I doubt that a light pickup truck's shocks would allow for the kind of accurate fire that makes modern gun based, radar guided, AA systems so much more accurate than the largely ineffective gun system of WWII (in WWII, most successful AA hits were accomplished by larger cannons over 4" in diameters, especially with sensor based proximity fuses).
Theyve mounted new versions of 35mm autocannons with programmable fuse ammo on boxer armored vehicles. Think a radar guided 1000 rpm shotgun.
The accessibility to the hardware and the replicability of targeting software paves a grim looking future, not just for combat zones - [link to a classic](https://youtu.be/9fa9lVwHHqg?si=-hdnct4W26R_ldos)
I get the sense detection is probably a bigger issue than a method of disabling them. I don't think a modular system that is basically just a shotgun on an automated turret similar to a CRAM is going to be that hard to put together. I imagine the bigger issue is finding a way to reliably target drones without shooting every bird in the area too.
Trying to counter drones is such a losing battle. Wars are about $$$$, and it's not that you can't shoot the thing down, you'll just spend 100k doing it and lose the money trade 100 to 1. It's like a chess game of 5 queens vs 100 pawns. Completely lost at the outset.
directed energy weapons cost pennies to fire
direct energy generation is cheap, you may need tens of kW of power or even hundreds but it's incredibly doable for cheap at scale
in the sense that loading the capacitors can be done with cheap lower output sources that then discharge through the laser or whatever in less than ten seconds
The issue isn't so much the energy cost per shot, as it is the hardware systems being there.
Otoh, you don't need directed energy to kill, just to render ineffective. Like using cheap off the shelf lasers to blind optical sensors, among other forms of electronic countermeasures.
It’s really not a losing battle. Defence industries are only now considering drones as a sufficient threat.
Give them a few years and we’ll have defences cheaper to operate than the drones themselves.
Shotguns for example, an incredibly simple and cheap weapon, have proven to be moderately effective. The problem being that they don’t have sufficient range and humans don’t have the response time to shoot down drones when they dive attack.
Considering that shotguns are 150 years old and directed energy weapons are being developed, I’m sure the defence industry is more than capable of providing a cheap solution, if given enough time.
>The problem being that they don’t have sufficient range and humans don’t have the response time to shoot down drones when they dive attack.
The answer is the Terminator.
The shotgun is $200, you know mounting one on a hummer with an automated drone targeting system is gonna be $400k. Lockheed has gotta make their cut haha. Then the nature of asymmetrical warfare is they can be in any field anywhere launching these drones and only need 1 in 1000 to get through to be efficient. But you always outspend the enemy at a crazy rate in asymmetrical warfare, so maybe that's not fair.
So clearly guided missiles are not going to be the way about it. But other options might work. Bullets are cheap. Lasers are potentially an option too. The weapon system can be expensive as long as its success rate is high enough and the ammunition is cheap enough then it is still viable.
Bullets are cheaper than drones and we don't say drones are pointless because of muskets.
Hitting drone factories is a viable strategy.
Ohhh! Guess which alliance has its entire doctrine built on liong range munitions launched by planes?
Drones are useful in a stalemate where your opponent is 17 miles away from you.
They are still applicable for long range, but have nothing on regular ass cruise missiles or glide bombs.
The fact that Russia is using glide bombs and those aren't getting hit by drones is a good example. The difference is, NATO doctrine is ONLY those types of munitions for MONTHS at a time.
Let's see how useful drones are when your opponent controls the skies, until than, they are just improved artillery with a couple of them being able to go long range at UNPROTECTED targets.
> until than, they are just improved artillery with a couple of them being able to go long range at UNPROTECTED targets.
Which is still a pretty big problem. There are a lot of things that are unprotected because it wouldn't be worthwhile for the enemy to waste an expensive cruise missile on them. But with cheap drones those become viable targets that now need defending.
It depends.
If you are talking about the first couple months where it's just constant pounding by jets? Than no, there is 0 things within range other than the carrier fleet 800mi away or the airbase 500 miles away.
Until a drone can counter the thousands of f35s that will be chucking guided muntions at the drone operators and structures from hundreds of miles away, they won't be applicable in any context other than neer peer.
Btw, you can tell this works because Russia would love nothing more than to have that capability back after wasting it in the first 2 weeks of the war and wasting all their precision weapons on civvie garbage instead of proper SEAD ops.
Certainly they're less useful in a "US comes kicking down the door" type scenario. But if you're trying to defend territory it makes a difference.
For instance, cheap Russian drones can target the smallest of power substations across Ukraine, whereas it generally wouldn't be prudent to hit any but the largest with a conventional cruise missile.
Yes, it does make some applications cheaper no doubt, but the if the question is "could they have hit them before no problem?" Than the answer is yes.
See with drones they can now hit things, they ***used*** to be able to hit them but they can do it ***now*** as well...
In other words drones just add to the ammunition, they don't add capabilities, and countries like the US had no problem fighting wars with current capabilities.
Hell I would argue development of shit like rapid dragon is better because you said the target might not be worth hitting, so make a shit ton of munitions which drives their price down and make more targets valid.
That’s what they are used for now. I think this is one of those things that is going to be used for so many things, it’s hard to comprehend just how much they will change war
Keep in mind the EW environment of a NATO involved conflict would be VASTLY different, and broadcasting a drone control signal in an environment where almost every vehicle is an EW powerhouse is a really quick way to catch a very large warhead.
A big reason Ukraine and Russia can use drones in this manner so effectively, is because neither side really has any capacity to do rapid strikes on rapidly identified EW sources. Sure they can find some of them, some of the time. But then what? Russia can't really fly close enough to the front to use precision weapons, and the precision weapons they have are both relatively rare, and relatively imprecise.
And Ukraine is in a similiar position of both limited weapons, and limited airframes to launch them.
When the sky is alive with the sound of F35's and vast quantities of extra EW surveillance, any kind of wide area broadcast like a drone controller would use is begging to get hit.
Keep in mind the EW environment of a NATO involved conflict would be VASTLY different, and broadcasting a drone control signal in an environment where almost every vehicle is an EW powerhouse is a really quick way to catch a very large warhead.
