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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.
This reminds me of a discussion I had with a group of my physics/ Electro-Optic students related to radar measurement vs radar detectors.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.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.
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.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.
No doubt advanced militaries are developing all the technologies you've described.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.
Just out of curiosity, searched up 'smallest autonomous drone'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.
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?
How big a drone would it take to lift, target and fire a Hellfire anti-armor missile?
I'm not a drone operator, but I know a lot of guys like that and they really changed modern warfare.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.
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.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.
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?
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.
It doesn't take a larger drone to make an anti-armor weapon, just a shaped charge.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.
Followed on by anti-personnel drones attacking the dismounted armor column, over and done with.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.
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.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.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) commonly called "drones" have or will replace close air support aircraft like the A-10, and the Apache attack helicopter.
You wouldn't be imagining very long methinks.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.
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