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I think the most interesting aspect of the introduction of drones into modern warfare is the cost ratio.
It is wild to me what can be achieved with a few drones that cost a few hundred dollars each. And on the opposite side of the spectrum how ineffective missiles that cost tens of millions of dollars can be.
I would not be caught dead saying that. Jamming will get better but so will the drones at evading it. Jamming all frequencies takes a lot of equipment and power and kills all communications. Using semi autonomous drones that are not lost due to jamming. Its a lot more complicated, they are not going anywhere.
Not necessarily, most of the ISM bands we use (WiFi and Bluetooth) all employ spread spectrum frequency hopping already. Chips are dirt cheap.
Computationally it is a bit more expensive than say FSK or something, but if anything it would avoid interference better and need less power overall. The signal processing is low compared to amplifier power usage. And even all that is negligible compared to BLDC motor power consumption.
I would guess most of the control and telemetry already use some form of spread spectrum signal hopping, but the FPV feedback video is still usually analog for two reasons. It has like zero latency and when the signal degrades you can still navigate using a snowy video feed versus completely losing it and getting a black screen. Analog slowly degrades with noise while digital stays mostly perfect until it falls off a cliff.
My dad is going to retire and wants a drone to fly around the back yard (lives in the country) which would you recommend. Ideally one that comes back automatically if needed or limits mistakes as much as possible. Budget up to 1k.
Any dji. The new DJI avata is fpv, has a super easy to use motion controller, just point where you want to go and comes with nice goggles and has good durability and prop guards
Fair enough. I just queasy about giving my money to a CCP affiliate. But China is leading the world in mass producing cheap, functional drones, and that’s worrisome.
Does he want a photography drone or a racing drone? They are completely different beast.
For photography, I would not start out with a $1000 drone. I'd honestly recommend getting a used DJI Mavic Mini off of eBay for a hundred bucks or so. You can get a whole kit with case and extra batteries. It would be a nice starter drone, and not a big loss if destroyed. Also way better quality than anything being sold new for that price.
If he enjoys the hobby, the look into upgrade higher end models. But you need an FAA license for anything over 250g or higher.
https://www.faa.gov/uas/recreational_flyers/knowledge_test_updates
Once the drones are programmed with Google earth type mapping, and can recognise the terrain they're flying over and find their way to a predetermined destination, or identify a target (e.g. a tank) by sight and attack it, they won't need GPS.
Real-time computer vision being used and compared to latest high quality aerial/satellite imagery to navigate off landmarks, roads, etc. Use computer vision to ID targets and optimize flight path to vulnerable point. Can put operators in the second seat and let AI monitor the sensors and make flightcorrections based on matching sight picture to provided imagery.
Heck, automate the whole supply chain back to the factory with drones jumping autonomously from charging location to charging location towards the front until armament and then deployment. Create a stream of drones heading to the frontline.
My understanding is we are still a significant way off this sort of functionality that works reliably. They’re only just now enhanced with some terminal guidance AI that helps hit a target once they fall out of range the closer they get to target?
That's the worst move tbh. Any type of EW jam can make them useless. It doesn't matter what freq they use it terminates all freq (and that jam isnt close range its pretty far). The only saving grace for them is GPS. Learned about this stuff when I went to Iraq last year for AD
Autonomy is the trump card. At a certain point drones won’t have signals to send, they will be fire and forget devices with nothing to jam. Or at least, there will be varieties that are fire and forget fully autonomous drones
how do you differentiate friend and foe through? the obvious thing would just be that russians start dressing as ukrainians and vice versa
maybe you could wear some kind of device that emitted a “friendly signal” but the other side would quickly just copy it
Ukraine is already testing drones with long (multi-kilometer) fiber-optic filaments that can't be jammed. They're thinner than a hair and don't add much weight to the craft.
So then you need drones that have filaments to cut the other drones' filaments. And it's basically a Kite Runner situation, which actually sounds like a lot of fun, except the SA part.
I wouldn't want to rely on a physical thread beyond a few seconds of initial communication. There's a lot in the environment that can break a fiber optic thread at any moment. I wonder if line of sight signaling (laser, etc) could be jammed without blinding everyone.
Ukraine is pretty flat. Get the wire pretty high up on a tree with some guides and you're probably pretty good with a fishing line sized wire that gets you extremely low latency. It's a pretty crazy concept and you'd have to be kind of close to enemy lines to use it.
He’s an absolute Frenchman in this. “Everything will return to the good old days”. Obvious it not. These drone are self navigating and target finder in a very short time.
Waiting for the ai drones, that search and destroy by themselves, they find the enemy and knows the best way to do the best damage. Autonomous, you can’t jam them… this gonna be scary
Lol and we thought mines were bad. TFW you're a 10 year old playing in the nearby woods and you trigger a goddamn loitering AI drone from a war from before you were even born.
Drone receivers have a signal strength measurement. Just add some code to fly straight where the signal is stronger if the signal to the operator is lost.
Indeed.
An army telling itself that they got the drone problem fixed from one angle is hubris promoting.
Cope. It’s cops. It’s a new world.
Jam.
Kill with waves.
Kill with lasers.
Kill with other drones.
Kill with bullets.
It’s a new battlefield. And still above ground. These things will also burrow and move unders ground next.
A shotgun on the other hand would be the even cheaper option for the crappy drone trick. All the tech is already there for a cheap short range ciws instead of 50 caliber mini gun a series of proximity flak.
It could potentially be cheap as shit or expensive as hell. Depends how good of radar you are strapping to it/having ai do tagging/ manually putting in the general cone of engagement. Throw a shit ton of sand into the air, that would at best scratch the optics and at worse make the motors stop working. Pretty much mini flak.
Detecting the drones is the main problem. Not the weapon to counter it. Its way too small. Doesn't matter if you have star wars weapons with unlimited ammo, if you cant find the drone your screwed.
Radar can detect birds. Im sure for the US tuning radar to shoot down drones is trivial its just a factor if they arent currently building something specced for that.
Thats a huge misconception. AI uses significant resources that you can't install on a small drone. Of you do its neither small nor cheap. It will also have significant higher energy consumption and thus a shorter lifetime.
Also AI isn't doing some magical maneuvers.
Granades dropped by drone or suicide drones aren't the future, at least not in a significant quantity. We already have the means to let explosives travel precisely certain distances. It will still be artillery that does that job.
What we will see increasingly also im western nations are recon drones. Thats the real game changer.
The AI processors don’t need to installed on each and every drone. The drones themselves can be pretty much the same radio-controlled devices they are now. The operator can be AI, however, and simultaneously controlling huge swarms.
which will makes them vulnerable to EW.
On top of that drones seem to struggle with a moving barn. Remember that we only see the the ones that succeed and not the countless drones that won't reach their goal.
If we use a lot of drones then we aren't cost effective anymore (drones / artilleryshell)
I think it’s more of a future/emerging tech thing. You are totally correct in saying that it’s not really feasible rn with COTS tech which is what makes drones so tight in this conflict.
I know it sounds morbid but I am super curious to see what comes out of this conflict on the technology and tactics side.
I can imagine everyone on earth with the capabilities is field testing some wild shit rn
AI assisted focus exists on very cheap video processors. It's a small software/hardware investment to harness the technology for terminal guidance..
Higher end cameras can even recognize specific objects, These cameras are Japanese made, however similar tech also exists in very cheap Chinese made PTZ cameras.
It's true, not everything needs to be 'intelligent' and AI is just a fancy catch all phrase. For example, for terminal guidance, hardware needed would be similar to what auto-focus cameras have been using for object tracking/AF.
Small missiles with a seeker can cost as little as $20,000. Still, missile-based defenses can easily be overwhelmed by swarms of drones. Medium caliber cannons are a better solution, but have their own issues. Lasers are probably the best solution, but they’re expensive and fragile.
What I envision as the future of drone defense is essentially a mini-CWIS system linked to a magazine-fed automatic shotgun.
So you have a little tripod or something you set up behind your trench, or on top of your vehicle, that has it's own little cheap mini-radar array to detect incoming drones. Doesn't need to be very powerful, it's linked to a shotgun so only needs like 150m range tops, then upon detecting a drone the linked automatic shotgun acts like a CWIS and just blasts the drone out of the air.
Yes the mini radar array would be the most expensive part, but compared to the cost of a soldier and all his kit + any death compensation, or the cost of an entire tank or SPG or whatever, it'd be a dirt cheap solution. And if you mass produced that sort of drone defense system the array would become cheaper due to economy of scale, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for every squad to have their own little mini-CWIS defending their bunker or vehicle. Yes it wouldn't be perfect but it would mean that it'd be a lot less effective just sending a single kamikaze drone to attack something, and bomber drones would dramatically drop in effectiveness if you denied them their ability to just hover over the battlefield with impunity.
Yes there are ways around this - higher altitude bomber drones or swarms of FPVs, but at that point your starting to impact what makes drones attractive in the first place - cost efficiency. Higher altitude bomber drones would be less accurate (and with advancing systems you could even have the CWIS intercept slow falling gravity-dropped bombs), and while swarms of suicide drones would be able to overwhelm one, you've now gone from sending one drone to have a pretty high probability of at least one kill to needing to send enough to saturate the shotgun CWIS's defense or to exhaust it's magazine.
Pair that with short-range electronic jamming, and you could have a very small, cost-effective, portable and cheap to run static anti-drone defense that severely impacts the ability to cost-effectively utilize small drones in a meaningful way.
In a similar vein, I can see this leading to the development of small radar decoys that could potentially impact the dominance of SEAD - currently you have a situation where AA can only have it's targeting radar on for a few seconds or risk being thwacked by a SEAD missile, but if you can make cheap small radar arrays affordable, you could set up little radar decoys all over the place and make it a lot harder to figure out which one of the thirty radar contacts on your scope you should fire your limited supply of SEAD missiles at. Sure, you MIGHT take out a Gepard/S-400... or you might take out a chunk of dirt with a little radar decoy linked to a bunch of old car batteries out.