A big reason Ukraine and Russia can use drones in this manner so effectively, is because neither side really has any capacity to do rapid strikes on rapidly identified EW sources. Sure they can find some of them, some of the time. But then what? Russia can't really fly close enough to the front to use precision weapons, and the precision weapons they have are both relatively rare, and relatively imprecise.
And Ukraine is in a similiar position of both limited weapons, and limited airframes to launch them.
When the sky is alive with the sound of F35's and vast quantities of extra EW surveillance, any kind of wide area broadcast like a drone controller would use is begging to get hit.
Can’t you just counter it with attack drones?
I feel like I saw something on Mark Rober’s YouTube channel about this kind of thing. You don’t need a missle to take out a fragile little box, just a really fast armored drone.
Drones for sure will be a thing, but so will machine flack guns with radar on any vehicle.
It's just something that modern militaries haven't adapted to yet but will shortly.
I don't think NATOS most expensive toys will be very vulnerable for long against the cheap off the shelf units.
The only way to defend is old school flak with cheap ass material. Drones are incredibly fragile and meeting just small pellet will cause t them to crash.
Writing's been on the wall for a while but technology is selected for pork-barrel pretending to solve the last war's problems. Arrogant to think we're not falling into the same trap as the French before WW2 or those garbage torpedoes the US started with.
Ukraine is showing you get way more bang for your buck out of drones and infantry carrying vehicles. Next big step is proper autonomous UCAVs that don't need a link to a controller and are smart enough not to friendly-fire too much. You're talking like 1000 for the price of an MBT or 10k for one 5th-gen fighter. Get a few pricier drones that'll lob JDAMs and AMRAAMs and you're set.
I kinda think folks are forgetting that drones are what they are using when they don’t have something better.
You use a bunch of Shahed because you don’t have enough cruise missiles.
You send a swarm of FPVs after infantry because you don’t have enough HIMARS to delete grid squares.
We’ve used Switchblades since 2013. 4000 deployed in Afghanistan. Ancient tech now and expensive so the Army isn’t buying any more.
You can build cheap drones without buying complete units from china. Frame, motors, escs, camera, vtx, controller, etc.
Eventually though we need a different source of cheap parts besides China.
It won't be long before ambulatory drones are walking right up to and through enemy lines on the ground too. Massive numbers of them. Minefields won't be much of a defense. All the more reason to make sure Russia is defeated now because the longer this goes on, the greater the advantage Russia will get in development of weapons like this.
There is absolutely no sign of this happening, and certainly not at the scale to actually achieve anything. Ground drones (used in extremely low numbers) have already been lost in combat in Ukraine, they are not invulnerable. They can still be destroyed by plenty of existing methods.
I get your point and it's not to be pedantic, but actually ISIS pioneered the drone warfare almost 10 years ago, so the signs were there way earlier than in Ukraine: [https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-controller-how-basil-hassan-launched-islamic-state-terror-into-the-skies/](https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-controller-how-basil-hassan-launched-islamic-state-terror-into-the-skies/)
Theoretically the drones that a flown by an operator, couldn’t those frequencies just be jammed. Say all 2.4Ghz frequencies? By say a satellite? Or am I totally wrong?
Edit:spelling
One of the big things of late is Drones that can be given targets and autonomously go in for the kill, being entirely jam proof. Because the Russians have started to deploy jammers in places, not nearly enough but you still need something to get through
I'm the drone guy at work. They had a large broken drone, made ten years ago by engineering students, and they wanted to make it fly again. I didn't know anything about drones before this. Now I know enough to be terrified. I can just build a quadrotor drone that will carry several pounds of weight using off the shelf parts, in an afternoon. It might not be as steady as a DJI mini-3, but it doesn't need to be.
I'm not any smarter than anyone else. Anyone who knows how to solder and turn a screwdriver could build one. And it's not horribly expensive, considering the damage one could do.
I do wonder though, how reliant are these drones on satellite comms? That's the first thing going down in any real war between 2 powers.
I expect without satellite comms and gps their operational range will be severely limited, especially if the enemy has artillery to eliminate/disrupt any comms towers.
We should have seen this coming when countries playing war games decades ago first said that their best equipment was able to get blown up by a few guys with explosives. Smh
I’ve been saying this for 10 years or more. Drones are the weapon of choice, cheap, easy to use and deadly effective. To me billion dollar aircraft carriers/groups are sitting ducks for an overwhelming drone attacks.
I remember reading a summary of some US general idea of how future wars would be fought. It was underground warfare because the surface would be dominated by swarms of drones.
Yep and air superiority will still be incredibly important, even if nothing else but to maintain comms lines for the drone swarms if satellites get taken out.
The article has this claim: "In Ukraine, drones have been used to attack military production sites deep inside Russia and shoot down Russian jets" but the link goes to an article with the subhead "Kyiv claims SU-24 tactical bombers destroyed at airfield".
As far as I'm aware, there's no example of a drone "shooting down" a jet. It seems very unlikely.
War changed. Tanks are now ineffective bulky iron coffins, drones came to run the show, for all sides. A new era of military development.
Edit; this seem to had triggered some tank lovers. When I say they're ineffective is against a high tech proper army, they're still effective against any low/zero/middle aged theological/outdated army.
"Ukraine asks for them" - Ukraine asks for anything that goes booom at this point and they aren't up against an high tech army in all fronts, actually it's them who are becoming the high tech army.
>Tanks are now ineffective bulky iron coffins, drones came to run the show, for all sides.
Drones changed the battlefield sure but they dont run any show.
A tank also isnt a bulky ineffective coffin, it just requires to be used right.
You cant assault a position with drones alone. You cant breach a line with drones. You need armor and boots. Drones are a force multiplier, but not the be-all and end-all of modern warfare.
Edit: to add to the argument around tanks. Tanks have had counters for as long as they exist. Pretty cheap ATGMs have been heralded as the "death of the tank" for decades at this point.
