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War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

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Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#51

Post by perlgeek »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #16
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

I'm not sure a carrier strike group would actually outright lose to a giant swarm of drones, at least in terms of the carrier being sunk. A Shahed warhead is pretty small once you're using it against large warships. That said, I wonder why you don't see Ukraine and Russia doing this more -- "saving up" for massive clouds of long range strike drones every couple weeks, instead of sending out a couple hundred every nig…

> at least in terms of the carrier being sunk

You don't need to sink a carrier to make it more of a liability than an asset.

If you hit its radar systems and/or damage the surface enough that landing becomes impossible, it becomes a sitting duck.

> That said, I wonder why you don't see Ukraine and Russia doing this more -- "saving up" for massive clouds of long range strike drones every couple weeks

To some degree, this happens. Journalists reporting from Ukraine already talk about some nights being silent, and then there are strikes with 600 drones or so. On the other side, Ukraine was really effective at using naval drone swarms to attack Russian naval ships.

Why not send even bigger swarm? I guess there are limits to how many drones you can effectively control at once. Data links saturate, and you risk losing a big swarm to jamming.

When Russia really wants to destroy a target in Ukraine, they use ballistic missiles, their interception rate is pretty low. Ukraine seems also pretty effective at destroying things in Russia, so air defense doesn't seem to be such a huge obstacle.

Finally, it feels like the Russia-Ukraine war is turning more and more into an economic battle. Ukraine is now at the point where money is more limited than weapons / ammunition, at least for some types of weaponry. Would saving up drones for a huge wave be a big economic advantage?

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#52

Post by perlgeek »

nradov wrote: post #49
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no ships were lost how much ammunition did the US navy use to shoot down incoming drones, and what are the cost of those vs the attacker's cost?

Does that even matter? US GDP is orders of magnitude larger than Iran. The American way of war has long been based on minimizing casualties through overwhelming materiel superiority and profligate ammunition expenditure. Back in WWII the USA literally out produced Japan by 1000:1 in some types of munitions. Our industrial base has decayed a bit lately but that's a fixable problem.

It matters in so far as the production rate for e.g. air defense interceptors is much lower than the rate at which they've been used in the Iran war. Which is probably one of the reasons the US was ready for a ceasefire.

They might have enough stockpiles to continue this war for a while, but it thins out the capabilities in other theaters, making the US generally more vulnerable.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#53

Post by TiredOfLife »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

There are 3 aircraft carriers near iran. Iran has multiple 10,000 of shahed drones.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#54

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

[deleted]

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#55

Post by analognoise »

nradov wrote: post #49
chii wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no ships were lost how much ammunition did the US navy use to shoot down incoming drones, and what are the cost of those vs the attacker's cost?

Does that even matter? US GDP is orders of magnitude larger than Iran. The American way of war has long been based on minimizing casualties through overwhelming materiel superiority and profligate ammunition expenditure. Back in WWII the USA literally out produced Japan by 1000:1 in some types of munitions. Our industrial base has decayed a bit lately but that's a fixable problem.

This absolutely matters. It is not 1945, and we used years of supplies.

If the decaying industrial base is that easy to fix please, by all means; go ahead and do it.

I don’t think you can fix it without long term, competent industrial policy and we have the absolute opposite of that in power currently.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#56

Post by smarm52 »

I thought this was common knowledge?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

> The Red force, led by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, used numerous asymmetrical tactics unanticipated by the Blue force; a pre-emptive cruise missile attack sank sixteen Blue warships and led to the exercise's suspension. The simulation was restarted with Blue forces fully restored, and Red forces heavily constrained from free-play "to the point where the end state was scripted"

More of a political exercise than anything else. But this has been cited as an indication of the effectiveness of modern drone-based warfare.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#57

Post by twhitmore »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #15
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

A Shahed is only useful against stationary soft targets, which an aircraft carrier is not. It also doesn’t have the kind of heavy warhead or terminal guidance required to defeat the armored structure of naval ships. Shahed doesn’t have any kind of countermeasure avoidance. Adding these would massively increase the cost. Naval anti-ship drones have been around for many decades. This is a highly evolved area of militar…

[flagged]

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#58

Post by lukan »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #15
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

A Shahed is only useful against stationary soft targets, which an aircraft carrier is not. It also doesn’t have the kind of heavy warhead or terminal guidance required to defeat the armored structure of naval ships. Shahed doesn’t have any kind of countermeasure avoidance. Adding these would massively increase the cost. Naval anti-ship drones have been around for many decades. This is a highly evolved area of militar…

"The standard naval anti-ship drones are Harpoon, Exocet, and similar. These are qualitatively more capable than a Shahed "

Those are called guided rockets and of course are more capable but also way more expensive.

Shaheds can and did get basic guidance very cheap. Add a video, basic image processing to find big grey object in sea as target, send them radio controlled in the right direction .. so when they get jammed, they autonomously find that big target.

And you surely can blind/shoot down a couple. But we were talking about 10000 of them at once. The carrier would maybe not sink, but it would burn.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#59

Post by m4rtink »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #15
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

A Shahed is only useful against stationary soft targets, which an aircraft carrier is not. It also doesn’t have the kind of heavy warhead or terminal guidance required to defeat the armored structure of naval ships. Shahed doesn’t have any kind of countermeasure avoidance. Adding these would massively increase the cost. Naval anti-ship drones have been around for many decades. This is a highly evolved area of militar…

Suppose the ship is immobilized or under tow after hitting a mine for example. Or even just in port in range of cheap dumb drones.

Basically these make it much more likely you loose ships if they stop moving for any reason.

Re: War game exposed U.S. vulnerability to low-tech warfare

#60

Post by rasz »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #15
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #9

Feels like the title needs some sort of "2002" notice - the reporting is recent but the actual wargame was done in 2002 and only recently declassified. So, of course, the US military's vulnerability has only increased in spades since 2002 due to drones. All those bases in the Middle East that were supposed to help protect the countries where they were based were just ripe targets. I think more critically, most of the…

A Shahed is only useful against stationary soft targets, which an aircraft carrier is not. It also doesn’t have the kind of heavy warhead or terminal guidance required to defeat the armored structure of naval ships. Shahed doesn’t have any kind of countermeasure avoidance. Adding these would massively increase the cost. Naval anti-ship drones have been around for many decades. This is a highly evolved area of militar…

>A Shahed is only useful against stationary

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/18/russian-drone-hits-...

https://en.usm.media/chinese-vessel-comes-under-attack-in-th...

>or terminal guidance

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-shahed-dive-bomb-shah...

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