Drone Proliferation

[jmotivator]

We are seeing a very dramatic seismic shift in the last few years in war technology. Drone technology is rather ubiquitous, and very easy to militarize to the point where drone warfare is almost as common in poor countries as it is in technologically advanced countries.

We see evidence every day of simple drones defeating modern armor to the point that Tanks are now under threat in much the same was the longbow and gunpowder ended the use of plate armor.

"Air superiority" won't be a thing is a few years when drones will have more capability in air support than a manned aircraft.

This gets even more frightening when you consider the strides made in AI and sensory equipment. A country with even a modest budget can fund a system much like the swarm technology currently used for flying art displays, but with every drone a bomb, and broad spectrum sensory cameras that would allow the country to send out a few thousand coordinated drones at night to hunt all humans in a given area and kill them.

The speed that this technology is taking over is pretty astounding.

My biggest long term fear is lasers. Lasers have the capacity to be far more devastating than even nuclear weaponry.. but drones are the short term threat that really has me worried.

 

[Allan]

The largest drone display so far is over 5,000 drones.

Imagine being on the battlefield and getting swarmed by 5 or 10 thousand armed autonomous drones.

 

[jmotivator]

The largest drone display so far is over 5,000 drones.

Imagine being on the battlefield and getting swarmed by 5 or 10 thousand armed autonomous drones.

A mix of 20% anti-Armor and 80% anti-personnel drones could wipe out a mechanized column in a matter of minutes with just 20% success rate per drone.

An autonomous drone swarm would have many advantages, but the greatest advantage would be efficiency. A swarm would be able to ensure that every drone attacks a dedicated target.

 

[longview]

We are seeing a very dramatic seismic shift in the last few years in war technology. Drone technology is rather ubiquitous, and very easy to militarize to the point where drone warfare is almost as common in poor countries as it is in technologically advanced countries.

We see evidence every day of simple drones defeating modern armor to the point that Tanks are now under threat in much the same was the longbow and gunpowder ended the use of plate armor.

"Air superiority" won't be a thing is a few years when drones will have more capability in air support than a manned aircraft.

This gets even more frightening when you consider the strides made in AI and sensory equipment. A country with even a modest budget can fund a system much like the swarm technology currently used for flying art displays, but with every drone a bomb, and broad spectrum sensory cameras that would allow the country to send out a few thousand coordinated drones at night to hunt all humans in a given area and kill them.

The speed that this technology is taking over is pretty astounding.

My biggest long term fear is lasers. Lasers have the capacity to be far more devastating than even nuclear weaponry.. but drones are the short term threat that really has me worried.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with a group of my physics/ Electro-Optic students related to radar measurement vs radar detectors.
The bottom line is that it is much easier to detect the presents of radar, than to resolve a returning radar reflection.
i.e. detectors will always be better than radar units, with equal technology.
Drones have some limitations, it they run on batteries, they have very limited range, if they store their energy some other way
then they have pieces that are detectable, although I suppose a rocket could be made without much metal.
The next weakness is the guidance system, remote operation requires communications, which can be disrupted, and autonomous
is a much higher level of sophistication.

As for Lasers, to get any significant energy requires ether massive power, or clever tricks to bring the phases of several pulses in phase
at a remote location. The best hope for a laser weapon is a gas dynamic CO2 laser, which uses the exhaust gas of a jet
as the excitation medium, but it is difficult to control.
To be fair it has been nearly 3 decades since I was involved in any Laser research, so there could have been LOTS of improvements,
but the basic physics remains the same.

 

[longview]

Here’s the Army’s now-patented EMP rifle attachment for taking out small drones

This is a clever idea, as pressure wave hitting a piezo can generate an enormous pulse, drones could be shielded
against such a pulse, but at a cost of weight and range.

 

[eohrnberger]

We are seeing a very dramatic seismic shift in the last few years in war technology. Drone technology is rather ubiquitous, and very easy to militarize to the point where drone warfare is almost as common in poor countries as it is in technologically advanced countries.

We see evidence every day of simple drones defeating modern armor to the point that Tanks are now under threat in much the same was the longbow and gunpowder ended the use of plate armor.

"Air superiority" won't be a thing is a few years when drones will have more capability in air support than a manned aircraft.

This gets even more frightening when you consider the strides made in AI and sensory equipment. A country with even a modest budget can fund a system much like the swarm technology currently used for flying art displays, but with every drone a bomb, and broad spectrum sensory cameras that would allow the country to send out a few thousand coordinated drones at night to hunt all humans in a given area and kill them.

The speed that this technology is taking over is pretty astounding.

My biggest long term fear is lasers. Lasers have the capacity to be far more devastating than even nuclear weaponry.. but drones are the short term threat that really has me worried.