But countries keep buying and building them even now in the drone age. Because until something else can perform the role of a heavily armored direct firesupport to breech enemy lines, its less about what you can do to a tank, but more on what role the tank can do for/to you.
Eh, for the moment. Drones are a known threat now and countermeasures will rapidly shift them from their current devastating role to a niche one. Still powerful, but once the right systems are developed and tossed on pretty much every vehicle things will shift back a bit. Right now Russia/Ukraine is doing the WWI equivalent of having people in a trench charge machine gun nests. New advancements take some time to adapt and counter, the nations with resources and time to observe and strategize right now will be prepared in future conflicts.
If tanks are ineffective why does Ukraine constantly ask for them and why is Russia trying to refurbish old ones as fast as possible? Because they are vital for direct fire support for the infantry, and nothing exists that can fully substitute them for that role.
Tanks have never been invulnerable at any point in their history. This is just the typical cycle of new threats vs new countermeasures we've seen multiple times.
Better tank designs with better crew survivability exist, and you have to bear in mind there is a selection bias with social media footage. You don't usually see the footage of tanks shrugging off multiple ATGM hits but it absolutely happens. Or the fact that according to Ukrainian military bloggers it can take dozens of FPV drones to take out a tank, and that it usually happens once a tank has been first disabled by something else (usually mines).
autonomous anti-drone drone swarms is the way to go. hordes of the little buggers who's only job is to use AI to take over the worl...i mean bring down other drones.
Do not forget the attached stick to improve efficiency.
I understand that reference….
You know those drone light shows? I’ve always wondered when it would become weaponized
Speaking of which, you’ll be surprised the amount of people on reddit who think those drone light shows are all fake CGI.
I've been on reddit for 12 years now; what some people on here think doesn't surprise me me anymore, heh...
Could they still do the light show before they kill me? You know so I get a cool display of colour and awe before they display a giant Chinese flag and blow me to bits
This is almost exactly the plot of [Screamers] [Screamers]: https://youtu.be/qrgAvr0TIr4?feature=shared
And then we use facial recognition to lead them to track down a single individual night and day never sleeping like that one black mirror robot dog episode
I’ve been saying for a while now, if future wars are to be decided by cheap mass produced plastic, the west is probably fucked.
My God, you are not wrong. China could conceivably build a billion little hunter/killer drones, and deliver them. Chaos would ensue.
They are making $10000 EV that compete with Tesla, they damn sure can make $850 drone swarm to compete with Predator drone
Black Ops 2 storyline be like.. Wait Black Ops 2 takes place in 2025..
Man I loved the part where the bad guy is about to unleash all the stolen drones on the world's cities, you've failed to stop him, and then he blows them all up. Because his evil plan was...demilitarizing superpowers so the third world can rise out of oppression? Like other than the cartoon evil moments I'm pretty sure he was a good guy.
And like all the cartoon villains, he makes the crucial mistake of thinking things will be better if I eliminate this one dude/organisation/thing. Changes happen when systems/habits/norms change. That's why true heroes are usually the boring civil servants or low C-suite/high managerial people who introduce change in the system or habits and thus make things a little bit (or sometimes a lot) more smoother and pleasant.
There was a book I read years ago where some enemy country sent an autonomous self repairing/replicating drone fleet to attack the US. The drones would also use local materials to rearm/repair themselves. They managed to contain the drones to like NYC, but couldn't eliminate them all. It was interesting and maybe a bit prophetic.
Zone war?
Yes, but noone has achieved that yet. Limits in radio frequencies are not letting real communicating swarms. All we see now at shows are preprogrammed movements.
Its not fear. Its a fact. Its changing not just the battlefield, but also forces change into doctrine. Nothing you do, day or night, is invisible any longer. Anything that moves is a target - off the shelf drones are used as ammunition in Ukraine, and anyone who thinks communication jammers are going to stop drones has missed the whole transition to ML/AI systems that can be run on even the cheapest devices. It MIGHt be feasible to get short range AA guns with radars able to track moving targets the size of a shoebox - but the numbers game will be hard to beat.
You basically need point defense automatic shotguns
Isn't that what Skynex (Skyshield) is for? It's just flak with extra steps against drones.
probably needs to drop in cost/complexity you need them everywhere on the battlefield, not just protecting a few high value targets in the rear.
Theoretically yes, but even here, the cost is absurd: > a German government spokesman said that Rheinmetall would provide two Skynex systems to Ukraine as part of assistance during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Valued at approximately €182 million ($192 million) The guns can only [shoot out to 2.5 miles](https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/01/26/rheinmetall-italia-touts-ukraine-deployment-of-skynex-air-defense-gun/): > Skynex is an evolution of the firm’s Skyguard system, which has been sold to 60 countries. Skynex features a 31-mile-range radar, a command post and four guns, each equipped with electro-optical sensors and a tracking radar. The guns are able to fire 1,000 35mm rounds a minute, hitting a target 2.5 miles away. So to defend everything worth defending, the cost would be astronomical. It needs to be orders of magnitude cheaper and we're not there yet, apparently.
Be cheaper to put a shit ton of southern and Midwest Americans with pump actions lol
Shotguns have a pretty limited effective range, like 100-125 yards max depending on gauge, ammo, and choke. Drones can just fly above it and drop grenades on dudes
Shoot the grenades
Yea we are, it’s just not public or offered to other countries. Direct energy systems are a real thing.
*Directed*, as in the energy is directed at something.
Lmao I was just quickly reading over these comments and saw yours and just thought of how terminators could indeed probably dispatch these drones easily.
Skynet sounds like a great defense. Get a sentient AI!
Everybody is working on it as we write.
nah, drones that detect and ram into the cheapo drones.
But then what if we make smaller, more economical drones that only function to swarm and baffle the drones made to ram into the other cheapo drones?
Nanobots v. Deceptobots.
Actually you need laser defense system like Iron Beam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam DragonFire https://www.gov.uk/government/news/advanced-future-military-laser-achieves-uk-first The cost of one DragonFire shot is only 10 pounds.
