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To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

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Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#121

Post by trhway »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #107
petre wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rafael Systems sells Drone Dome anti drone mobile defense.

I think they even proved themselves in the recent Gaza campaign.

I don't think there were any real military drones. While an RC model/quad with a grenade does qualify as a weapon, the purposely built military drones have orders of magnitude better communication over longer range, incl. remote high precision targeting, loitering times, and carry a high precision stand-off missiles (that is an important point because the defense has to shoot the small fast incoming missile while the drone itself carries several missiles and loiters outside of the CIWS/SHORAD range waiting for the window of opportunity, and thus shooting the drone itself requires much more expensive/heavy air-defense system).

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#122

Post by milesward »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #120
sliken wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at? Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.

Current point defense systems are already capable of placing a 20mm round with a muzzle velocity of 1000m/s onto a falling mortar shell in the last three seconds of its flight time. How hard do you think drones are by comparison?

ballistic trajectory versus active evasive behavior.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#123

Post by AtlasBarfed »

The critical aspect of drones is as cheap as you can get while being effective.

The US Military from a true large-conflict conventional war is currently most vulnerable to an economic conflict. We blew so much money on basically minor military maneuvers relative to a real big war, and it show that our defense industry is parasitic and corrupt.

Drones are the perfect counter: if cheap enough, plentiful enough, and effective enough, they don't need to be superior to their american counterparts. They just need to win the cost ratio by a sufficient margin.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#124

Post by filmfact »

milesward wrote: post #122
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current point defense systems are already capable of placing a 20mm round with a muzzle velocity of 1000m/s onto a falling mortar shell in the last three seconds of its flight time. How hard do you think drones are by comparison?

ballistic trajectory versus active evasive behavior.

Exactly - mortars predictable trajectory against a background free of ground clutter make them easy to predict the future location of.

A drone optimally randomly dodging at treetop height is a much more difficult target.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#125

Post by cma »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #120
sliken wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at? Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.

Current point defense systems are already capable of placing a 20mm round with a muzzle velocity of 1000m/s onto a falling mortar shell in the last three seconds of its flight time. How hard do you think drones are by comparison?

They could fly low: the tech isn't fully there yet but skydio drones show the potential.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#126

Post by hash872 »

godtoldmetodoit wrote: post #101
jude- wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubtful. The CCP runs a command economy. It doesn't need to sell its goods to finance a war when the state can simply force the economy to produce the means of war. Want to stop China from waging war? Knock out its means of production -- target its imports.

Agreed - in this awful scenario where the US is fighting China, their economy would absolutely crater as the US shoots any ship heading towards Chinese ports after the embargo was declared. China can't feed itself. China only produces a third of the oil it consumes. If your people begin to starve as soon as war starts and you all of a sudden have 1/3rd the oil you used to.... well, that's not exactly a recipe for suc…

They have a gigantic strategic oil reserve (it has its own Wiki page!), and I would assume the same for food as well. I'm sure that Pakistan and especially Russia would be happy to help with them as imports as well, maybe not as much as they use in a given year, but enough to help out.

Most of the simulations for a naval war around Taiwan predict that it would be over in a few days, maybe weeks, but not long enough to really draw down those reserves.

Most importantly, it's really not realistic that the US Navy could prevent the rest of planet Earth from providing goods to the world's largest trading nation. Our navy isn't big enough, for one thing, but the economic damage to every other country that imports into China makes this blockade idea pretty unrealistic. I can't even imagine how much inflation would spike when the world's factory can't export for a few weeks

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#127

Post by cma »

sklearncowboy wrote: post #106
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #4

Drones are the new aircraft carriers. That is, pre-WWII, the dominant naval ship was the battleship. Heavily armored, with enormous guns, military planners expected that the battle for the Atlantic and Pacific would be carried out by these monsters slugging it out. Though there were hints that planes could be quite effective against ships, few admirals realized that the longer range of an aircraft carrier would make…

China was already way past this by the late 90s. This is old thinking. Same battlefield with different technology. The war that changed everything was the 1st Gulf War. 20 years ago they could see how stupid it was to use weapons to blow things up that cost more than what you were blowing up. Our military has already been lapped. We only don't think so because we waste so much money on outdated expensive weapon syste…

We also use it as a loss leader exhibition space to sell the tech to allied dictators that want to appear stong with fighter jets and stuff.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#128

Post by benchaney »

boplicity wrote: post #98
lurquer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you can make a unabomber type of device you can construct a weaponized quadrocopter It’s trivial, cheap, and simple to do massive harm to massive numbers of people. Fortunately, humans don’t usually do this unless part of the government/military. In a country of 300 million, the only non-state mass death events are a handful of terrorist attacks and deranged teenagers determined to shoot up their schools. The an…

In 2020, 24 people died in car crashes in all of Seattle. [1] In 2020, 446 people died in mass shootings in the US. [2] 1. https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-traffic-deaths-remai... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

Why are you comparing traffic fatalities in Seattle to mass shooting fatalities in the entire country? That makes no sense.

In any event >40k people died from traffic fatalities in the United States in 2020[0], so a few orders of magnitude larger than mass shooting deaths,

[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974006735/tragic-driving-was-...

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#129

Post by jtbayly »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #86
sliken wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at? Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.

Here's a line of cops shooting at race drones. They would've had plenty of time to escape if they weren't sticking around to find out how long it takes to get shot down. These were race drones from 5 years ago and modern ones can be around twice as fast. Not to mention you don't want to dump a magazine upwards in your own territory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA

Fun video. Definitely showed how easy it is to shoot down drones of the consumer variety.

If you can hit it with a pistol it’s easy to hit.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#130

Post by cma »

magicsmoke wrote: post #54
justaguy88 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drone swarm can have a carrier vehicle, like a (perhaps autonomous) big plane or sub to get it within range

And I suppose the carrier vehicle is somehow invulnerable to missiles? In fact, why wouldn't it just carry missiles in the first place?

A missile blows up in all directions, whereas a small drone can focus fire and concentrate energy on individuals. A swarm of tiny drones in a concentrated population area can potentially end up with a similar kill to mass ratio as early nuclear bombs. It is similar to the difference between a large conventional bomb and a cluster bomb but taken to another level.
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