Military Drone Discussion Part 2

Follow on to this thread:


As war is becoming drone-dominated before our eyes, I think the genie is out of the bottle.

I have a hard time seeing how warfare won't be entirely driven by drones in 20 years unless some even more terrifyingly effective and cheap technology comes along.

Interestingly, since drones are now proving that soldiers and armor are probably too easily countered on the battlefield by drones, it's possible that in 20 years the drones will rule the battlefield AND the casualty list. There is no point in lining up human targets across a no-man's-land when drone accuracy and lethality reach 90%. The better option is to not line up humans at all.

The terrible side of that is that in 20 years the war front in a drone war will become everywhere, and the primary targets will increasingly become civilians. The effectiveness of drones as a conventional weapon also make them exceptionally terrifying as a terror weapon.

People can debate and innovate forever on battlefield countermeasures for drones, but most of those countermeasures would prove unworkable in civilian areas. You can't do broad spectrum round-the-clock jamming in civilian areas, for instance.

We're going to start reaching MAD levels of threat, but t won't just be two super powers in the stand off, it will be every country.

It's just an evolution in warfare.

Problem right now is that drones are much cheaper. Ordinance that is very expensive is being used to country. So the cost ratio of enemy/defense is way out of wack.

There are already missile systems in work that fit guidance systems to much less expensive rockets used already for air/ground attack. With guidance and proximity detonation they are converted for an anti-drone mission. The conversion of an existing system has a positive impact on the cost ration. Both for deployment and the cost of a per-shot. Instead of expending a $5,000,000, use a guided rocket costing what? $20,000-$50,000?

Then there are directed energy weapons that will come online. Even better for anti-drone as they do not rely on loading missiles and rocked. Faster response time, no reloading the rack/stack, and able to track and disable/destroy larger drone numbers.

WW

And now that the Spiderweb concept was also used on Iran, nobody is safe anywhere.

Expect to see it happen here within this year.

Drone hobbyists are all collectively moaning as they've seen their hobby become more and more restricted until now when things are about to get 10 times worse for them.

My impression is that what today seems like an overwhelming sea change in warfare is only because the equally inexpensive countermeasures have yet to catch up in testing, production and deployment. Cannon nets or rocket nets are inexpensive, and detection can trigger deployment with nothing more than the equivalent of the one on your Ring Doorbell. Think of it as the equivalent of flares and chaff for combat aircraft - a tiny fraction of the price of SAMs or Air-to-Air missiles.

Structurally, the small drones used in Ukraine's most recent airfield attacks are no more than gnats. All you need is to protect your hardware is to detect and shoot out mosquito netting to ensnare it. It may still explode, but before making contact and destroying its target. I can imagine a day when a dozen or so of these are attached to every active tank, howitzer and APC on the battle field, or deployed in advance of them. I wouldn't be surprised if the gamers in the Pentagon aren't on their way to testing prototypes at Picatinney Arsenal in New Jersey already.

Of course the more expensive drones - the ones with penetrating power like a cruise missile - will be much rarer, and require things like SAM batteries.

Hamish Howl said:

And now that the Spiderweb concept was also used on Iran, nobody is safe anywhere.

Expect to see it happen here within this year.

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It's been used on Iran AND Russia in the last few months.

What was with the soldier carrying a drone like a kid with a model kit?

MamboDervish said:

My impression is that what today seems like an overwhelming sea change in warfare is only because the equally inexpensive countermeasures have yet to catch up in testing, production and deployment. Cannon nets or rocket nets are inexpensive, and detection can trigger deployment with nothing more than the equivalent of the one on your Ring Doorbell. Think of it as the equivalent of flares and chaff for combat aircraft - a tiny fraction of the price of SAMs or Air-to-Air missiles.

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I don't think there is, or will be, a cheap solution to Drones. Drone defense will be playing catchup for a very long time. It's easy to envision a defense against a single drone, but when you start getting into dispersed groups of 20, 30, 100 drones the whole net idea gets increasingly impossible.

The only answer to an autonomous drone swarm that I can think of is another drone swarm, but even that is problematic since tracking a human, let alone an AFV, is far easier than detecting and tracking a drone, so the defense will be more expensive than the attack.