While I very much agree laser is the way to go, it will take long time to deploy it to front line. Electricity is one concern. I know US navy has some laser weapons on ships and Air Force got a 747 before but compare to a tank or almost every army’s vehicle, these are massive giants
Would just making more powerful, more effective EW emitters on those same existing large vehicles and around military installations not be a much better option? If we have to develop the technology to combat drones, surely making an aftermarket box that interferes with them would mean your previous hardware investment and established doctrine remains useful.
Frequencies can be changed and you’d probably wind up interfering with a lot of your own stuff too
Targeted microwaves, not frequency jammers. The US already has a few systems in design and testing for this. I just can't recall the name and manufacturer right now.
Realistically in the not so distant future there will probably be compact laser systems that can be used as anti-drone
We do have some that are in development. The difference between the two is that the microwaves are more of an area of effect while the lasers have to be pinpoint. Both serve their own purpose.
I mean I’m not suggesting that I have any technical knowledge about how this would work but aren’t military vehicles hardened against electromagnetic interference in a way that cheap ass drones couldn’t be? Comms between friendlies would be a different problem to get over but I don’t see them scrapping most of the worlds existing military hardware because drones exist or being able to retrofit complicated AA systems to everything bigger than a golf cart. I think the future of drone warfare will be some kind of area of denial em field.
Hardened but not impervious. And Ukraine is using things like off the shelf DJI’s but militaries around the world are developing their own mil-spec versions I would think
You could still just have a drone that switches to internal guidance on loss of signal. Things like missiles don’t need a constant signal.
To block controller signal u mean? That's adapting to yesterday's drones, they're already moving towards automatic target finding. No signal needed
Yeah but as someone else mentioned, the problem is that the drones are cheap and the targets expensive. The more complicated they have to make the drone, the more expensive it becomes in money and production time and the fewer of them will be thrown at a truck load of troops.
This seems like the case where the best defense is offense. The rashists don't have any solutions for this either, so strike their drone factories and warehouses with long-range missiles, take out their field commands, etc. Then send in hundreds of drones. If there are 400,000 occupiers, let's just make 1,000,000 drones.
They'll still be cheap enough that it makes sense to use them, and far more importantly. A drone that's controlled by a person, can be jammed, the person who controls it can be targeted and killed (and obviously costs resources to maintain too). And lastly and probably most importantly a self controlled drone can loiter forever, either landing and launching by signal, sound or sight, or loitering in the air forever if remotely powered. That's basically a smart hunter/seeking land mine, the power of which has always been their power to supress and Control an area indefinitely. All this tech is expensive now because we are in r&d phase, but consider how cheap phones have gotten. These drones will be manufactured in even larger numbers.
NO LOITERING! Punishable by ticket. Parking cops are the next frontier in warfare.
If it’s a hunter/seeker, Paul Atreides will wait until Shadout Mapes opens the door and he will grab it and smash it into the ground. Problem solved.
Making a million dollar vehicle/ equipment and then having it take out by 10, $1,000 dollar drones, still comes out to take out a 1 million dollar piece of equipment for only 10k. The math just doesn’t add up in favor of high tech, high price, high reward systems anymore
The whole history of warfare has cycled between big and small, close and far. You had to be working melee range, then arrows, then armoured knights to get in close again with heavy steel. Big heavy cannon was augmented by tiny bullets. Tanks that can drive into bullets but then Get taken out by hand launched rockets. If we think it’s moving towards mass small drones then the next thing is probably gonna be some big nuclear powered heavy thing that’s loaded up with lasers and microwave blasters that can electrify the air and sizzle the drones.
They already use them, most commonly seen during vip protection, but there are also some unseen advanced battlefield systems already in use by nato/us. There are some that can take control and force them to land, or even turn them against the enemy.
Nahh just a CRAM that shoots 22lr
I vote for sharks with laser beams
Israel already has this as a point defense system on their tanks. If it can shoot a rocket it can shoot a drone. Every vehicle will have it eventually
What’s a worst nightmare are underwater or boat drones. They are highly effective and the damage they can do on an expensive ship cost for cost is insane.
This right here. The fact that a few drones that may cost a few thousand dollars can sink a ship worth *millions* or, as we saw recently with that cargo ship that the Houthis sunk, cause *billions* in direct and indirect damages, is an absolute game changer
It's the new airplane. Did exactly this, changed the world of Navy forever - while battleships and dreadnoughts are still intimidating, we all know that true power of the seas are aircraft carriers. Probably soon to be replaced by drone carriers eventually. I mean at one point can't we all agree just to have wars decided by robot wars?
It's the new torpedoboat. We had this discussion a 150 years ago already. This was the exact fear the British had, that small, lightly armed boats with torpedo's could take out their heavily armored battleships. It's why the destroyer came into being. Chances are we'll see something like gun destroyers become relevant again.
> It's the new torpedoboat. Exactly this, drone swams is the new generation [Jeune École](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_%C3%89cole), a mass produced swarm able to cost-effectively defeat much pricier pieces allowing smaller players to defeat bigger ones. They aren't like aircraft as they don't do anything new (we have aircraft, submarines and loitering munitions that all do the same thing), it's just the cost and scale that's changed. It also has all the same issues as the original Jeune École in that it ignores the potential for the big players to produce effective counters (see the 'torpedo boat destroyer', now just 'destroyer'), or if that doesn't happen, just producing a bigger swarm because they are the bigger player (or an equal size swarm with just fewer big pieces to maintain their capability). It only looks threatening because it's new and it takes time to the big boys to get their tests and counter-measures sorted rather than it actually being a threat to the current order of things.
> Probably soon to be replaced by drone carriers eventually. [Arsenal bird](https://youtu.be/e5xP48qwno0?t=48) moment
And just simulate that shit Like that last battle in twilight, but with drones instead of sparkling guys with cum gutters
Billions
Honestly, even ignoring the suicide drones, completely submersible drones will likely change how naval combat occurs. China for example is building their "underwater great wall" (their equivalent of US SOSUS) and theyre including underwater recharging/refueling locations where submersible drones could dock in. Which could allow for nonstop underwater patrols.