The lethality of a drone appears to be limited to the weight it can carry, which limits the offensive arms that it can bring to bear.

In the given example:

The largest drone display so far is over 5,000 drones.

Imagine being on the battlefield and getting swarmed by 5 or 10 thousand armed autonomous drones.

If each drone had a single shot 22 it could accurately aim, I see this more of a threat against personnel as opposed to armor.
If each drone had a single frag grenade it could accurately drop on a target, it's still more an anti-personnel weapon.

How big a drone would it take to lift, target and fire a Hellfire anti-armor missile? Wouldn't it be about the size of a small helicopter? Ergo expensive?

Then again, maybe not. What about a drove with night vision which carries a 1 lb. payload of C4 shaped charge, attaches itself to an amored vehicle's weakest part and then detonates?

An interesting thought experiment, this.

 

[Allan]

The lethality of a drone appears to be limited to the weight it can carry, which limits the offensive arms that it can bring to bear.

In the given example:

If each drone had a single shot 22 it could accurately aim, I see this more of a threat against personnel as opposed to armor.
If each drone had a single frag grenade it could accurately drop on a target, it's still more an anti-personnel weapon.

How big a drone would it take to lift, target and fire a Hellfire anti-armor missile? Wouldn't it be about the size of a small helicopter? Ergo expensive?

Then again, maybe not. What about a drove with night vision which carries a 1 lb. payload of C4 shaped charge, attaches itself to an amored vehicle's weakest part and then detonates?

An interesting thought experiment, this.

No doubt advanced militaries are developing all the technologies you've described.

Effective drones would attack then return to the launch site to be rearmed and have a fresh battery installed.

 

[eohrnberger]

No doubt advanced militaries are developing all the technologies you've described.

Effective drones would attack then return to the launch site to be rearmed and have a fresh battery installed.

Just out of curiosity, searched up 'smallest autonomous drone'

https://www.fastcompany.com/40575392/this-tiny-drone-with-a-tiny-brain-is-smart-enough-to-fly-itself

Add facial / body recognition, a small frag charge, and turn it lose in the general area where the target is thought to be with a search and destroy mission . . . .
Borrowed / adapted from Minority Report, but not it's no longer science fiction. It could be done with today's publicly available technologies.

 

[The Stars Tremble]

Lasers have the capacity to be far more devastating than even nuclear weaponry

Er what? If you're talking about blinding troops on the battlefield, I can see lasers being comparable to nuclear weapons. But nukes mess up physical assets, and people not on a battlefield, and it's hard to beat their kinetic strength.

Isn't it interesting that the civilian and military definition of "drone" are still quite different?

 

[jmotivator]

Er what? If you're talking about blinding troops on the battlefield, I can see lasers being comparable to nuclear weapons. But nukes mess up physical assets, and people not on a battlefield, and it's hard to beat their kinetic strength.

Isn't it interesting that the civilian and military definition of "drone" are still quite different?

As militarized lasers increase in power we are reaching a point where not that long from now a single sweep of a laser could level a city.

 

[The Stars Tremble]

How big a drone would it take to lift, target and fire a Hellfire anti-armor missile?

Those missiles have considerable flight time and their own targeting capabilities (fire and forget.) They're already carried by conventional military drones (eg Predator and Reaper.)

It's not really clear to me how big helicopter drones can do anything better, than existing military drones. I guess they could loiter longer (particularly on the ground) and I guess they'd be quieter. But as you said, a military version would be quite expensive.

 

[Fabiusbile]

The lethality of a drone appears to be limited to the weight it can carry, which limits the offensive arms that it can bring to bear.

In the given example:

If each drone had a single shot 22 it could accurately aim, I see this more of a threat against personnel as opposed to armor.
If each drone had a single frag grenade it could accurately drop on a target, it's still more an anti-personnel weapon.

How big a drone would it take to lift, target and fire a Hellfire anti-armor missile? Wouldn't it be about the size of a small helicopter? Ergo expensive?

Then again, maybe not. What about a drove with night vision which carries a 1 lb. payload of C4 shaped charge, attaches itself to an amored vehicle's weakest part and then detonates?

An interesting thought experiment, this.

I'm not a drone operator, but I know a lot of guys like that and they really changed modern warfare.
Even miniature FPV drones are equally dangerous for infantry and armored vehicles. They hit weak tank components such as exhaust systems, optics, transmission rollers, and an immobilized tank is not a unit, it is food for artillery or more serious drones capable of piercing armor.
To date, the only way to attack under drone attack is the so-called turtle tanks (whose firing capabilities are critically limited, and sometimes the guns are removed altogether) or a high-speed attack on motorcycles, because under the influence of electronic warfare installations, drone operators have delays in controlling the drone and it is very difficult to hit the motorcycle.