MamboDervish said:

Structurally, the small drones used in Ukraine's most recent airfield attacks are no more than gnats. All you need is to protect your hardware is to detect and shoot out mosquito netting to ensnare it.

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WAY easier said than done. Drones converging on your hardware from all sides at an elevation of 2 to 3 feet would be almost impossible to defend against inside 100m.

MamboDervish said:

It may still explode, but before making contact and destroying its target. I can imagine a day when a dozen or so of these are attached to every active tank, howitzer and APC on the battle field, or deployed in advance of them. I wouldn't be surprised if the gamers in the Pentagon aren't on their way to testing prototypes at Picatinney Arsenal in New Jersey already.

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And those defenses will be more expensive than the drones and will need to be ubiquitous.

MamboDervish said:

Of course the more expensive drones - the ones with penetrating power like a cruise missile - will be much rarer, and require things like SAM batteries.

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I don't think that kind of drone will ever exist. If you want that kind of drome-delivered power then you are better off with a tiny drone with a targeting laser to paint a target for artillery.

Imagine 100 tiny drones quietly reconning an armored column and painting all heavy weapons for an MLRS battery 15 miles away dropping hundreds of guided anti-armor munitions.

We have similar tech already, but my point in the OP is that currently you would need air superiority to carry out that kind of strike with current technology, but you wouldn't need air superiority with low flying drones.

ASHES said:

Drone hobbyists are all collectively moaning as they've seen their hobby become more and more restricted until now when things are about to get 10 times worse for them.

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This. I can barely use my kit anywhere these days. It’s damn frustrating.

jmotivator said:

I don't think there is, or will be, a cheap solution to Drones. Drone defense will be playing catchup for a very long time. It's easy to envision a defense against a single drone, but when you start getting into dispersed groups of 20, 30, 100 drones the whole net idea gets increasingly impossible.

The only answer to an autonomous drone swarm that I can think of is another drone swarm, but even that is problematic since tracking a human, let alone an AFV, is far easier than detecting and tracking a drone, so the defense will be more expensive than the attack.



WAY easier said than done. Drones converging on your hardware from all sides at an elevation of 2 to 3 feet would be almost impossible to defend against inside 100m.

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Think about that cost ...

jmotivator said:

And those defenses will be more expensive than the drones and will need to be ubiquitous.

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No, they'd be much cheaper, especially once manufactured to scale. We're talking about netting launched with 4 or 6 shotgun shells. Pretty damn cheap.

jmotivator said:

I don't think that kind of drone will ever exist. If you want that kind of drome-delivered power then you are better off with a tiny drone with a targeting laser to paint a target for artillery.

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Now you're into an entirely different kettle of fish.

jmotivator said:

Imagine 100 tiny drones quietly reconning an armored column and painting all heavy weapons for an MLRS battery 15 miles away dropping hundreds of guided anti-armor munitions.

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You've been watching too many movies.

jmotivator said:

We have similar tech already, but my point in the OP is that currently you would need air superiority to carry out that kind of strike with current technology, but you wouldn't need air superiority with low flying drones.

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All you are describing above is the idea that with the countermeasures I've proposed, one drone will never be enough to do the job like it is now and has been for weeks. Sure, if you send six or eight drone at the same target in a wave, you'll overcome the countermeasures, just as you would if you sent six or eight Sidewinders after the same plane, exhausting their chaff and flares. But not only does your ammunition cost more go up by at least that factor, you also need to commit more trained operators, build and hide larger field units, etc. Very quickly the cheap formula of "one drone=one tank" or "one drone=one plane" recedes far into the rear view mirror.

The other factor about the advance drones being used to take out the netting, it exposes the attack, alerts defenses, creates debris and shrapnel that can trigger the trailing drones, and can create smoke which obscures the target altogether. Remember, these are entirely visually targeted - not GPS. A tank or howitzer can hang out in a forest surrounded by trees, and those trees can be shrouded by netting that would stop these drones. Remember, we're talking about equipment so light and fragile that if it didn't have a bomb attached, you could swat it out of the air with your bare hand.

Don't be surprised if you start reading about netting countermeasures before the year is out.

jmotivator said:

It's been used on Iran AND Russia in the last few months.

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Yes, and it's going to be very popular going forward.

It basically costs about $15,000 to have an unstoppable, almost untraceable attack on anyone you like.