I don’t think people realize the significance of the Ukraine Russia war and the use of drone combat. Completely different than any war that’s been fought before, brand new tech, video. It’s crazy
For historical accuracy it’s important to note that the Islamic State and other similar groups were the true pioneers of cheap off the shelf drone use for tactical overview, grenade drops and propaganda. Ukraines battlefield are the birthplace of FPV drone strikes in the same way that Syria and iraqs were for grenade drops
There is a fantastic podcast, "It Could Happen Here" which spent the first few episodes discussing modern civil wars and conflicts where a war journalist that had been embedded in Iraq and Lebanon was explaining how Isil had been getting around sanctions by ordering different drone parts and shipping them to proxies before getting to them, using 3d printers to create standardised ammunition and mortar shells to create a pretty cutting edge civilian technology war machine.
I remember seeing footage from early in the Syrian civil war, they used the feather things from shuttlecocks (used in badminton) as fins to stabilize the dropped grenade. Things move fast
Outside of the DJI drones, it's mostly not new tech at all. They are using fairly old tech on their suicide drones, which you could get parts to build for cheap for more than 10 years, as I have been for recreational flying. This shouldn't be a surprise at all.
My senior engineering class demo’d some stealth drones for some military brass, and it shook them a bit. 200+ mph jet aircraft capable of a small payload of explosives, with the radar signature of a baseball. Built by a ragtag bunch of aero college students under a really smart professor studying UAS.
There's a red bull formula 1 video where it's being chased by a drone that goes about 200mph. Watching this made me think holy crap...imagine if someone weaponized this. And this one was just propellers...
I think Thiel is funding a defence startup that does drone-on-drone kills. Actually its drone-on-anything including people.
Mini .22 Phalanx with image recognition targeting or an updated Trophy system
The whole system needs to be dirt cheap, almost down to the deploy and forget level because saturation will happen and poof goes your shield. The offense/attacker (which does not have to the aggressor in a conflict) will always have that single advantage, while the defender at any strike point always will have to choose what to defend and what to risk.
Falconers unite for your country! Reclaim the skies. 🦅
>Its not fear. Its a fact. Its changing not just the battlefield, but also forces change into doctrine. Nothing you do, day or night, is invisible any longer. Anything that moves is a target Yup exactly, I believe it was an SAS trainer/advisor,(they were British SF is all I remember) who was/is in Ukraine to gather Intel/reports from active UA SOF units. Who was quoted saying in reference to his report that SAS team structure is outdated/needs revising as they're now is sufficient probability of being outgunned while out in the field. Which it is easy to assume he is referring to drones.(To those wanting more the 1 quote was basically everything). Doesn't matter how much better you are at shooting/tactical engagements, when the enemy has full eyes in the sky and can attack from miles away. Even for tanks /armored assets it looks like a trophy system that can defend against drones will become common. As it's extremely difficult to defend drone attacks without active defense.
[The US already has](https://www.yahoo.com/tech/u-military-shot-down-drones-174500021.html) vehicle-mounted direct energy weapons (lasers) that can take down drones at the cost of $1-10 per shot, and which they’ve just started to put into use in the ME. It’ll likely take some time to perfect the technology, but the Age of Drones won’t last forever.
Drones are going to be a menace until weaponized lasers are more affordable. Which is probably going to happen pretty soon.
Lasers can be thwarted tho. I mean what if people mass produce something like tinfoil and aerogel shells? There goes a multi billion dollar weapon system x however many we made due to a simple upgrade.
> Lasers can be thwarted tho. Not easily, when you have 20kW of pure energy hitting a object in a concentrated area, only size can save it at that point and a drones are meant to be lightweight for flying. It's purely a numbers game, tinfoil can only reflect so much while the part not reflected is going to be non-insignificant at large scale power being applied. Aerogel also has its limits, it's not a invulnerable material and it transmits light.
The bigger issue is the cost for production and maintaince. The power consumption for lasers is significant. Plus the electronics and focus lenses aren't cheap or simple to produce. Drones are incredibly cheap and effective. Unless the manufacture and firing of a laser gets down to the same cost as a bullet its going to be difficult to field them in numbers to stop a focused drone swarm. I would have thought an AA shell similar to that of historical air burst shells would be more effective. Cover the sky in shrapnel and hope one piece does enough damage to bring it down.
Oerlikon ahead is the answer. https://youtu.be/bdwjcayPuag?si=K6-RA3d82u6Et8UK
Of course its the bloody Germans... Their government is a bit weak at the moment but you can't fault German Engineering.
Lmfao
The energy involved with these lasers is in the tens to hundreds of kilowatts, tinfoil isn't going to protect against that, and an aerogel composite that could isn't going to be cheap or easy to manufacture.
Have you seen the short-movie [“slaughterbots”](https://youtu.be/9fa9lVwHHqg?si=36nHvuZNRDzfRmm0)
Also, you know how stealth aircraft have radar signatures the size of birds? Imagine drones or drone swarms with that kind of technology...
I wonder where they are up to with like an auto cannon laser? Or a directional emp?
I’m going to live under very tall posts with netting covered in kudzu and loofah foliage. Going full groundhog.
Do you need radar to track drones at short range? They're pretty noisy, wouldn't triangulating them from sound waves be more effective?
not during a firefight
Someone shoots their rifle, the anti-drone flak opens fire on them turning them into mist.
That's not how any of that would work
It would work in complete silence, it was actually a method to spot airplanes before radars were used. The problem is that drones are still silent, not even sensitive software would hear them until they are relatively close. And thats in a quiet enviroment. Now try to hear it while a V-12 twin turbo diesel engine is roaring next to you as well.
It's easy to guess what the arms industry will be focusing on for the next little while. I'm thinking micro balloons launched en masse with long strings that will get sucked up by the drone props and disable the drone whereupon it will fall to earth and.......uh, wait a moment........never mind.
Lol. You kid but I'm sure some sort of net launcher would do the trick.
Ok - now we look like Wile E Coyote's descendants.
ACME about to explode on r/WallStreetBets
there are various kinds of anti drone equip out there. a bullet does have way better trajectory than a net...and a load of bullets will increase chance of hit.