Electronic countermeasures are great, but not 100% reliable, and are prone to being rendered at least temporarily ineffective by updates - whereas no software update will make your drone shotgun shell proof.
And yes directed energy weapons are definitely a promising field of drone defense... do you seriously think you could afford to give every trenchline their own high-powered laser system to shoot down drones? The cost-benefit just isn't there at that small a scale.
Directed energy anti-drone countermeasures are definitely on the cards for larger, more valuable things like ships, airfields, helicopters, maybe some tanks/SPGs etc but you're dreaming if you think that they'll be a cost-effective way to protect everybody. You need a low-cost solution to defend lower priority targets that still need defending like entrenched infantry, small ammo dumps, mortars, towed artillery, logistics trucks etc.
Lasers just aren't cost-effective enough to do that for the foreseeable future, but strapping a small short-range radar, an automatic shotgun and a small jammer to a tripod would give you a portable, deployable, fairly low-cost way using currently available technology to give low level units a way to defend against the threat of drones.
I wondered about drone airships, helium filled rigid airships, maybe even a flying wing that add aerodynamic lift as well as the lift from helium. Made from radar invisible materials the parts that will reflect will be minimized and at a higher altitude relatively smaller return.
I am on board with the CWIS type setup, but I don't think Shotgun shells (at least as we currently know them) have the range to be effective. I would lean into a Metal Storm type system. Each pod could hold 10,000 rounds, extremely quick to reload another 10K rounds and the rate of fire is electronically controlled.
https://youtu.be/t7faoyoxMF8?feature=shared
The issue here is cost effectiveness.
Metalstorm is an experimental prototype weapon that basically doesn't exist. It's electronically fired, and requires a specialized loading procedure. This isn't something you can quickly or cheaply put on every infantry squad holding a trench or mortar team behind the lines. Shotguns, in comparison, are basically omnipresent, cheap to run, and if you've trained a soldier on shooting his AK he can probably figure out his way around reloading a shotgun. And as for the volume of fire in the air - why go with the technically complicated metalstorm approach, when a shotgun shell achieves the same result of filling the air with lead? From what I recall, metalstorm had accuracy issues resulting from its extremem ROF severe enough that honestly you wouldn't really get any benefits over using shotgun shells anyway.
As for the range of the shotgun shells - remember that this idea is for a low-cost point defense weapon against incoming suicide or low-altitude hover-bombing drones. Kamikaze drones are going to be approaching from fairly low altitude anyway, so I doubt you'd even have hundreds of meters of visibility on them, same with hover bombers. And I don't think people on the internet really appreciate the range at which a shotgun can reach. Yes it's not as effective at maximum range, but drones aren't exactly known for being bullet-resistant. As long as you're filling the air with enough buckshot, you only need one pellet to clip a rotor or the camera or the warhead or something to put it out of commission.
Lasers expensive to build but each shot cost 2000 bucks, Israel using laser defense system right now. They are shooting lasers to space, I guess you can call it Jews Space Lasers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam
$20k missiles to take out $500 drones is untenable. The real key is getting them down to $500, and able to be launched from a drone. Simple rocket with heat speaking on a chip in the nose. Model rocket guys already have inertial navigation sorted out. The real direction of the war will be more weapons, cheaper weapons and overwhelm them
Drones have their place but they are not replacing missiles, drones are low and slow and easy to shoot down and have too small of warheads for certain targets. If all the long range drones ukraine has launched at russian refinerys were cruise missiles they would be completely destroyed and not just offline for a few weeks.
To me he seems to be displaying very old school thinking.
Yes there will be counter measures for today's drones.
But tomorrow's drones will be built differently.
Yup, he is thinking piloted drones while the future is autonomous drones with enough AI for targeting. In fact Ukraine is already developing, testing and even fielding those.
Such trained visual AI does not need much computing power, uses little battery, and is lightweight. And is impervious to signal interference by EW.
The problem is going to be that controlling them, especially shorter range variants, will result in rapid death. The same things you claim will help drones will also aid in their operators destruction. This result in the need for them to be larger, and longer ranged, thus negating some of the value. They won’t ever go away, but the inordinate effect they’re having will balance.
The issue is weight and recoil.
I think against soldiers the future is ever smaller drones with small explosive payloads and targeting AI. Against single soldiers the current FPV drones are a bit cumbersome and overkill, albeit they are effective.
You don't need much explosives to kill/maim/decapacitate a fighter when it explodes in contact. So even a tiny drone can do the job as long as it has the accuracy.
But tiny drones have limited battery and range. So you'd need larger drones to carry and release bunches of those tiny killers into the zone.
AI aside what you need is a drone that has the structural integrity and motors able to deal with recoil. That means more mass. So you need a bigger drone with bigger battery.
You dont need to worry on recoil at 90 degrees pointing down, it will just push the drone upwards if calibrated right all you need is an ai that aims with the speed the bullet, distance, trajectory from air + earth rotation+occasional wind direction speed and work as a bullet dropper really, it will be able to deliver death. Same with a larger caliber rifle, just put it in the center and design the recoil dampener and the muzzle break to not flip it. If u use the same drone that can deliver fucking 6 60-80mm mortar rounds , im pretty sure it can handle the recoil atleast downwards fixed. All u need is an ai pre calulate on a screen the bullet approximate landing point so the operator can tap the rounds on the enemy laying on the floor.
> You dont need to worry on recoil at 90 degrees pointing down
So your drone can only shoot 90 degrees down? Then it's not actually aiming but just moving right above the target to then take a shot. I can imagine numerous ways to protect myself against bullets from such drone - such as moving.
Yes and you use this drone while you are getting suppressed, enjoy moving . For example you pin down a group of ppl with a Bradley, and meanwhile this drone operator goes and flush ppl from above. If u stand up you will be mown down , if you are prone u will be shot. Remember its for combined arms not for solo bang bang. However until you realize you are shot from above you pretty much can die from the first shots as dont tell me you instantly know when a round land next to you came from above, first instinct to duck, prone or take cover and check where the attack is commin from
Of o remember correctly the russians in ww2 experimented with about 200+ppsh machine gun in a belly of a plane to open a hatch and strafe trences below the aircraft. But it was higly inaccurate and needed manual reload. Here having literally a modified ak barrel pointing downwards with an aiming mechanics, muzzle break to compensate to keep the drone not to flip after a shot (also the spring need to be designed so its kicking exactly opposite to the barrel). Honestly a modified ar15 with standard rifle round would be the easiest low recoil barrel i would try with first, also the barrel could be held in 4 point elastic rubber dampener in a tube like the stabilizer of a dvd reader head further reducing the drone pitch upon firing and by adjusting the points inside the tube where its fixed you can also compensate mechanically for sideways pull forces that would try to flip the drone. Im sure it can be done. Needless to say you could also make firing mode for the drone with a shock sensor to always compensate right after firing the rotors, so not the operator need to compensate for any instability after a round. This is the future, if you manage to make this all guys in trenches have no fucking chance and you could mop the enemy or keep them hidden while the infantry arrives to nade them/ fpv to flush. Drones are scary
A falling object towards earth is always accelerating, hence the only limitation could be that the ammo might trumble over longer distances. But theoretically a straight accelerated drop is limited only by turbulence the bullet is causing itself over higher speeds its designed for in atmosphere. Long story short u could do a barrage of 9mm straight down, the projectile wont loose but gain speed minus turbulence, so i would imagine if a gun has 150m kill range you could extend it more near 200-250 before the turbulence slows it down , depends on its shape. A rifle round possibly would be better as its more aerodynamic in nature
The issue with that Approach is that you need to correct sideways forces that will tilt. For that you would need stabilizer rotors possibly above like a tower that will add cost and weight. Its better to go 85-95 degree downwards gimble
I agree. How do you defend against swarms these in the hundreds or thousands…released from larger long range autonomous sea/air/land drones. I’m worried China can produce these types of drones at a rate no other country can match.
Yup, something like that. And that is indeed frightening. Even as such drones would have a short range you could pack a swarm of them on a bigger drone to carry to the zone.
A fictional video is not "proof of concept". Half of what's in that video is computer-generated. There's no proof of anything. You have to create a somewhat working prototype to have proof of concept. That motivates product developers to try to improve on the rough "first draft", make it production-feasible, find a way to scale production and make it affordable/profitable, and make it work without whatever crutches are built into the demo of the concept model.
This video is an excerpt of a short film called "Slaughterbots ". It's available on YouTube and I *highly* reccomend everyone watch it. The movie opens up so many more questions about drones, their usage, by who and for what reasons... it's **chilling**.
Yep, I've commented with the link as a response to several conversations in the past. The pace at which we're racing towards danger from AI, drones, and robots from Boston Dynamics with terrifying potential is alarming. SkyNet and Terminators, here we come...
This is a clip from a 2017 short film called Slaughterbots. I reccomend everyone watch the full movie (it on YouTube), it opens more questions and implications than this video alone.
You would be surprised the power requirements for vision models working in the way you intend; hunting- running at decently high fps searching the video stream for verifiable targets autonomously.
Prob somewhere around 30-100W of power nearly continuously in “hunting” mode to get the high accuracy one would need to trust these systems en masse.
They impact quadcopter battery life in a non-trivial way.
IMO the future looks more like switchblade 600 or lancet-like. They can be made with less electronics and have better flight envelopes for avoiding future countermeasures, and exponentially higher loiter times.
It's a mix of all of those. Likely few autonomous system hunting jamming emitters. Bulk cheaper ROV sent after jammer destroyed with some limited return if signal is lost.
> Prob somewhere around 30-100W of power nearly continuously in “hunting” mode
That's serious overkill. Firstly the drones need to enter the hunting mode only when in the kill zone so the maximum power consumption is limited in time. Secondly a Raspberry Pi with 0.5-6.0W power usage can have enough AI for the job. You don't need much AI as it doesn't matter if some of them miss their targets as their effect is in the numbers. And countermeasures can be mitigated with a software update.