 

[The Stars Tremble]

As militarized lasers increase in power we are reaching a point where not that long from now a single sweep of a laser could level a city.

You're talking about something very different to drones. You're talking about lasers on ships, which have a nuclear powerplant and essentially unlimited payload for capacitors or batteries. Drones have VERY limited payload for these things.

 

[ataraxia]

I’m just hoping that in the future, our children and grandchildren will look upon The practice of warfare with the same horror and disgust as we look on ancient practices of cannibalism and institutionalized slavery.

 

[longview]

As militarized lasers increase in power we are reaching a point where not that long from now a single sweep of a laser could level a city.

I do not see this, because at even low power a laser will ionize the air, and will block the beam.
If you focus even say a 10 watt laser down with a lens, on the other side the energy level will bounce all over the place as the
air at the focal point changes. This is why the high energy lasers use something called an unstable resonator,
which only has a virtual focal point.

 

[jmotivator]

How big a drone would it take to lift, target and fire a Hellfire anti-armor missile? Wouldn't it be about the size of a small helicopter? Ergo expensive?

The javelin missile has a total weight of 45lb, but the actual shaped charge is considerably lighter (~17lbs) than that because the Javelin is mostly delivery system, and targets the top of the tank where the armor is weakest.

But heck, consider a small drone of maybe 3 inches wide with a small amount of thermite as a payload. Such a small drone launched at short range from a mother drone could fly into the barrel of a main battle tank, ignite the thermite and render the tank's main gun inoperable.

Imagine such a mother drone with 20 or 30 such mini drones dropping thermite into the barrels of MBTs and on the hoods of every halftrack and within a few minutes the mechanized column is no longer mechanized.

 

[jmotivator]

I do not see this, because at even low power a laser will ionize the air, and will block the beam.
If you focus even say a 10 watt laser down with a lens, on the other side the energy level will bounce all over the place as the
air at the focal point changes. This is why the high energy lasers use something called an unstable resonator,
which only has a virtual focal point.

Current anti-drone lasers have an effective range of 1.8 miles.

The Free-Electron Laser can rapidly alternate frequency to overcome many different obstacles to most lasers. FEL technology has been planned for an initial 100kw power output but can theoretically go much higher since the FEL is not generated in a medium.

 

[ASHES]

The lethality of a drone appears to be limited to the weight it can carry, which limits the offensive arms that it can bring to bear.

In the given example:

If each drone had a single shot 22 it could accurately aim, I see this more of a threat against personnel as opposed to armor.
If each drone had a single frag grenade it could accurately drop on a target, it's still more an anti-personnel weapon.

How big a drone would it take to lift, target and fire a Hellfire anti-armor missile? Wouldn't it be about the size of a small helicopter? Ergo expensive?

Then again, maybe not. What about a drove with night vision which carries a 1 lb. payload of C4 shaped charge, attaches itself to an amored vehicle's weakest part and then detonates?

An interesting thought experiment, this.

It doesn't take a larger drone to make an anti-armor weapon, just a shaped charge.



Of course, larger drones with larger charges would lead to a higher success rate.

And people have put much more than a single shot 22 on a drone. A teen did it 9 years ago.

 

[eohrnberger]

The javelin missile has a total weight of 45lb, but the actual shaped charge is considerably lighter (~17lbs) than that because the Javelin is mostly delivery system, and targets the top of the tank where the armor is weakest.

But heck, consider a small drone of maybe 3 inches wide with a small amount of thermite as a payload. Such a small drone launched at short range from a mother drone could fly into the barrel of a main battle tank, ignite the thermite and render the tank's main gun inoperable.

Imagine such a mother drone with 20 or 30 such mini drones dropping thermite into the barrels of MBTs and on the hoods of every halftrack and within a few minutes the mechanized column is no longer mechanized.

Followed on by anti-personnel drones attacking the dismounted armor column, over and done with.

 

[jmotivator]

Followed on by anti-personnel drones attacking the dismounted armor column, over and done with.

Exactly, and flying in fast and low, weaving through trees or a few feet above the ground. By the time you can really hear them it's too late. It's like a barrage of MLRS but way more deadly because every bomblet is an angry robot that knows who or what it has to kill and the whole swarm can adjust on the fly to reprioritize targets as drones fall to countermeasures.

 

[eohrnberger]

Those missiles have considerable flight time and their own targeting capabilities (fire and forget.) They're already carried by conventional military drones (eg Predator and Reaper.)

It's not really clear to me how big helicopter drones can do anything better, than existing military drones. I guess they could loiter longer (particularly on the ground) and I guess they'd be quieter. But as you said, a military version would be quite expensive.