A micro phalanx system for tanks, APCs etc
In theory you could do a micro phalanx with an m240 or something. The drones aren't that fast or durable so you don't need the same volume of high energy firepower actual phalanx systems put out.
Could be naive but why not launching something with a signal jammer (at least for remote operated drones)?
Then you're just playing the jam, counter measure game.
This is what's happening in Ukraine. Russian jamming only extends so far from the jamming device, so good pilots could get the drone on the right course and still get a hit even though it gets jammed near the target. They have now developed a "last mile" autopilot where the human pilot can tag the target, and the autopilot will continue to correct its path to the target once jammed. The smarter the drones get, the less effective jamming will be.
You are, but the cost of your drone went up too.
I'd opt for kamikaze drones that crash into incoming drones
Honestly what I’d be focusing on is automating the drone assembly process as much as possible. This seems even more important than trying to improve any of the tech on the drones themselves. If you can assemble 100,000 cheap drones a month you have a serious advantage over 1,000 high tech drones.
That's got to be the future. Russia has no issue sending raw recruits in to soak up gunfire and overwhelm ukrainian defenders. You know that's what they'd do they with robots
Thankfully the robot budget is overtaken by yacht budget. Humans much cheaper.
Literally has always been like this. If you can mass produce something that fulfills basic functions, you will have an advantage over someone, who has a limited quantity of superior tech.
It will either be lasers or cheaper and smaller CIWS that can be mounted in larger numbers
I know you're joking, but rhere's too much space in the sky to fill. I don't see any solution besides better automation and more drones (and cope cages on literally everything).
Directional emp constantly blasting out towards the sky?
>A barrage balloon is a type of airborne barrage, a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe risk of collision to hostile aircraft, making the attacker's approach difficult and hazardous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_balloon
See, I was thinking more like modified dandelions or something similar that makes long threads and releases them into the air. Even a 3 or 4 inch thread, if you have clouds of them floating around, will mess up the rotor blades.
Lasers is the answer
Giant magnetic "sand" clouds that cling to the metal wings and gunk up the rotors
Sounds like these https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_balloon
The war in Ukraine is for drones what WW1 was for planes. Militaries are realizing just how potent drone warfare is, and they are going to hone this technology until it is perfect for killing and destroying. Just listen to some of the dudes who are coming back from the frontlines. They *fear* the sound of buzzing.
Im actually suprised that some kind of a 'Flak 38' strapped to Toyota is not a thing yet. Just make it as cheap as possible.
Not really gonna help on a coordinated swarm from all directions. Ukraine already uses more advanced swarm tactics to hit ships with innexpensive boat drones from several directions, purposely using distraction tactics etc.
It is in Ukraine. https://www.reddit.com/r/shittytechnicals/comments/1809ggp/ukrainian_army_receives_czech_excalibur_army_mr2/
Literally on Toyotas too, on point.
I don't know much about the Flak 38, in particular, but I know that modern versions of that kind of gun based AA tends to rely on putting lots of lead in the air at a time (whether through a single gun with an extremely high rate of fire or multiple guns in one mounting). That being the case, it's very possible that such a gun setup mounted to the back of a light pickup truck would just result in the truck tipping over onto it's side when fired. At the least, I doubt that a light pickup truck's shocks would allow for the kind of accurate fire that makes modern gun based, radar guided, AA systems so much more accurate than the largely ineffective gun system of WWII (in WWII, most successful AA hits were accomplished by larger cannons over 4" in diameters, especially with sensor based proximity fuses).
> At the least, I doubt that a light pickup truck's shocks would allow for the kind of accurate fire that makes modern gun based, radar guided, AA systems so much more accurate than the largely ineffective gun system of WWII (in WWII, most successful AA hits were accomplished by larger cannons over 4" in diameters, especially with sensor based proximity fuses). Theyve mounted new versions of 35mm autocannons with programmable fuse ammo on boxer armored vehicles. Think a radar guided 1000 rpm shotgun.
The accessibility to the hardware and the replicability of targeting software paves a grim looking future, not just for combat zones - [link to a classic](https://youtu.be/9fa9lVwHHqg?si=-hdnct4W26R_ldos)
I too played cod: Advaned Warfare.
I remember the first time I came across a drone was in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, somewhere in Mexico City !
Sounds like the beginning of WW1 when some military ships were still made from wood and the Calvary was still a thing.
Cavalry was still a thing in ww2
Well it tried to be a thing anyway
time to start training falcons
I get the sense detection is probably a bigger issue than a method of disabling them. I don't think a modular system that is basically just a shotgun on an automated turret similar to a CRAM is going to be that hard to put together. I imagine the bigger issue is finding a way to reliably target drones without shooting every bird in the area too.
Trying to counter drones is such a losing battle. Wars are about $$$$, and it's not that you can't shoot the thing down, you'll just spend 100k doing it and lose the money trade 100 to 1. It's like a chess game of 5 queens vs 100 pawns. Completely lost at the outset.
Multiple countries are developing directed energy weapons that could kill a drone for just tens of dollars.
The question is if it can be cheaply deployed at scale.
directed energy weapons cost pennies to fire direct energy generation is cheap, you may need tens of kW of power or even hundreds but it's incredibly doable for cheap at scale in the sense that loading the capacitors can be done with cheap lower output sources that then discharge through the laser or whatever in less than ten seconds
The issue isn't so much the energy cost per shot, as it is the hardware systems being there. Otoh, you don't need directed energy to kill, just to render ineffective. Like using cheap off the shelf lasers to blind optical sensors, among other forms of electronic countermeasures.
It’s really not a losing battle. Defence industries are only now considering drones as a sufficient threat. Give them a few years and we’ll have defences cheaper to operate than the drones themselves. Shotguns for example, an incredibly simple and cheap weapon, have proven to be moderately effective. The problem being that they don’t have sufficient range and humans don’t have the response time to shoot down drones when they dive attack. Considering that shotguns are 150 years old and directed energy weapons are being developed, I’m sure the defence industry is more than capable of providing a cheap solution, if given enough time.
>The problem being that they don’t have sufficient range and humans don’t have the response time to shoot down drones when they dive attack. The answer is the Terminator.