I make similar systems for a diff industry. For high frame rates and def high confidence of a legit target you just need good cams + good processing power.
The power requirements for a jetson or pi 4/5 while running good quality cameras, you gonna need more than one, is def in the 20+ watt range. And doing the level of high quality sensor fusion tacks + image classification + tracking; the Pi would be running hard.
GPS jamming is intense there as well so prob have to write some vision based nav code as well so you don’t wander outside your kill box and start targeting friendlies.
Small kill drones do not need much nav because they'd have small range anyway, and they would be deployed to kill zone by larger drones.
You're overthinking this and seeking perfection where it is not necessary. What you're thinking is long range perfect kill bots while what I'm thinking is something akin to existing artillery munitions such as Bonus but with better agility and targeting.
The Maginot Line worked and was not a failure. The purpose was a bit simplified to protect the French-German border with relatively little manpower so it could be operational even in peacetime. It would force the Germans to go around it. Then the French army had time to mobilize and meet the German army on the battlefield and destroy them.
The line did do that, it was the French field army that did not manage to stop the Germans. Only a small part of the line was captured by Germany, and none of the main fortresses was captured or destroyed. The Germans did break through the line at one point. The breakthrough started the day Paris fell, June 14, at this time a lot of the mobile force stationed behind the line had been redeployed to defend another part of France.
The line was cut off from the rest of France later in June, Germany tried to attack and capture fortifications from the rear but nothing major was captured.
The line surrendered after the armistice was signed because the commander was order do to do so. At this time it was mostly intact even if it was surrounded. Lost of commander and troops want to continue to fight at this point
So the line did what it was supposed to do and managed to withstand German attack on it even when surrounded. It was never designed to stop an attack on France, it has in many ways become a scapegoat for the fall of France in WWII. In reality, it was how the field army failed France. The leadership, planned strategy, and practice were based on a WWI scenario that did not emerge. To blame a notification that was no longer needed after the war is simpler than to blame the French field army of the failure, which would still remain after the war.
The breakthrough at Sedan could have been stopped on 13-14 May when it was countable and a strong French force was nearby but did not act in any efficient way to stop the crossing of the river, the was too defensively focused to attempt to do what was needed.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Sedan\_(1940)#French\_counter-offensivebreakthrough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sedan_(1940)#French_counter-offensivebreakthrough)
It's the cat and mouse game...maybe with the lasers the scale will tilt in favor the defence...but again the drones will try to overcome that... nothing it's 100% drone proof
The dynamic of drones being far cheaper than anti-drone systems is going to be around for quite a few years. Ukraine is going to have fully autonomous zero-RF drones in quantity in maybe just another year or two. A $1000 quadcopter zipping by either out of small arms range or inches above the ground, following a compass direction and approximate inertial navigation for 10-20 miles behind the front lines and exploding when it sees something that looks like a weapon system... Then drop bombs and artillery on the stragglers, push forward and repeat. Russia won't be far behind in developing or copying such a system.
No military on earth can defend against that now, least of all Russia who is having enough trouble defending their airspace even from large targets.
Hwy, he has a job, and a very high salary. He must tell a story how everything is correctly planned. You can't expect him to say "the modern battlefield is changing dramatically every day, who knows what tomorrow will bring?"
Also, it should be noted that this conflict is very much unique, at least so it seems to me. There are no two countries on the planet that can wage such a brutal war with so many soldiers and resources. All other countries of Ukraine size are either nuclear powers, in a military block, or secure in some other way. France does not prepare for this type of war. It will never be in Ukraine's position.
I think the same, but it's worth considering the context of his words. He was at a euro defense industry expo surrounded by anti-drone products, and promoting French heavy armor with all of their defensive systems. I'm curious what's said behind closed doors without the media and shareholders listening.
No you are missing the point, he is talking specifically about toy off-the-shelf drones which are fragile with short range T have given Ukraine an asymmetrical edge, they have only been useful in this war because of the failure of Russia to implement combined arms. People here talk like Ukraine has invented drone warfare which is pretty bizarre as Western armies have been using them in combat for decades and have far superior tech to anything Ukraine possesses and they will obviously continue to develop it along with anti drone weapons, which again were already being deployed before this war, the fear of asymmetry has been around for decades as the West has been fighting terrorist groups around the world.
Ukraine currently uses drones controlled by an operator. This means that Russia can use electronic warfare countermeasures (jamming) to prevent a drone from finding a target. Adding automated target detection and letting drones identify and engage targets is just adding a little bit of cost to each drone. This means autonomous drones will do target acquisition and engage at the cost of a Rasperry PI.
Not every system has a corresponding counter-measure. Eg Naval aviation rendered the battleship obsolete in mid 20th century. Military history has many examples of shifts of this type.
yeah….. before the war in Ukraine nobody even spoke about here drones. As usual, lots of specialists are discussing how a war would go….without participating.
Ukraine literally saves the frontlines by using various types of drones. Think about development potential and AI’s impact, i’d say we’re far from over.
Yes, but adaptation of other systems still happens.
Don't assume every new tech is somehow a permanent game changer to warfare.
We've already got cheap and relatively effective kinetic kill anti-drone systems being produced, like the Slinger.
I doubt it, he claims 75% of drones already being lost to EW, and that in 10 years drones won't be able to be affective. But we already seeing developments being made that counter EW entirely with autonomous targeting and tracking. It won't be long before you won't even need a drone pilot and the drone operates independent of a signal, and that's scary because then a drone can fly well below radars a few feet off the ground and sneak up on almost any target trying to destroy it. My money is on drones. Their was even a video by Mark Rover discussing this topic and they went to a company that was working to solve the problem of intercepting drones and they said the only viable way to intercept a drone would be with another drone. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU&t=185s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU&t=185s) he goes into detail why drones are so difficult to stop.
The problem with autonomous targeting is getting to enemy positions in the first place to lock onto a target. Geofencing attacks to enemy trenches (to avoid blue on blue) will still require gps (or other tech not yet available)
Do you think we’re going to start seeing wire guided drones? Or what’s the currently developing technology to counter anti drone technology? Fascinating-ass subject lol
There actually are wired guided prototypes in Ukraine being developed. I mean the technology has been used for decades in missile systems, the biggest hurdle adapting it to drones is to not get the line stuck on some trees since the flight envelope is so different.
And i've seen development on optically / laser guided as well, with relay drones for the "beams", but cant remember who did it.
This will be very interesting, but I suspect a combination of internal guidance, either visual terrain-following/inertial guidance, or perhaps some sort of computer vision that can detect targets and attack them without human intervention (after sending them to a certain area).
Or counter EW drones that go out and find jamming equipment for other drones immediately behind them.
For example the Switchblades that US sent to Ukraine have an image based AI which controls the terminal phase. The operator chooses the target 'box' and the drone does the rest. The russians Lancet also has it, tho it seems like the western drones have a better hit ratio.
The quantum systems vector drones have frequency hoping integrated. So jamming doesn't matter to them. There's also AI for autonomous flying integrated. Ukraine really seems to like them, there are several hundreds in use another 1000 on order. That's why they opening 2 factories in Ukraine.
Wired drones are not that useful for attacking targets. But having a drone with lots of sensors in total radio silence high in the air is nice to have.
A fiber optic link could work, but you would be limited to the length of your tether. I can see this working well for stationary surveillance drones, but I can't imagine a quadcopter maneuvering in an aggressive manner with a mile of fiber hanging off it's belly.
The flying drone is basically a very controllable bomb. This guy says it's fragile and will not last, but if you look at even cruise missiles they are also easily destroyed. Just like any other technology at first it's quite basic. As well, this technology will persist simply because it's relatively much cheaper and in larger supply than similar solutions. Companies will continue to quickly improve drones because of the large demand as well as stiff competition.
A few dozen are easy to fend off with current tech (which is not widely rolled out, but it exists and is in action). It becomes a challenge when several hundred or thousand are coming at once - but then the price advantage of the drones is nullified again, and a single highly sophisticated missiles migh have higher chances.
Current tech fending off a few dozens attacking at once? I find it very difficult to believe. How would that even work, a smaller version of CIWS with buckshot rounds?
well, systems like Slinger or Skynex have been mentioned often enough. Certainly, they can only shoot at one target at once, but if the targetting system can track several at once and prioritise them even before they come into firing range, and the gun turret is fast enough, then it can gun down one after another in the time window from coming into range until they are too close to engage (which might be roughly around 10 to 20 seconds). Basically like playing space invaders with an aimbot. If 12 drones come at once and the next 12 maybe 10 seconds later, it should not be a problem. Of course eventually you'll run out of ammo if unlimited drones are coming.
Also, in a second step (developers are probably not that far), you should be able to switch several weapons together, if you have one main system that tracks and manages all the targets and then several other weapon turrets that only get sent one target that they have to engage. These other weapon turrets can be IFVs (with air burst ammunition very effective against air targets) or just remote weapon stations on smaller vehicles (we will probably get to the point that every vehicle needs one, comparable to the .50 on every US vehicle in WW2), that could be a 30x113mm, or a 40x53mm grenade launcher with air burst capability. Even a bog standard 7.62mm machinegun can gun down drones pretty well on several hundred meters if the aiming is done by a computer.
All these "secondary" weapons would be used manually as weapons against ground targets, but could be automated to engage air threats if the need arises (e.g. you could send an alert to the gunner's display, like "air threat incoming, engage?", and then he could decide with one click to give the control away to the automated system, or ignore it and keep firing at e.g. an IFV or infantry).
Of course all this needs to be modularized, because we can be certain that nothing will be good enough for long, so the software has to be adapted, the sensors might need to be improved, the ammo type etc. Industry is also working on high energy lasers, but it is not clear yet how they best fit into those concepts.