Predators and Reapers are very quite, to my understanding, in that they are flying at a height where their engine sound doesn't reach the ground.
Their loitering endurance is probably higher than any helicopter platform or derivative, so, yeah, a drone helicopter wouldn't perform as well as they would in that use.

However, drone helicopters do make sense in other instances:

The Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout is an unmanned autonomous helicopter developed by Northrop Grumman for use by the United States Armed Forces.[3] The Fire Scout is designed to provide reconnaissance, situational awareness, aerial fire support and precision targeting support for ground, air and sea forces. The initial RQ-8A version was based on the Schweizer 330, while the enhanced MQ-8B was derived from the Schweizer 333. The larger MQ-8C Fire Scout variant is based on the Bell 407.​

​

In February 2018, 23 MQ-8Bs were in service with the U.S. Navy.[4] The MQ-8B was retired from service in October 2022.[2]​

Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout​

 

[SavannahMann]

Drones and AI are the new airplane and anti aircraft technology war.

This will take a little time, so I beg your indulgence. The evolution of this technology is instructive, or I hope it is.

Going into World War Two shooting down enemy aircraft was essentially a game of steel curtains. The idea was to throw a lot of junk into the air and hope some of it hit the airplane badly enough to knock it out of the air.

This wasn’t easy. First you had to know the speed, altitude, and direction of the enemy aircraft. Anti aircraft artillery or Triple A had to be alerted and given this information. Delicate time fuzes were set on the shells. This allowed them to detonate at the right time, as the shells passed through the right altitude.

Observers would report that the shells were bursting above, or below the aircraft so adjustments could be made. The airplanes could change their altitude to throw off the ranging efforts.

As you can imagine this was a lot of expense and effort for little return.

Then the British and Americans began working on a Proximity Fuze. This would automatically detonate a shell as it neared something big. Like an aircraft or the ground. When this was developed, it was a huge advance. It was classified as the highest of Top Secrets along with the Atomic Bomb. Seriously, a simple fuse that detonated artillery shells was so secret we literally lied to the troops about how it worked in case any of them were ever captured.

It was a game changer. Anti Aircraft and artillery support became five or ten times more effective. If you had troops in the open, an air burst of the artillery shell spreads fragments around, hitting many of those troops, and you could do this before with laborious calculations and delicate settings on a time fuse, it was a lot easier with the VT, or Variable Time fuse. The shells would explode near the airplane, when the radar pulse would bounce back and tell the shell it was close to the target for anti aircraft work.

After World War II, this of course became something that everyone figured out, and soon everyone had. So as we got into Korea, everyone’s anti aircraft artillery was more accurate and effective. It was time to figure out a counter to the counter.

The counter to aircraft bombing you was anti aircraft guns. The counter to the guns needed to be found. So cluster bombs and aircraft dedicated to hunting anti aircraft guns were developed. This would allow a low flying aircraft to drop a lot of little bombs, and if one of those little bombs hit the gun, or ammunition, it would be damaged or destroyed. Or at least the personnel servicing the gun would be injured and killed.

In Vietnam, these flights were called Wild Weasels. Aircraft that hunted anti aircraft systems. Iron Hand fired radar seeking missiles that homed in on the anti aircraft radar. Weasels dropped cluster bombs on the anti aircraft systems.

Improved anti aircraft missiles were developed and soon the anti aircraft guns were essentially obsolete. Especially with the advent of Stealth Technology. But that is the sequence. One countered the game changing effects of the one previous. From calculating how long a shell would fly to detonate near an aircraft in 1940, to stealth aircraft costing billions of dollars to avoid detection by anti aircraft systems, each counter caused immediate research and development into the way to counter that development. From guns that fired these shells serviced by men, to the CIWS and similar systems on land where all a human has to do is turn a key and the computer does the rest.

Drones and AI are the current ones. Now, Drones are changing the battlefield. And developments are coming to cause the drones to be damaged or destroyed by counter drone systems. Next swarms of drones will launch and take out the attacking drones. After that is developed, there will be decoy and anti-anti Drone systems. Yes I put two anti’s there for the example.

 

[Rich2018]

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) commonly called "drones" have or will replace close air support aircraft like the A-10, and the Apache attack helicopter.

 

[Fledermaus]

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) commonly called "drones" have or will replace close air support aircraft like the A-10, and the Apache attack helicopter.

Replace?

No.

Augment?

Yes.

 

[zincwarrior]

The largest drone display so far is over 5,000 drones.

Imagine being on the battlefield and getting swarmed by 5 or 10 thousand armed autonomous drones.

You wouldn't be imagining very long methinks.