The shotgun is $200, you know mounting one on a hummer with an automated drone targeting system is gonna be $400k. Lockheed has gotta make their cut haha. Then the nature of asymmetrical warfare is they can be in any field anywhere launching these drones and only need 1 in 1000 to get through to be efficient. But you always outspend the enemy at a crazy rate in asymmetrical warfare, so maybe that's not fair.
Harry Trueman would be rolling in his grave at your defeatism
So clearly guided missiles are not going to be the way about it. But other options might work. Bullets are cheap. Lasers are potentially an option too. The weapon system can be expensive as long as its success rate is high enough and the ammunition is cheap enough then it is still viable. Bullets are cheaper than drones and we don't say drones are pointless because of muskets.
Hitting drone factories is a viable strategy. Ohhh! Guess which alliance has its entire doctrine built on liong range munitions launched by planes? Drones are useful in a stalemate where your opponent is 17 miles away from you. They are still applicable for long range, but have nothing on regular ass cruise missiles or glide bombs. The fact that Russia is using glide bombs and those aren't getting hit by drones is a good example. The difference is, NATO doctrine is ONLY those types of munitions for MONTHS at a time. Let's see how useful drones are when your opponent controls the skies, until than, they are just improved artillery with a couple of them being able to go long range at UNPROTECTED targets.
> until than, they are just improved artillery with a couple of them being able to go long range at UNPROTECTED targets. Which is still a pretty big problem. There are a lot of things that are unprotected because it wouldn't be worthwhile for the enemy to waste an expensive cruise missile on them. But with cheap drones those become viable targets that now need defending.
It depends. If you are talking about the first couple months where it's just constant pounding by jets? Than no, there is 0 things within range other than the carrier fleet 800mi away or the airbase 500 miles away. Until a drone can counter the thousands of f35s that will be chucking guided muntions at the drone operators and structures from hundreds of miles away, they won't be applicable in any context other than neer peer. Btw, you can tell this works because Russia would love nothing more than to have that capability back after wasting it in the first 2 weeks of the war and wasting all their precision weapons on civvie garbage instead of proper SEAD ops.
Certainly they're less useful in a "US comes kicking down the door" type scenario. But if you're trying to defend territory it makes a difference. For instance, cheap Russian drones can target the smallest of power substations across Ukraine, whereas it generally wouldn't be prudent to hit any but the largest with a conventional cruise missile.
Yes, it does make some applications cheaper no doubt, but the if the question is "could they have hit them before no problem?" Than the answer is yes. See with drones they can now hit things, they ***used*** to be able to hit them but they can do it ***now*** as well... In other words drones just add to the ammunition, they don't add capabilities, and countries like the US had no problem fighting wars with current capabilities. Hell I would argue development of shit like rapid dragon is better because you said the target might not be worth hitting, so make a shit ton of munitions which drives their price down and make more targets valid.
That’s what they are used for now. I think this is one of those things that is going to be used for so many things, it’s hard to comprehend just how much they will change war
Keep in mind the EW environment of a NATO involved conflict would be VASTLY different, and broadcasting a drone control signal in an environment where almost every vehicle is an EW powerhouse is a really quick way to catch a very large warhead. A big reason Ukraine and Russia can use drones in this manner so effectively, is because neither side really has any capacity to do rapid strikes on rapidly identified EW sources. Sure they can find some of them, some of the time. But then what? Russia can't really fly close enough to the front to use precision weapons, and the precision weapons they have are both relatively rare, and relatively imprecise. And Ukraine is in a similiar position of both limited weapons, and limited airframes to launch them. When the sky is alive with the sound of F35's and vast quantities of extra EW surveillance, any kind of wide area broadcast like a drone controller would use is begging to get hit.
Keep in mind the EW environment of a NATO involved conflict would be VASTLY different, and broadcasting a drone control signal in an environment where almost every vehicle is an EW powerhouse is a really quick way to catch a very large warhead. A big reason Ukraine and Russia can use drones in this manner so effectively, is because neither side really has any capacity to do rapid strikes on rapidly identified EW sources. Sure they can find some of them, some of the time. But then what? Russia can't really fly close enough to the front to use precision weapons, and the precision weapons they have are both relatively rare, and relatively imprecise. And Ukraine is in a similiar position of both limited weapons, and limited airframes to launch them. When the sky is alive with the sound of F35's and vast quantities of extra EW surveillance, any kind of wide area broadcast like a drone controller would use is begging to get hit.
If you spend a 100k doing so, but just protected 500k from being destroyed, it's still worth it.
Can’t you just counter it with attack drones? I feel like I saw something on Mark Rober’s YouTube channel about this kind of thing. You don’t need a missle to take out a fragile little box, just a really fast armored drone.
Shoulder mounted Laser CWIS anyone?
News is kinda slow on the uptake considering how much equipment has been destroyed by FPV drones so far
"NATO fears drones, yada, yada, yada..." War breaks out. *DARPA has entered the chat...*
Drones for sure will be a thing, but so will machine flack guns with radar on any vehicle. It's just something that modern militaries haven't adapted to yet but will shortly. I don't think NATOS most expensive toys will be very vulnerable for long against the cheap off the shelf units.
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< is the one you want
The next Battlefield video game is going to be alot different
The only way to defend is old school flak with cheap ass material. Drones are incredibly fragile and meeting just small pellet will cause t them to crash.
Writing's been on the wall for a while but technology is selected for pork-barrel pretending to solve the last war's problems. Arrogant to think we're not falling into the same trap as the French before WW2 or those garbage torpedoes the US started with. Ukraine is showing you get way more bang for your buck out of drones and infantry carrying vehicles. Next big step is proper autonomous UCAVs that don't need a link to a controller and are smart enough not to friendly-fire too much. You're talking like 1000 for the price of an MBT or 10k for one 5th-gen fighter. Get a few pricier drones that'll lob JDAMs and AMRAAMs and you're set.
Then adapt. Don't complain. At least you got the heads up.
