Counter-drone warfare is going to be huge over the next couple decades, so this is very interesting to see.
Drone warfare right now is small in numbers and small in range, because of limitations around the technology — even so it is having a ton of impact on the ground in Ukraine.
A good analog might be early World War 1: planes were incredible scouts and they were occasionally disruptive to troops, but it wasn't really practical to deploy them in large, coordinated formations, fit them with heavy payloads, or use them out over the oceans. By World War 2 that entire calculus had changed, with horrifying results for all combatants.
Right now an American carrier group might be vulnerable in littoral (shoreline) combat to drones, but retreating even a few dozen miles offshore would be enough distance to dampen the threat — drones just don't have the range and anti-jamming to be useful on the scale of hundreds or thousands of miles.
In 15 years though? 10x the range, the speed, the numbers, and potentially outfit a carrier ship specifically for deploying drones en masse. Play the same scenario out underwater with "drone carrier submarines".
The key question for all American military commanders and defense contractors to answer: how do you shoot down 1,000 drones without losing a ship?
> how do you shoot down 1,000 drones without losing a ship?
A hangar of 10,000 anti-drone gnats. Barring a breakthrough in high explosives, an anti-drone drone will be lighter and cheaper than an anti-ship drone. We played this game with planes and boats.
It is cost issue. If American can build 1K drones like that, Chinese and Russians can do easily at 100x due to their industries bases. Amercian lacks those industries within America right now. You hear a lot of Made iN China components slip into F35. So the cost for Americans are just too high especially with coming dedollarisation and persistent high inflation. It doesnt matter what Americans build as defense to drones attack, the enemy combatant will just outproduce and swamp you directly and/or slip in another ttacks during those saturation (e.g. surface base unmmaned speedboat with tactical nukes/thermo right at the center of Ametican warships/carriers. From what I have read, it is already developed and tested. We shluld be seeing American spanish armada wipeout in coming decades if WW3 happen.
While I personally detest wars, the reality of them is it’s not about being cost effective. It’s about winning.
If it’s within an organization’s means to spend $100k (within means being the key part) to be able to destroy 500 dollar drones in a way that increases the ability to win compared to not having it, then purely from the war perspective, it makes sense.
Of course, the entire concept of war is laden with waste and destruction, so it’s almost never in alignment with the economically and environmentally optimized choice.
The largest militaries have access to such an insane amount of money that almost anything that wins better will be purchased, despite the monetary return not justifying the monetary cost.
In life and death situations, a soldier backed by that money isn’t going to care how much money they wasted. Just that they remain alive and the enemy loses.
> it’s not about being cost effective. It’s about winning.
well, you win by being cost effective. Most modern wars are contests of attrition and logistics and bringing down political will to continue to fight, Ukraine being a good example now, but Afghanistan too of course.
Tactically costs don't always matter, but the overall strategic goal has to be to trade favorably.
Yes, but "cost effectiveness" means very different things sometimes. If, for example a hypothetical country were to have huge stores of old equipment to throw at a problem, losing material from the stockpile doesn't actually "cost" the value of producing the stuff new would. Or a hypothetical country with a massive industrial base, fighting a minor proxy war that is politically unpopular at home. Or a hypothetical country, with a tiny population and no native industry, fighting a massive power in a long-lasting guerrilla campaign using material donated from regional powers. Etc, etc.
> Most modern wars are contests of attrition and logistics and bringing down political will to continue to fight
This second point is very well taken; I would extend it even further -- wars have always been contests of attrition, logistics, and political will, but this has been sharply highlighted in all the major conflicts since the turn of the 20th century.
Even if it is extremely effective. This thing would need to blow up between 500 - 2000 drones (depending on drone cost, which is going down) to make itself worth the expense. Meanwhile such a vehicle might be something that can be shot down with some AA fire.
Also no areal vehicle can go on say 500 missions without maintenance, that price is going to only go up.
I think you have to consider the opportunity cost. Spending $100k to kill a $500 drone sounds like a bad deal, but if that drone kills a soldier it could cost hundreds of thousands (or even millions) to train a new one and pay out death benefits.
How about Israeli army? Nade drop on personnel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwNpab1DckY (SFW) there is also video of Merkava getting damaged by bigger shell hitting its turret.
Can't read the article because it's behind Bloomberg's paywall so I don't know this wee beastie's capabilities, but my first thought would be because most manned aircraft are much faster, fly higher, carry more weapons, and have self-defense systems built in, which drones usually don't.
It’s a real shame if SpaceX’s technology gets co-opted by the US military, because then any point to point Starship trajectory needs to be treated as a hostile ICBM, even if it’s just passenger transport.
Not joking here. At my old startup, we had made significant progress in executing something along those lines. It was technically feasible, but neither economical nor relevant for that time, so the concept had to be ditched in the semi-prototype stage.
Drone warfare right now is small in numbers and small in range, because of limitations around the technology — even so it is having a ton of impact on the ground in Ukraine.
A good analog might be early World War 1: planes were incredible scouts and they were occasionally disruptive to troops, but it wasn't really practical to deploy them in large, coordinated formations, fit them with heavy payloads, or use them out over the oceans. By World War 2 that entire calculus had changed, with horrifying results for all combatants.
Right now an American carrier group might be vulnerable in littoral (shoreline) combat to drones, but retreating even a few dozen miles offshore would be enough distance to dampen the threat — drones just don't have the range and anti-jamming to be useful on the scale of hundreds or thousands of miles.
In 15 years though? 10x the range, the speed, the numbers, and potentially outfit a carrier ship specifically for deploying drones en masse. Play the same scenario out underwater with "drone carrier submarines".
The key question for all American military commanders and defense contractors to answer: how do you shoot down 1,000 drones without losing a ship?