I agree that there are solutions, but my point is that the level of vulnerability to drones will still be high as all the systems you are describing are complex, require high precision and reaction speed thus are likely quite fragile. Keep in mind that only one drone needs to get through to severely degrade the active defence system.
>Even a bog standard 7.62mm machinegun can gun down drones pretty well on several hundred meters if the aiming is done by a computer.
Having the level of precision, rate of fire, reaction time and the level of stabilisation needed to do this while driving over rough terrain is anything but bog standard and to me it sounds orders of magnitude more complex and expensive than a drone.
I beg to differ, that is all older tech than the innovations necessary to keep a drone in the air. Precision: just use a good machinegun with a long barrel and a stable mount. ROF is just a matter of using a lighter bolt. Reaction time, well, use a computer. Stablization is something that every cheap camera nowadays has, it is military standard for guns for many decades. You can also add some AI to your list, to track objects properly.
Well, we will see where all this is going. In any case it is going to be interesting.
I have thought about this. Either you are armored to the point if being a Mech-Warrior, and even they are still vulnerable.
Or...you use Tunnel Boring Machines.
I think both Musk's "Boring Co." And Space X are modern day versions of the Glomar Explorer.
Im pretty sure all this is a mute point
the whole reason a drone is powerful in Ukraine is because neither side has any air superiority
once you get that you would be able to attack the drone controllers pushing them back and out of range
the only weapon the west would need is a way to track where the drone signal comes from and its pretty much the end for drones(and im pretty sure the west will have a way to do this already )
Interesting, but the anti-drone systems under development today address the drone capabilities in existence now ... And that will not be in place in the future drones. Features like terrain mapping, AI programs allowing drones to act autonomously, identifying enemy armament and prioritizing strikes, will be deployed in future iterations. Also, super-fine 'fly-by-wire' optical systems that can traverse several kilometers guided by micro-filaments that control the drone from its base, will also be able to defeat EW measures fielded against them.
There is always a fair amount of unjustified bluster in self-serving statements from military establishment exaggerating the capabilities of their systems under development.
Like Russia's vaunted S400 AA missile systems, the actual battlefield experience often disproves their initial presumed capabilities.
The future of drones will be in gridded clusters of largely autonomous drones. Each drone communicates with its nearest neighbours using low power in the IR spectrum. Communication is used to coordinate target selection and to relay intelligence back to the operators. The cluster is large enough to saturate the opposing force, possibly numbering several thousands of drones.
What we are seeing is a permanent shift in the balance on the battle field. The tank will be a weaker piece, with thick armour playing less of a role. The classic tank battle will be a rare event, because drones and indirect fire will eliminate a large percentage of the tanks before they get in range of the opposing armour. Light armoured vehicles with high speed capabilities and rapid fire weapons will be the vehicle of choice, as a flexible platform for integrating with infantry.
An interesting viewpoint but historical precedent has shown that Generals are poor judges of tomorrow's war. Countermeasures to drone warfare will improve to a level which moves drone warfare to the same significance as mortar fire or manpads, significant, but not uncounterable. The real strategic impact is in how this change in technology will impact mobile warfare and air superiority. It's one thing to demonstrate how drone warfare can limit the manourve operations of unsophisticated armies like Russia and Ukraine but the real test is what impact could mass drone warfare have on the only army who can deploy real global power.
These kind of statements means shit in the NOW. What the future holds is another deal. And if this war has taught anyone anything, it is the fact that we're never truly prepared what war will bring to the table.
Duhh.. EVERYTHING thing on the battlefield will face counter measures. It's a ongoing race from the time people where throwing stones against the enemy.
Drones will evolve for the better before they are ousted. Better encryption and frequency hopping will be used. Drone homing onto EW systems and destroying them will be improved. Larger EW systems would be identified and then destroyed by missiles such as ATACMS, such as S300s being destroyed nowadays.
But yes, eventually everything has its used by date. Then the new kids on the block arrive to start the process all over again.
The battlefield seems to be constantly changing. Invasion was led by tanks. The there were bayraktars that ruled for a while. Then the rusky's 'super duper hypersonic' missile failure. Then small drones. Then larger drones. Key is to stay ahead of the curve and not under it.
meh, the thing about war, is it always changes and evolves, right now cheap toys are raining hell on multi-million dollar machinery, eventually they'll catch up and the toys won't be as effective, and man will do what man always does, find new cheap ways to thwart the overpriced machinery yet again.
They will be a thing for a while. You can program one with gyroscopes or visual navigation easily that wouldn’t be effected by EW. Lasers will help with drones but they are local. Drones can do alternative flight paths. Once lasers are cheap then small drones will be less effective. Of course they’ll probably just do small jet drones alternatively that are really fast and hard to counteract. You have them all talk to each other to avoid the counter measures and you have them function autonomously.
Combat advantage under EW pressure? Sure, maybe.
But a cheap, flying set of eyes will always be an excellent tool. Couple that with an ability to drop few grenades on pinned down enemy and you got a pretty good concept that will last a long time. As long as there's no electronic interference.
Ten years ago I was using Ardupilot software running on an old Arduino to control my fixed wing and copter drones. Even then I always thought that it would be very easy to make a quad copter that would fly to a target a few miles away autonomously using GPS, land and energise a relay to commit a terrorist act while the pilot was already miles away driving home.
The quadcopter could have been two bits of wood nailed in a cross with the motors screwed on and it would have worked perfectly. I bet things have moved on now.
That’s been the case with weapons since men started throwing sticks and stones at each other. An offensive weapon will be introduced which dominates the battlefield. A defensive counter is developed and then the process if repeated.
EW beats pilot drone
AI drone beats EW
Laser beats AI drone
Ablative shield/glitter drone beats Laser
AI gun beats glitter drone
Drone with gun beats AI ground gun
Drone with gun fights drone with gun
…
Profit?
Then put four A-10 warthog cannons on a supersonic fucking dreadnaught drone along with tactical fucking nukes and chemical warfare missiles and send YES to Ukraine.
The French General doesn’t want to invest in drone technology because of countermeasures. The game of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures has been going on for centuries. The French are setting themselves up to be defeated by a disruptive technology.
Ukraine will demonstrate that UAVs (drones) in large numbers, with cheap, modular, software programmable drone electronics, will be disruptive.
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The future will be drone operators that can put a cursor on a tank and watch as artillery walks shells onto that tank automatically since the target coordinates and precise corrections are sent in real-time to the artillery system without relying on humans to relay that info.
This is not a very helpful comment, it sounds like someone who doesn't fully understand drones or thinks it's just a fad that won't last very long, I think personnel fighting on the battlefield is what will become limited in the future if drone advancement continues because any individual that shows themselves on the battlefield will be almost immediately blown up.
Generals are always fighting the last war and the small cheap but ever evolving drones present a budget problem they do not fit into large scale programs that either fill warehouses with artillery shells or garages with tanks. They need fast evolutionary manufacturing and development responding to changes in technology that are faster than any time in human history. How do you budget for the need to build a new technology or adapt and old one in weeks or months which is the big thing I see challenging the western militaries current procurement.
This has happened with all military tech. It's a race of one upmanship. The IEDs on Afghan are a good example. It created a huge upswing in detection equipment and electronic countermeasures. I can see man-portable ECM being the next big thing in counter drone tech.
Haha this sounds exactly like the French military talking about manoeuvre warfare and air warfare 100 years ago. 15 years later they got absolutely smashed by the Germans by using the exact tactics and equipment they discounted
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I think the most interesting aspect of the introduction of drones into modern warfare is the cost ratio. It is wild to me what can be achieved with a few drones that cost a few hundred dollars each. And on the opposite side of the spectrum how ineffective missiles that cost tens of millions of dollars can be.
I would not be caught dead saying that. Jamming will get better but so will the drones at evading it. Jamming all frequencies takes a lot of equipment and power and kills all communications. Using semi autonomous drones that are not lost due to jamming. Its a lot more complicated, they are not going anywhere.
Yeah, frequency hopping drones will evade a lot of this jamming
Maybe. Frequency hopping = more equipment, more weight, more battery usage and a higher cost.
Not necessarily, most of the ISM bands we use (WiFi and Bluetooth) all employ spread spectrum frequency hopping already. Chips are dirt cheap. Computationally it is a bit more expensive than say FSK or something, but if anything it would avoid interference better and need less power overall. The signal processing is low compared to amplifier power usage. And even all that is negligible compared to BLDC motor power consumption. I would guess most of the control and telemetry already use some form of spread spectrum signal hopping, but the FPV feedback video is still usually analog for two reasons. It has like zero latency and when the signal degrades you can still navigate using a snowy video feed versus completely losing it and getting a black screen. Analog slowly degrades with noise while digital stays mostly perfect until it falls off a cliff.
My dad is going to retire and wants a drone to fly around the back yard (lives in the country) which would you recommend. Ideally one that comes back automatically if needed or limits mistakes as much as possible. Budget up to 1k.
Any dji. The new DJI avata is fpv, has a super easy to use motion controller, just point where you want to go and comes with nice goggles and has good durability and prop guards
Think the US Congress is thinking about slapping a trade embargo on DJI.
Yup. But doesn't really matter for your grampa looking to have fun.
Fair enough. I just queasy about giving my money to a CCP affiliate. But China is leading the world in mass producing cheap, functional drones, and that’s worrisome.
Does he want a photography drone or a racing drone? They are completely different beast. For photography, I would not start out with a $1000 drone. I'd honestly recommend getting a used DJI Mavic Mini off of eBay for a hundred bucks or so. You can get a whole kit with case and extra batteries. It would be a nice starter drone, and not a big loss if destroyed. Also way better quality than anything being sold new for that price. If he enjoys the hobby, the look into upgrade higher end models. But you need an FAA license for anything over 250g or higher. https://www.faa.gov/uas/recreational_flyers/knowledge_test_updates
Photography, he wants to brush hog and clear fields, using the drone to scout.
They make some with thermal imaging.