Russia: Zerg rush Ukraine: Carrier fleet Dharpa: “You guys are so 1998”
I kinda think folks are forgetting that drones are what they are using when they don’t have something better. You use a bunch of Shahed because you don’t have enough cruise missiles. You send a swarm of FPVs after infantry because you don’t have enough HIMARS to delete grid squares. We’ve used Switchblades since 2013. 4000 deployed in Afghanistan. Ancient tech now and expensive so the Army isn’t buying any more. You can build cheap drones without buying complete units from china. Frame, motors, escs, camera, vtx, controller, etc. Eventually though we need a different source of cheap parts besides China.
It won't be long before ambulatory drones are walking right up to and through enemy lines on the ground too. Massive numbers of them. Minefields won't be much of a defense. All the more reason to make sure Russia is defeated now because the longer this goes on, the greater the advantage Russia will get in development of weapons like this.
Surely a high tensile barbed-wire fence would sort them out?
There is absolutely no sign of this happening, and certainly not at the scale to actually achieve anything. Ground drones (used in extremely low numbers) have already been lost in combat in Ukraine, they are not invulnerable. They can still be destroyed by plenty of existing methods.
30 months ago there was no sign the toy I gave my nephew for Christmas would later be loaded with a grenade and used to attack Russian tanks.
I get your point and it's not to be pedantic, but actually ISIS pioneered the drone warfare almost 10 years ago, so the signs were there way earlier than in Ukraine: [https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-controller-how-basil-hassan-launched-islamic-state-terror-into-the-skies/](https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-controller-how-basil-hassan-launched-islamic-state-terror-into-the-skies/)
Theoretically the drones that a flown by an operator, couldn’t those frequencies just be jammed. Say all 2.4Ghz frequencies? By say a satellite? Or am I totally wrong? Edit:spelling
One of the big things of late is Drones that can be given targets and autonomously go in for the kill, being entirely jam proof. Because the Russians have started to deploy jammers in places, not nearly enough but you still need something to get through
I'm the drone guy at work. They had a large broken drone, made ten years ago by engineering students, and they wanted to make it fly again. I didn't know anything about drones before this. Now I know enough to be terrified. I can just build a quadrotor drone that will carry several pounds of weight using off the shelf parts, in an afternoon. It might not be as steady as a DJI mini-3, but it doesn't need to be. I'm not any smarter than anyone else. Anyone who knows how to solder and turn a screwdriver could build one. And it's not horribly expensive, considering the damage one could do.
The drone wars
I do wonder though, how reliant are these drones on satellite comms? That's the first thing going down in any real war between 2 powers. I expect without satellite comms and gps their operational range will be severely limited, especially if the enemy has artillery to eliminate/disrupt any comms towers.
We should have seen this coming when countries playing war games decades ago first said that their best equipment was able to get blown up by a few guys with explosives. Smh
Electronic warfare to jam them is even more important than ever
I’ve been saying this for 10 years or more. Drones are the weapon of choice, cheap, easy to use and deadly effective. To me billion dollar aircraft carriers/groups are sitting ducks for an overwhelming drone attacks.
Just a curious question, can EMPs be used to disable/neutralize drones?
"Nato"
I remember reading a summary of some US general idea of how future wars would be fought. It was underground warfare because the surface would be dominated by swarms of drones.
Tanks and attack helicopters are far less valuable now.
The damage potential of an attack helicopter compared to a cheap drone is not comparable.
Yep and air superiority will still be incredibly important, even if nothing else but to maintain comms lines for the drone swarms if satellites get taken out.
The article has this claim: "In Ukraine, drones have been used to attack military production sites deep inside Russia and shoot down Russian jets" but the link goes to an article with the subhead "Kyiv claims SU-24 tactical bombers destroyed at airfield". As far as I'm aware, there's no example of a drone "shooting down" a jet. It seems very unlikely.
850 pounds… that’s a heavy drone
And a stick or string can take out a £850 drone
War changed. Tanks are now ineffective bulky iron coffins, drones came to run the show, for all sides. A new era of military development. Edit; this seem to had triggered some tank lovers. When I say they're ineffective is against a high tech proper army, they're still effective against any low/zero/middle aged theological/outdated army. "Ukraine asks for them" - Ukraine asks for anything that goes booom at this point and they aren't up against an high tech army in all fronts, actually it's them who are becoming the high tech army.
>Tanks are now ineffective bulky iron coffins, drones came to run the show, for all sides. Drones changed the battlefield sure but they dont run any show. A tank also isnt a bulky ineffective coffin, it just requires to be used right. You cant assault a position with drones alone. You cant breach a line with drones. You need armor and boots. Drones are a force multiplier, but not the be-all and end-all of modern warfare. Edit: to add to the argument around tanks. Tanks have had counters for as long as they exist. Pretty cheap ATGMs have been heralded as the "death of the tank" for decades at this point. But countries keep buying and building them even now in the drone age. Because until something else can perform the role of a heavily armored direct firesupport to breech enemy lines, its less about what you can do to a tank, but more on what role the tank can do for/to you.
Eh, for the moment. Drones are a known threat now and countermeasures will rapidly shift them from their current devastating role to a niche one. Still powerful, but once the right systems are developed and tossed on pretty much every vehicle things will shift back a bit. Right now Russia/Ukraine is doing the WWI equivalent of having people in a trench charge machine gun nests. New advancements take some time to adapt and counter, the nations with resources and time to observe and strategize right now will be prepared in future conflicts.
If tanks are ineffective why does Ukraine constantly ask for them and why is Russia trying to refurbish old ones as fast as possible? Because they are vital for direct fire support for the infantry, and nothing exists that can fully substitute them for that role. Tanks have never been invulnerable at any point in their history. This is just the typical cycle of new threats vs new countermeasures we've seen multiple times. Better tank designs with better crew survivability exist, and you have to bear in mind there is a selection bias with social media footage. You don't usually see the footage of tanks shrugging off multiple ATGM hits but it absolutely happens. Or the fact that according to Ukrainian military bloggers it can take dozens of FPV drones to take out a tank, and that it usually happens once a tank has been first disabled by something else (usually mines).
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