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French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

politico.eu

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Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#61

Post by grandremplace »

boricj wrote: post #19
bell-cot wrote: post #2

> Since the war in Ukraine started, the French government has urged companies to produce more weapons, faster and cheaper. > However, the reality is complicated. > "It's an ongoing process. Up until now, we were producing around 10 radars a year, now the target is over 20 a year,” Descourvieres said. If there was an actual war on, and a nation was taking both combat and operational losses - then 10 or 20 per year har…

If France were to be at war with a nation knocking on our borders, our policy nowadays is to fire a nuclear-tipped ASMPA missile as a warning shot . We do not rely on our conventional forces or anyone else to safeguard our sovereignty should it escalate to that. Our army and arms industry have suffered heavy cuts for thirty years after the end of the Cold War, prioritizing quality over quantity, but we've kept what w…

[flagged]

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#62

Post by AYBABTME »

lm28469 wrote: post #45
AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #42

I read the article but couldn't find any mention of how a radar detects drones? A drone is much smaller than an aircraft, can be confused with birds and can have 0 communication with a command & control station due to AI. So how can anything detect it? Plus, even if you detect it, it's coming towards you at a speed of 100+ kmph with the intent to crash into you and detonate the payload. Any missile you use is way too…

You're making a lot of wrong assumptions, drones can be any size, nobody's talking about missiles to shoot them down, not all drones are kamikaze, &c. If they're already being produced they do work for their intended purpose, Thales doesn't fuck around

I wouldn't be surprised if the drones they can detect are the larger fixed wings long range ones and not the FPV types.

FPV drones, aside from EW and directed energy weapons, don't have any counter at the tactical scale (although fielding shotguns might help). Any counter will need to be infantry section/platoon scale to be effective, or at a minimum company level weapon system. The range of the AA countermeasure for an FPV drone will be on the order of 500m-1.5km, so covering a 1000s of km long front line is near impossible with current systems.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#63

Post by AYBABTME »

fjfaase wrote: post #35

From what I heard about the SMART-L [1] radar around 1990, it could spot reflective objects the size of tennis balls at a distance of about 100Km. I guess with modern electronics and DSP, a much smaller system must be able to detect drones with ease. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART-L

The problem isn't detecting small objects, it's that at this scale, there's a ton of noise. Distinguishing between noise, foliage, birds, and a tiny FPV drone, is really finding a needle in a haystack. Radar systems have been simply ignoring that level of noise at low altitude, sticking to fast moving small objects (artillery shells, rockets) or generally bigger objects (planes).

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#64

Post by ed_mercer »

> Security is tight: An officer checks phones and pictures taken by visitors before they leave to make sure no industrial secrets are taken out of the facility.

What a joke. What if have cloud backup? This level of half-assed checking gives me great doubt about their competency.

The only way to prevent leakage is to have people leave their stuff at the entrance and go through a metal detector.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#65

Post by bell-cot »

lm28469 wrote: post #56
bluGill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would work and be better than the nothing we have. Well some minor adustment for 155mm shells.

Well actually against modern armor they wouldn't work much better than nothing

Artillery shells are (99%) for use against infantry and other soft targets. Anti-armor is at most a micro-niche.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#66

Post by snypher »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #42

I read the article but couldn't find any mention of how a radar detects drones? A drone is much smaller than an aircraft, can be confused with birds and can have 0 communication with a command & control station due to AI. So how can anything detect it? Plus, even if you detect it, it's coming towards you at a speed of 100+ kmph with the intent to crash into you and detonate the payload. Any missile you use is way too…

>can be confused with birds

The article states they can determine the difference.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#67

Post by ClumsyPilot »

simmerup wrote: post #14
stefan_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's getting hard to believe anything in this world anymore. A million shells fired by the Germans in Verdun in a mere 8 hours and now the entirety of Europe can't make that number in a year.

Just wait until we see what China can produce for a war

China has been supplying the entire world with basically all of modern industrial goods. They have over 10x Russia's industry.

Anyone who draws China into a prolonged conflict is too dumb to live.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#68

Post by Arrath »

AYBABTME wrote: post #62
lm28469 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of wrong assumptions, drones can be any size, nobody's talking about missiles to shoot them down, not all drones are kamikaze, &c. If they're already being produced they do work for their intended purpose, Thales doesn't fuck around

I wouldn't be surprised if the drones they can detect are the larger fixed wings long range ones and not the FPV types. FPV drones, aside from EW and directed energy weapons, don't have any counter at the tactical scale (although fielding shotguns might help). Any counter will need to be infantry section/platoon scale to be effective, or at a minimum company level weapon system. The range of the AA countermeasure for…

Even if the entire front is utterly uneconomical to cover, local defenses like these can be used to provide an umbrella to more important points. Field hospitals, ammo dumps, headquarters, maintenance depots, etc.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#69

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bell-cot wrote: post #2

> Since the war in Ukraine started, the French government has urged companies to produce more weapons, faster and cheaper. > However, the reality is complicated. > "It's an ongoing process. Up until now, we were producing around 10 radars a year, now the target is over 20 a year,” Descourvieres said. If there was an actual war on, and a nation was taking both combat and operational losses - then 10 or 20 per year har…

> 10 or 20 per year hardly amounts to squat.

Yes, before this war I never realised that our (western) military production is a joke. I am very disturbed that we cannot outproduce Russia despite having 20x their military budget.

People who say that the West could produce more if it was really pressed - well so could Russia, people are still driving BMWs and having parties, they have not mobilised the way the British have during WW2. I think it's dangerous to believe that we could magic capabilities out of thin air when it really counts.

The way we do contracts is a clownshow - UK has ordered more NLAWS and they will take two years to deliver.

Meanwhile in the Vietnam war, USA lost 10,000 combat aircraft, more than currently exist in all of western world combined. I cannot explain this in any way other than the system being rife with waste and abuse.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#70

Post by [deleted] »

lm28469 wrote: post #55
stefan_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's getting hard to believe anything in this world anymore. A million shells fired by the Germans in Verdun in a mere 8 hours and now the entirety of Europe can't make that number in a year.

I'll take 10 000 modern shells over 1m of whatever the fuck they were using back in ww1. The accuracy was "it's going to fall somewhere between us and were the canon is pointed" and up to 50% didn't detonate. We're talking about: https://nfknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2573.jpg vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors/Nexter_Bonus

[deleted]
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