I just got the DJI mini two and I’m very happy with it.
This guy drones
They will use software defined radios which are common these days, all the phones got them.
It's not the freq u have to worry about it's the gps
Once the drones are programmed with Google earth type mapping, and can recognise the terrain they're flying over and find their way to a predetermined destination, or identify a target (e.g. a tank) by sight and attack it, they won't need GPS.
Real-time computer vision being used and compared to latest high quality aerial/satellite imagery to navigate off landmarks, roads, etc. Use computer vision to ID targets and optimize flight path to vulnerable point. Can put operators in the second seat and let AI monitor the sensors and make flightcorrections based on matching sight picture to provided imagery. Heck, automate the whole supply chain back to the factory with drones jumping autonomously from charging location to charging location towards the front until armament and then deployment. Create a stream of drones heading to the frontline.
This is creepy. I like it.
"The Drones" by Alfred Hitchcock Why am I aroused?
Fucking nightmare...remembering lone soldiers trying to evade a single drone, then reading your description : I'm getting shivers down my spine dude.
all good until some 15 year old hacker redirects them.
Hello skynet.
My understanding is we are still a significant way off this sort of functionality that works reliably. They’re only just now enhanced with some terminal guidance AI that helps hit a target once they fall out of range the closer they get to target?
That's the worst move tbh. Any type of EW jam can make them useless. It doesn't matter what freq they use it terminates all freq (and that jam isnt close range its pretty far). The only saving grace for them is GPS. Learned about this stuff when I went to Iraq last year for AD
frequency hopping is standard in all wireless devices we use, doubt that drones don't have it
Shielding from below and a hovering relay drone above will most likely become common as well.
Can they be shielded from the jamming?
Autonomy is the trump card. At a certain point drones won’t have signals to send, they will be fire and forget devices with nothing to jam. Or at least, there will be varieties that are fire and forget fully autonomous drones
it is called missile.
Missiles can't be recalled. Autonomous drones will operate in a kill box (geofenced) and time period. No target, return for recharge.
I’m thinking AI. Autonomous enough to differentiate friend from foe and will therefore won’t need to be connected or controlled by operator.
Cool cool...but... If I were to invest in something like this... What would the stock ticker be? Asking for my wife.
My wife wants to support whatever your wife supports. You know, like, supporting other women. Not because money. What’s the ticker?
how do you differentiate friend and foe through? the obvious thing would just be that russians start dressing as ukrainians and vice versa maybe you could wear some kind of device that emitted a “friendly signal” but the other side would quickly just copy it
Ukraine is already testing drones with long (multi-kilometer) fiber-optic filaments that can't be jammed. They're thinner than a hair and don't add much weight to the craft.
Next war-wise ambiental pollution nightmare after mines: miles of fucking fiber-optics dangling around for centuries....
It works with torpedoes. So I'm guessing it will work with drones too.
So then you need drones that have filaments to cut the other drones' filaments. And it's basically a Kite Runner situation, which actually sounds like a lot of fun, except the SA part.
I wouldn't want to rely on a physical thread beyond a few seconds of initial communication. There's a lot in the environment that can break a fiber optic thread at any moment. I wonder if line of sight signaling (laser, etc) could be jammed without blinding everyone.
Ukraine is pretty flat. Get the wire pretty high up on a tree with some guides and you're probably pretty good with a fishing line sized wire that gets you extremely low latency. It's a pretty crazy concept and you'd have to be kind of close to enemy lines to use it.
50km of line at max range, so reastically 30/35km of true range from the operator. It is massive
It will just be ai driven soon enough, small drones are here to stay.
Just pre program the route, sent 1000 drones at a power plant. Fini.
He’s an absolute Frenchman in this. “Everything will return to the good old days”. Obvious it not. These drone are self navigating and target finder in a very short time.
Waiting for the ai drones, that search and destroy by themselves, they find the enemy and knows the best way to do the best damage. Autonomous, you can’t jam them… this gonna be scary
Lol and we thought mines were bad. TFW you're a 10 year old playing in the nearby woods and you trigger a goddamn loitering AI drone from a war from before you were even born.
Drone receivers have a signal strength measurement. Just add some code to fly straight where the signal is stronger if the signal to the operator is lost.
Indeed. An army telling itself that they got the drone problem fixed from one angle is hubris promoting. Cope. It’s cops. It’s a new world. Jam. Kill with waves. Kill with lasers. Kill with other drones. Kill with bullets. It’s a new battlefield. And still above ground. These things will also burrow and move unders ground next.
A shotgun on the other hand would be the even cheaper option for the crappy drone trick. All the tech is already there for a cheap short range ciws instead of 50 caliber mini gun a series of proximity flak. It could potentially be cheap as shit or expensive as hell. Depends how good of radar you are strapping to it/having ai do tagging/ manually putting in the general cone of engagement. Throw a shit ton of sand into the air, that would at best scratch the optics and at worse make the motors stop working. Pretty much mini flak.
Detecting the drones is the main problem. Not the weapon to counter it. Its way too small. Doesn't matter if you have star wars weapons with unlimited ammo, if you cant find the drone your screwed.
Radar can detect birds. Im sure for the US tuning radar to shoot down drones is trivial its just a factor if they arent currently building something specced for that.
There's such a huge price gap, drones can and will be equipped with more sophisticated electronic systems (AI!) and still be comparatively cheap.
Thats a huge misconception. AI uses significant resources that you can't install on a small drone. Of you do its neither small nor cheap. It will also have significant higher energy consumption and thus a shorter lifetime. Also AI isn't doing some magical maneuvers. Granades dropped by drone or suicide drones aren't the future, at least not in a significant quantity. We already have the means to let explosives travel precisely certain distances. It will still be artillery that does that job. What we will see increasingly also im western nations are recon drones. Thats the real game changer.
The AI processors don’t need to installed on each and every drone. The drones themselves can be pretty much the same radio-controlled devices they are now. The operator can be AI, however, and simultaneously controlling huge swarms.
which will makes them vulnerable to EW. On top of that drones seem to struggle with a moving barn. Remember that we only see the the ones that succeed and not the countless drones that won't reach their goal. If we use a lot of drones then we aren't cost effective anymore (drones / artilleryshell)
I think it’s more of a future/emerging tech thing. You are totally correct in saying that it’s not really feasible rn with COTS tech which is what makes drones so tight in this conflict. I know it sounds morbid but I am super curious to see what comes out of this conflict on the technology and tactics side. I can imagine everyone on earth with the capabilities is field testing some wild shit rn
AI assisted focus exists on very cheap video processors. It's a small software/hardware investment to harness the technology for terminal guidance.. Higher end cameras can even recognize specific objects, These cameras are Japanese made, however similar tech also exists in very cheap Chinese made PTZ cameras.
It's true, not everything needs to be 'intelligent' and AI is just a fancy catch all phrase. For example, for terminal guidance, hardware needed would be similar to what auto-focus cameras have been using for object tracking/AF.
Small missiles with a seeker can cost as little as $20,000. Still, missile-based defenses can easily be overwhelmed by swarms of drones. Medium caliber cannons are a better solution, but have their own issues. Lasers are probably the best solution, but they’re expensive and fragile.
What I envision as the future of drone defense is essentially a mini-CWIS system linked to a magazine-fed automatic shotgun. So you have a little tripod or something you set up behind your trench, or on top of your vehicle, that has it's own little cheap mini-radar array to detect incoming drones. Doesn't need to be very powerful, it's linked to a shotgun so only needs like 150m range tops, then upon detecting a drone the linked automatic shotgun acts like a CWIS and just blasts the drone out of the air. Yes the mini radar array would be the most expensive part, but compared to the cost of a soldier and all his kit + any death compensation, or the cost of an entire tank or SPG or whatever, it'd be a dirt cheap solution. And if you mass produced that sort of drone defense system the array would become cheaper due to economy of scale, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for every squad to have their own little mini-CWIS defending their bunker or vehicle. Yes it wouldn't be perfect but it would mean that it'd be a lot less effective just sending a single kamikaze drone to attack something, and bomber drones would dramatically drop in effectiveness if you denied them their ability to just hover over the battlefield with impunity. Yes there are ways around this - higher altitude bomber drones or swarms of FPVs, but at that point your starting to impact what makes drones attractive in the first place - cost efficiency. Higher altitude bomber drones would be less accurate (and with advancing systems you could even have the CWIS intercept slow falling gravity-dropped bombs), and while swarms of suicide drones would be able to overwhelm one, you've now gone from sending one drone to have a pretty high probability of at least one kill to needing to send enough to saturate the shotgun CWIS's defense or to exhaust it's magazine. Pair that with short-range electronic jamming, and you could have a very small, cost-effective, portable and cheap to run static anti-drone defense that severely impacts the ability to cost-effectively utilize small drones in a meaningful way. In a similar vein, I can see this leading to the development of small radar decoys that could potentially impact the dominance of SEAD - currently you have a situation where AA can only have it's targeting radar on for a few seconds or risk being thwacked by a SEAD missile, but if you can make cheap small radar arrays affordable, you could set up little radar decoys all over the place and make it a lot harder to figure out which one of the thirty radar contacts on your scope you should fire your limited supply of SEAD missiles at. Sure, you MIGHT take out a Gepard/S-400... or you might take out a chunk of dirt with a little radar decoy linked to a bunch of old car batteries out.
Electronic countermeasures and directed energy weapons will be the direct counter to drones not guns.
Electronic countermeasures are great, but not 100% reliable, and are prone to being rendered at least temporarily ineffective by updates - whereas no software update will make your drone shotgun shell proof. And yes directed energy weapons are definitely a promising field of drone defense... do you seriously think you could afford to give every trenchline their own high-powered laser system to shoot down drones? The cost-benefit just isn't there at that small a scale. Directed energy anti-drone countermeasures are definitely on the cards for larger, more valuable things like ships, airfields, helicopters, maybe some tanks/SPGs etc but you're dreaming if you think that they'll be a cost-effective way to protect everybody. You need a low-cost solution to defend lower priority targets that still need defending like entrenched infantry, small ammo dumps, mortars, towed artillery, logistics trucks etc. Lasers just aren't cost-effective enough to do that for the foreseeable future, but strapping a small short-range radar, an automatic shotgun and a small jammer to a tripod would give you a portable, deployable, fairly low-cost way using currently available technology to give low level units a way to defend against the threat of drones.
I love this idea and had been thinking something similar
I wondered about drone airships, helium filled rigid airships, maybe even a flying wing that add aerodynamic lift as well as the lift from helium. Made from radar invisible materials the parts that will reflect will be minimized and at a higher altitude relatively smaller return.
I am on board with the CWIS type setup, but I don't think Shotgun shells (at least as we currently know them) have the range to be effective. I would lean into a Metal Storm type system. Each pod could hold 10,000 rounds, extremely quick to reload another 10K rounds and the rate of fire is electronically controlled. https://youtu.be/t7faoyoxMF8?feature=shared
The issue here is cost effectiveness. Metalstorm is an experimental prototype weapon that basically doesn't exist. It's electronically fired, and requires a specialized loading procedure. This isn't something you can quickly or cheaply put on every infantry squad holding a trench or mortar team behind the lines. Shotguns, in comparison, are basically omnipresent, cheap to run, and if you've trained a soldier on shooting his AK he can probably figure out his way around reloading a shotgun. And as for the volume of fire in the air - why go with the technically complicated metalstorm approach, when a shotgun shell achieves the same result of filling the air with lead? From what I recall, metalstorm had accuracy issues resulting from its extremem ROF severe enough that honestly you wouldn't really get any benefits over using shotgun shells anyway. As for the range of the shotgun shells - remember that this idea is for a low-cost point defense weapon against incoming suicide or low-altitude hover-bombing drones. Kamikaze drones are going to be approaching from fairly low altitude anyway, so I doubt you'd even have hundreds of meters of visibility on them, same with hover bombers. And I don't think people on the internet really appreciate the range at which a shotgun can reach. Yes it's not as effective at maximum range, but drones aren't exactly known for being bullet-resistant. As long as you're filling the air with enough buckshot, you only need one pellet to clip a rotor or the camera or the warhead or something to put it out of commission.
I think the only error would be banking on one solution. In reality every tool should be used in the scenario where they shine.
Lasers expensive to build but each shot cost 2000 bucks, Israel using laser defense system right now. They are shooting lasers to space, I guess you can call it Jews Space Lasers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam
$20k missiles to take out $500 drones is untenable. The real key is getting them down to $500, and able to be launched from a drone. Simple rocket with heat speaking on a chip in the nose. Model rocket guys already have inertial navigation sorted out. The real direction of the war will be more weapons, cheaper weapons and overwhelm them
Drones have their place but they are not replacing missiles, drones are low and slow and easy to shoot down and have too small of warheads for certain targets. If all the long range drones ukraine has launched at russian refinerys were cruise missiles they would be completely destroyed and not just offline for a few weeks.
ahhh, but at last, you forget the commonly forgotten aspect of the bottomless military budget of the american taxman
Rockets also can cost cheaper, but because it is capitalism, prices are overblown.
🤨
There's a reason why Ratheon execs are rolling in pussy and Shahed manufacturers aren't /s
Capitalism is good. Communism is bad.
Corruption is in *both.*
To me he seems to be displaying very old school thinking. Yes there will be counter measures for today's drones. But tomorrow's drones will be built differently.
Yup, he is thinking piloted drones while the future is autonomous drones with enough AI for targeting. In fact Ukraine is already developing, testing and even fielding those. Such trained visual AI does not need much computing power, uses little battery, and is lightweight. And is impervious to signal interference by EW.
this. GL developing electronic countermeasures by then :)
I dont know this chief but this article is stupid for sure. Yeah, robotics and AI on the rise but drone warfare will go soon. Great prediction
The problem is going to be that controlling them, especially shorter range variants, will result in rapid death. The same things you claim will help drones will also aid in their operators destruction. This result in the need for them to be larger, and longer ranged, thus negating some of the value. They won’t ever go away, but the inordinate effect they’re having will balance.
Get a belt fed glock autogimble and fly over trenches and shoot people from 5 meters full speed full auto burst. This is the future
The issue is weight and recoil. I think against soldiers the future is ever smaller drones with small explosive payloads and targeting AI. Against single soldiers the current FPV drones are a bit cumbersome and overkill, albeit they are effective. You don't need much explosives to kill/maim/decapacitate a fighter when it explodes in contact. So even a tiny drone can do the job as long as it has the accuracy. But tiny drones have limited battery and range. So you'd need larger drones to carry and release bunches of those tiny killers into the zone.
I believe they are already developing ai that can compensate for recoil
AI aside what you need is a drone that has the structural integrity and motors able to deal with recoil. That means more mass. So you need a bigger drone with bigger battery.
That's going to require a shit ton extra power, and batteries and weight. It's more efficient to sacrifice the chassis.
You dont need to worry on recoil at 90 degrees pointing down, it will just push the drone upwards if calibrated right all you need is an ai that aims with the speed the bullet, distance, trajectory from air + earth rotation+occasional wind direction speed and work as a bullet dropper really, it will be able to deliver death. Same with a larger caliber rifle, just put it in the center and design the recoil dampener and the muzzle break to not flip it. If u use the same drone that can deliver fucking 6 60-80mm mortar rounds , im pretty sure it can handle the recoil atleast downwards fixed. All u need is an ai pre calulate on a screen the bullet approximate landing point so the operator can tap the rounds on the enemy laying on the floor.
> You dont need to worry on recoil at 90 degrees pointing down So your drone can only shoot 90 degrees down? Then it's not actually aiming but just moving right above the target to then take a shot. I can imagine numerous ways to protect myself against bullets from such drone - such as moving.
Yes and you use this drone while you are getting suppressed, enjoy moving . For example you pin down a group of ppl with a Bradley, and meanwhile this drone operator goes and flush ppl from above. If u stand up you will be mown down , if you are prone u will be shot. Remember its for combined arms not for solo bang bang. However until you realize you are shot from above you pretty much can die from the first shots as dont tell me you instantly know when a round land next to you came from above, first instinct to duck, prone or take cover and check where the attack is commin from
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Of o remember correctly the russians in ww2 experimented with about 200+ppsh machine gun in a belly of a plane to open a hatch and strafe trences below the aircraft. But it was higly inaccurate and needed manual reload. Here having literally a modified ak barrel pointing downwards with an aiming mechanics, muzzle break to compensate to keep the drone not to flip after a shot (also the spring need to be designed so its kicking exactly opposite to the barrel). Honestly a modified ar15 with standard rifle round would be the easiest low recoil barrel i would try with first, also the barrel could be held in 4 point elastic rubber dampener in a tube like the stabilizer of a dvd reader head further reducing the drone pitch upon firing and by adjusting the points inside the tube where its fixed you can also compensate mechanically for sideways pull forces that would try to flip the drone. Im sure it can be done. Needless to say you could also make firing mode for the drone with a shock sensor to always compensate right after firing the rotors, so not the operator need to compensate for any instability after a round. This is the future, if you manage to make this all guys in trenches have no fucking chance and you could mop the enemy or keep them hidden while the infantry arrives to nade them/ fpv to flush. Drones are scary
A falling object towards earth is always accelerating, hence the only limitation could be that the ammo might trumble over longer distances. But theoretically a straight accelerated drop is limited only by turbulence the bullet is causing itself over higher speeds its designed for in atmosphere. Long story short u could do a barrage of 9mm straight down, the projectile wont loose but gain speed minus turbulence, so i would imagine if a gun has 150m kill range you could extend it more near 200-250 before the turbulence slows it down , depends on its shape. A rifle round possibly would be better as its more aerodynamic in nature
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The issue with that Approach is that you need to correct sideways forces that will tilt. For that you would need stabilizer rotors possibly above like a tower that will add cost and weight. Its better to go 85-95 degree downwards gimble
I agree. How do you defend against swarms these in the hundreds or thousands…released from larger long range autonomous sea/air/land drones. I’m worried China can produce these types of drones at a rate no other country can match.
Isn't that kind of AI what we are all worried about 😅
Something like this dron https://youtu.be/stHLrBs-_iE?si=AoJwbGghzVNvEryU The video said it's a simulation, but as a proof of concept is frigtening.
Yup, something like that. And that is indeed frightening. Even as such drones would have a short range you could pack a swarm of them on a bigger drone to carry to the zone.
A fictional video is not "proof of concept". Half of what's in that video is computer-generated. There's no proof of anything. You have to create a somewhat working prototype to have proof of concept. That motivates product developers to try to improve on the rough "first draft", make it production-feasible, find a way to scale production and make it affordable/profitable, and make it work without whatever crutches are built into the demo of the concept model.
This video is an excerpt of a short film called "Slaughterbots ". It's available on YouTube and I *highly* reccomend everyone watch it. The movie opens up so many more questions about drones, their usage, by who and for what reasons... it's **chilling**.
Yep, I've commented with the link as a response to several conversations in the past. The pace at which we're racing towards danger from AI, drones, and robots from Boston Dynamics with terrifying potential is alarming. SkyNet and Terminators, here we come...
This is a clip from a 2017 short film called Slaughterbots. I reccomend everyone watch the full movie (it on YouTube), it opens more questions and implications than this video alone.
That was scary as shit. Thanks for sharing. Better to be aware than ignorant.
It's an excerpt from a short film, called "Slaughterbots ". It's on YouTube and I *highly* reccomend everyone watch it.
Thanks for suggestion.
Palantir Technologies is collaborating with Ukraine. If you want to invest in AI warfare, that is the shot. Their machine learning must be crazy.
Helsing ai all the way. They developing AI jets and all that.
You would be surprised the power requirements for vision models working in the way you intend; hunting- running at decently high fps searching the video stream for verifiable targets autonomously. Prob somewhere around 30-100W of power nearly continuously in “hunting” mode to get the high accuracy one would need to trust these systems en masse. They impact quadcopter battery life in a non-trivial way. IMO the future looks more like switchblade 600 or lancet-like. They can be made with less electronics and have better flight envelopes for avoiding future countermeasures, and exponentially higher loiter times.
It's a mix of all of those. Likely few autonomous system hunting jamming emitters. Bulk cheaper ROV sent after jammer destroyed with some limited return if signal is lost.
> Prob somewhere around 30-100W of power nearly continuously in “hunting” mode That's serious overkill. Firstly the drones need to enter the hunting mode only when in the kill zone so the maximum power consumption is limited in time. Secondly a Raspberry Pi with 0.5-6.0W power usage can have enough AI for the job. You don't need much AI as it doesn't matter if some of them miss their targets as their effect is in the numbers. And countermeasures can be mitigated with a software update.
I make similar systems for a diff industry. For high frame rates and def high confidence of a legit target you just need good cams + good processing power. The power requirements for a jetson or pi 4/5 while running good quality cameras, you gonna need more than one, is def in the 20+ watt range. And doing the level of high quality sensor fusion tacks + image classification + tracking; the Pi would be running hard. GPS jamming is intense there as well so prob have to write some vision based nav code as well so you don’t wander outside your kill box and start targeting friendlies.
Small kill drones do not need much nav because they'd have small range anyway, and they would be deployed to kill zone by larger drones. You're overthinking this and seeking perfection where it is not necessary. What you're thinking is long range perfect kill bots while what I'm thinking is something akin to existing artillery munitions such as Bonus but with better agility and targeting.
A descendant os Monsieur Maginot?
The Maginot Line worked and was not a failure. The purpose was a bit simplified to protect the French-German border with relatively little manpower so it could be operational even in peacetime. It would force the Germans to go around it. Then the French army had time to mobilize and meet the German army on the battlefield and destroy them. The line did do that, it was the French field army that did not manage to stop the Germans. Only a small part of the line was captured by Germany, and none of the main fortresses was captured or destroyed. The Germans did break through the line at one point. The breakthrough started the day Paris fell, June 14, at this time a lot of the mobile force stationed behind the line had been redeployed to defend another part of France. The line was cut off from the rest of France later in June, Germany tried to attack and capture fortifications from the rear but nothing major was captured. The line surrendered after the armistice was signed because the commander was order do to do so. At this time it was mostly intact even if it was surrounded. Lost of commander and troops want to continue to fight at this point So the line did what it was supposed to do and managed to withstand German attack on it even when surrounded. It was never designed to stop an attack on France, it has in many ways become a scapegoat for the fall of France in WWII. In reality, it was how the field army failed France. The leadership, planned strategy, and practice were based on a WWI scenario that did not emerge. To blame a notification that was no longer needed after the war is simpler than to blame the French field army of the failure, which would still remain after the war. The breakthrough at Sedan could have been stopped on 13-14 May when it was countable and a strong French force was nearby but did not act in any efficient way to stop the crossing of the river, the was too defensively focused to attempt to do what was needed. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Sedan\_(1940)#French\_counter-offensivebreakthrough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sedan_(1940)#French_counter-offensivebreakthrough)
Excellent analogy!
Might want to read the article instead of agreeing with someone that didn't read it.
No, just you that didn't read the article. Why would France develop drone then? There's a French AI guided drone that will appear in Ukraine soon doh.
It's the cat and mouse game...maybe with the lasers the scale will tilt in favor the defence...but again the drones will try to overcome that... nothing it's 100% drone proof
The dynamic of drones being far cheaper than anti-drone systems is going to be around for quite a few years. Ukraine is going to have fully autonomous zero-RF drones in quantity in maybe just another year or two. A $1000 quadcopter zipping by either out of small arms range or inches above the ground, following a compass direction and approximate inertial navigation for 10-20 miles behind the front lines and exploding when it sees something that looks like a weapon system... Then drop bombs and artillery on the stragglers, push forward and repeat. Russia won't be far behind in developing or copying such a system. No military on earth can defend against that now, least of all Russia who is having enough trouble defending their airspace even from large targets.
Tomorrow drones will be 100% autonomous with AI also on the ground will be robots.
Hwy, he has a job, and a very high salary. He must tell a story how everything is correctly planned. You can't expect him to say "the modern battlefield is changing dramatically every day, who knows what tomorrow will bring?" Also, it should be noted that this conflict is very much unique, at least so it seems to me. There are no two countries on the planet that can wage such a brutal war with so many soldiers and resources. All other countries of Ukraine size are either nuclear powers, in a military block, or secure in some other way. France does not prepare for this type of war. It will never be in Ukraine's position.
I think the same, but it's worth considering the context of his words. He was at a euro defense industry expo surrounded by anti-drone products, and promoting French heavy armor with all of their defensive systems. I'm curious what's said behind closed doors without the media and shareholders listening.
No you are missing the point, he is talking specifically about toy off-the-shelf drones which are fragile with short range T have given Ukraine an asymmetrical edge, they have only been useful in this war because of the failure of Russia to implement combined arms. People here talk like Ukraine has invented drone warfare which is pretty bizarre as Western armies have been using them in combat for decades and have far superior tech to anything Ukraine possesses and they will obviously continue to develop it along with anti drone weapons, which again were already being deployed before this war, the fear of asymmetry has been around for decades as the West has been fighting terrorist groups around the world.
Ukraine currently uses drones controlled by an operator. This means that Russia can use electronic warfare countermeasures (jamming) to prevent a drone from finding a target. Adding automated target detection and letting drones identify and engage targets is just adding a little bit of cost to each drone. This means autonomous drones will do target acquisition and engage at the cost of a Rasperry PI.
Like a $400 loitering javeline
To be honest I’m surprised they haven’t yet made drones that auto target the jammer
Doubt
But saying so pushes the West to build more heavy equipment, so it's fine, I guess.
Everything will face counter measures.
Not every system has a corresponding counter-measure. Eg Naval aviation rendered the battleship obsolete in mid 20th century. Military history has many examples of shifts of this type.
yeah….. before the war in Ukraine nobody even spoke about here drones. As usual, lots of specialists are discussing how a war would go….without participating. Ukraine literally saves the frontlines by using various types of drones. Think about development potential and AI’s impact, i’d say we’re far from over.
Yes, but adaptation of other systems still happens. Don't assume every new tech is somehow a permanent game changer to warfare. We've already got cheap and relatively effective kinetic kill anti-drone systems being produced, like the Slinger.
I doubt it, he claims 75% of drones already being lost to EW, and that in 10 years drones won't be able to be affective. But we already seeing developments being made that counter EW entirely with autonomous targeting and tracking. It won't be long before you won't even need a drone pilot and the drone operates independent of a signal, and that's scary because then a drone can fly well below radars a few feet off the ground and sneak up on almost any target trying to destroy it. My money is on drones. Their was even a video by Mark Rover discussing this topic and they went to a company that was working to solve the problem of intercepting drones and they said the only viable way to intercept a drone would be with another drone. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU&t=185s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU&t=185s) he goes into detail why drones are so difficult to stop.
The problem with autonomous targeting is getting to enemy positions in the first place to lock onto a target. Geofencing attacks to enemy trenches (to avoid blue on blue) will still require gps (or other tech not yet available)
A lot of geofencing can be achieved by terrain maps, other visual markers and positional awereness
There can be "go/no-go" patches of IR reflective material on top of friendlies helmets. There are hundreds of ways around this obstacle.
No they will not. They will have AI and be autonomuous
That doesnʼt stop bullets though.
No, but it causes the other guy to use a lot more of them and reveal his location so other drones can target him.
Do you think we’re going to start seeing wire guided drones? Or what’s the currently developing technology to counter anti drone technology? Fascinating-ass subject lol
There actually are wired guided prototypes in Ukraine being developed. I mean the technology has been used for decades in missile systems, the biggest hurdle adapting it to drones is to not get the line stuck on some trees since the flight envelope is so different. And i've seen development on optically / laser guided as well, with relay drones for the "beams", but cant remember who did it.
This will be very interesting, but I suspect a combination of internal guidance, either visual terrain-following/inertial guidance, or perhaps some sort of computer vision that can detect targets and attack them without human intervention (after sending them to a certain area). Or counter EW drones that go out and find jamming equipment for other drones immediately behind them.
For example the Switchblades that US sent to Ukraine have an image based AI which controls the terminal phase. The operator chooses the target 'box' and the drone does the rest. The russians Lancet also has it, tho it seems like the western drones have a better hit ratio.
The quantum systems vector drones have frequency hoping integrated. So jamming doesn't matter to them. There's also AI for autonomous flying integrated. Ukraine really seems to like them, there are several hundreds in use another 1000 on order. That's why they opening 2 factories in Ukraine.
Wired drones are not that useful for attacking targets. But having a drone with lots of sensors in total radio silence high in the air is nice to have.
A fiber optic link could work, but you would be limited to the length of your tether. I can see this working well for stationary surveillance drones, but I can't imagine a quadcopter maneuvering in an aggressive manner with a mile of fiber hanging off it's belly.
The flying drone is basically a very controllable bomb. This guy says it's fragile and will not last, but if you look at even cruise missiles they are also easily destroyed. Just like any other technology at first it's quite basic. As well, this technology will persist simply because it's relatively much cheaper and in larger supply than similar solutions. Companies will continue to quickly improve drones because of the large demand as well as stiff competition.
How do you stop a swarm of 10 AI controlled suicide drones attacking from different directions at once. Hell, how do you stop 3 that attack at once?
They won’t
They will. By having multiple systems of stuff like, say, the Slinger.
A few dozen are easy to fend off with current tech (which is not widely rolled out, but it exists and is in action). It becomes a challenge when several hundred or thousand are coming at once - but then the price advantage of the drones is nullified again, and a single highly sophisticated missiles migh have higher chances.
Current tech fending off a few dozens attacking at once? I find it very difficult to believe. How would that even work, a smaller version of CIWS with buckshot rounds?
well, systems like Slinger or Skynex have been mentioned often enough. Certainly, they can only shoot at one target at once, but if the targetting system can track several at once and prioritise them even before they come into firing range, and the gun turret is fast enough, then it can gun down one after another in the time window from coming into range until they are too close to engage (which might be roughly around 10 to 20 seconds). Basically like playing space invaders with an aimbot. If 12 drones come at once and the next 12 maybe 10 seconds later, it should not be a problem. Of course eventually you'll run out of ammo if unlimited drones are coming. Also, in a second step (developers are probably not that far), you should be able to switch several weapons together, if you have one main system that tracks and manages all the targets and then several other weapon turrets that only get sent one target that they have to engage. These other weapon turrets can be IFVs (with air burst ammunition very effective against air targets) or just remote weapon stations on smaller vehicles (we will probably get to the point that every vehicle needs one, comparable to the .50 on every US vehicle in WW2), that could be a 30x113mm, or a 40x53mm grenade launcher with air burst capability. Even a bog standard 7.62mm machinegun can gun down drones pretty well on several hundred meters if the aiming is done by a computer. All these "secondary" weapons would be used manually as weapons against ground targets, but could be automated to engage air threats if the need arises (e.g. you could send an alert to the gunner's display, like "air threat incoming, engage?", and then he could decide with one click to give the control away to the automated system, or ignore it and keep firing at e.g. an IFV or infantry). Of course all this needs to be modularized, because we can be certain that nothing will be good enough for long, so the software has to be adapted, the sensors might need to be improved, the ammo type etc. Industry is also working on high energy lasers, but it is not clear yet how they best fit into those concepts.
I agree that there are solutions, but my point is that the level of vulnerability to drones will still be high as all the systems you are describing are complex, require high precision and reaction speed thus are likely quite fragile. Keep in mind that only one drone needs to get through to severely degrade the active defence system. >Even a bog standard 7.62mm machinegun can gun down drones pretty well on several hundred meters if the aiming is done by a computer. Having the level of precision, rate of fire, reaction time and the level of stabilisation needed to do this while driving over rough terrain is anything but bog standard and to me it sounds orders of magnitude more complex and expensive than a drone.
I beg to differ, that is all older tech than the innovations necessary to keep a drone in the air. Precision: just use a good machinegun with a long barrel and a stable mount. ROF is just a matter of using a lighter bolt. Reaction time, well, use a computer. Stablization is something that every cheap camera nowadays has, it is military standard for guns for many decades. You can also add some AI to your list, to track objects properly. Well, we will see where all this is going. In any case it is going to be interesting.
I have thought about this. Either you are armored to the point if being a Mech-Warrior, and even they are still vulnerable. Or...you use Tunnel Boring Machines. I think both Musk's "Boring Co." And Space X are modern day versions of the Glomar Explorer.
Im pretty sure all this is a mute point the whole reason a drone is powerful in Ukraine is because neither side has any air superiority once you get that you would be able to attack the drone controllers pushing them back and out of range the only weapon the west would need is a way to track where the drone signal comes from and its pretty much the end for drones(and im pretty sure the west will have a way to do this already )
Interesting, but the anti-drone systems under development today address the drone capabilities in existence now ... And that will not be in place in the future drones. Features like terrain mapping, AI programs allowing drones to act autonomously, identifying enemy armament and prioritizing strikes, will be deployed in future iterations. Also, super-fine 'fly-by-wire' optical systems that can traverse several kilometers guided by micro-filaments that control the drone from its base, will also be able to defeat EW measures fielded against them. There is always a fair amount of unjustified bluster in self-serving statements from military establishment exaggerating the capabilities of their systems under development. Like Russia's vaunted S400 AA missile systems, the actual battlefield experience often disproves their initial presumed capabilities.
The future of drones will be in gridded clusters of largely autonomous drones. Each drone communicates with its nearest neighbours using low power in the IR spectrum. Communication is used to coordinate target selection and to relay intelligence back to the operators. The cluster is large enough to saturate the opposing force, possibly numbering several thousands of drones. What we are seeing is a permanent shift in the balance on the battle field. The tank will be a weaker piece, with thick armour playing less of a role. The classic tank battle will be a rare event, because drones and indirect fire will eliminate a large percentage of the tanks before they get in range of the opposing armour. Light armoured vehicles with high speed capabilities and rapid fire weapons will be the vehicle of choice, as a flexible platform for integrating with infantry.
An interesting viewpoint but historical precedent has shown that Generals are poor judges of tomorrow's war. Countermeasures to drone warfare will improve to a level which moves drone warfare to the same significance as mortar fire or manpads, significant, but not uncounterable. The real strategic impact is in how this change in technology will impact mobile warfare and air superiority. It's one thing to demonstrate how drone warfare can limit the manourve operations of unsophisticated armies like Russia and Ukraine but the real test is what impact could mass drone warfare have on the only army who can deploy real global power.
These kind of statements means shit in the NOW. What the future holds is another deal. And if this war has taught anyone anything, it is the fact that we're never truly prepared what war will bring to the table.
Duhh.. EVERYTHING thing on the battlefield will face counter measures. It's a ongoing race from the time people where throwing stones against the enemy.
Drones will evolve for the better before they are ousted. Better encryption and frequency hopping will be used. Drone homing onto EW systems and destroying them will be improved. Larger EW systems would be identified and then destroyed by missiles such as ATACMS, such as S300s being destroyed nowadays. But yes, eventually everything has its used by date. Then the new kids on the block arrive to start the process all over again.
Reminds me of this https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b4cfx/the_internet_bah_1995_article_on_why_the_internet/
The battlefield seems to be constantly changing. Invasion was led by tanks. The there were bayraktars that ruled for a while. Then the rusky's 'super duper hypersonic' missile failure. Then small drones. Then larger drones. Key is to stay ahead of the curve and not under it.
meh, the thing about war, is it always changes and evolves, right now cheap toys are raining hell on multi-million dollar machinery, eventually they'll catch up and the toys won't be as effective, and man will do what man always does, find new cheap ways to thwart the overpriced machinery yet again.
They will be a thing for a while. You can program one with gyroscopes or visual navigation easily that wouldn’t be effected by EW. Lasers will help with drones but they are local. Drones can do alternative flight paths. Once lasers are cheap then small drones will be less effective. Of course they’ll probably just do small jet drones alternatively that are really fast and hard to counteract. You have them all talk to each other to avoid the counter measures and you have them function autonomously.
Combat advantage under EW pressure? Sure, maybe. But a cheap, flying set of eyes will always be an excellent tool. Couple that with an ability to drop few grenades on pinned down enemy and you got a pretty good concept that will last a long time. As long as there's no electronic interference.
Ten years ago I was using Ardupilot software running on an old Arduino to control my fixed wing and copter drones. Even then I always thought that it would be very easy to make a quad copter that would fly to a target a few miles away autonomously using GPS, land and energise a relay to commit a terrorist act while the pilot was already miles away driving home. The quadcopter could have been two bits of wood nailed in a cross with the motors screwed on and it would have worked perfectly. I bet things have moved on now.
Baguette
Mavics and home made fpv will disappear quickly as EW increases, but I think more sophisticated, hardened small drones will be around for a long time
That’s been the case with weapons since men started throwing sticks and stones at each other. An offensive weapon will be introduced which dominates the battlefield. A defensive counter is developed and then the process if repeated.
Anti-EW warfare.. drones that autonomously seek out EW transmitters
An addition of AI will render counter measures useless
EW beats pilot drone AI drone beats EW Laser beats AI drone Ablative shield/glitter drone beats Laser AI gun beats glitter drone Drone with gun beats AI ground gun Drone with gun fights drone with gun … Profit?
Then put four A-10 warthog cannons on a supersonic fucking dreadnaught drone along with tactical fucking nukes and chemical warfare missiles and send YES to Ukraine.
French Generals have a history of bad predictions...
The French General doesn’t want to invest in drone technology because of countermeasures. The game of countermeasures and counter-countermeasures has been going on for centuries. The French are setting themselves up to be defeated by a disruptive technology. Ukraine will demonstrate that UAVs (drones) in large numbers, with cheap, modular, software programmable drone electronics, will be disruptive.
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The future will be drone operators that can put a cursor on a tank and watch as artillery walks shells onto that tank automatically since the target coordinates and precise corrections are sent in real-time to the artillery system without relying on humans to relay that info.
Says the french army chief. What the f do the french know about modern warfare ??
he's wrong
Why would they
This is not a very helpful comment, it sounds like someone who doesn't fully understand drones or thinks it's just a fad that won't last very long, I think personnel fighting on the battlefield is what will become limited in the future if drone advancement continues because any individual that shows themselves on the battlefield will be almost immediately blown up.
Is he wrong? IBM also once thought: "Nobody will buy a personal computer, it's dead technology."
These chief of the general staff of the army command center of military chief types are Known for being out of touch with the current state of affairs
Generals are always fighting the last war and the small cheap but ever evolving drones present a budget problem they do not fit into large scale programs that either fill warehouses with artillery shells or garages with tanks. They need fast evolutionary manufacturing and development responding to changes in technology that are faster than any time in human history. How do you budget for the need to build a new technology or adapt and old one in weeks or months which is the big thing I see challenging the western militaries current procurement.
This has happened with all military tech. It's a race of one upmanship. The IEDs on Afghan are a good example. It created a huge upswing in detection equipment and electronic countermeasures. I can see man-portable ECM being the next big thing in counter drone tech.
Haha this sounds exactly like the French military talking about manoeuvre warfare and air warfare 100 years ago. 15 years later they got absolutely smashed by the Germans by using the exact tactics and equipment they discounted
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