Drones and how to kill them?

[uk 75]

This thread is not intended to discuss any individual countries use of drones as UAV are now called.

A Not-So-Short History of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) - Consortiq

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or drones, have a very storied history. In fact, UAVs go back as far as 1783! Here's what to know.

consortiq.com

Rather it is to have a place where we can look at general developments in UAV technology and ways to kill drones.
Drones offer a cheaper and easier to use alternative to aircraft, missiles, and a range of systems.
Current drones are small and cheap. killing them needs expensive weapons designed to shoot down planes and missiles.
Perhaps we need to go back to more basic weapons like shotguns and cannons slaved to effective jamming and detection systems.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Perhaps we need to go back to more basic weapons like shotguns and cannons slaved to effective jamming and detection systems.

Shotguns are fine weapons against low-flying drones, but most seem to fly well above duck-hunting altitude. Given that drones are only going to become:
1) cheaper
2) more numerous
3) Smaller

... it is imperative that systems be developed that can wipe out drones not only en masse, but surgically. Some sort of EMP-type device might knock a cloud of murderbots out of the sky; it might also take out friendly electronics. A directed energy weapon - laser or tight-focus radio - might be the most practical system long-term, though these requite line of sight. A laser emitter carried to altitude by a blimp, a barrage balloon, or a big drone, possible connected to the ground via fiber optics or mirrors, might be a way to go, but that would be vulnerable to attack. A more personal approach of having a defensive swarm of anti-murderbot murderbots might be inevitable, but that would require you to have access to high-rate manufacturing.

Possible: an explosive weapon that releasing fine filaments into a widely dispersed cloud. The filaments would need to be both environmentally sorta safe... and adhesive. Perhaps carbon fibers or silk or kevlar coated with a glue that really, REALLY sticky for a minute or so, then dries out and is non-toxic. Get this cloud close to an enemy drone and the filament glue themselves to the blades and either degrade performance enough that it drops from the sky, or straight-up locks the blades.

 

[sferrin]

Perhaps we need to go back to more basic weapons like shotguns and cannons slaved to effective jamming and detection systems.

Shotguns are fine weapons against low-flying drones, but most seem to fly well above duck-hunting altitude. Given that drones are only going to become:
1) cheaper
2) more numerous
3) Smaller

... it is imperative that systems be developed that can wipe out drones not only en masse, but surgically. Some sort of EMP-type device might knock a cloud of murderbots out of the sky; it might also take out friendly electronics. A directed energy weapon - laser or tight-focus radio - might be the most practical system long-term, though these requite line of sight. A laser emitter carried to altitude by a blimp, a barrage balloon, or a big drone, possible connected to the ground via fiber optics or mirrors, might be a way to go, but that would be vulnerable to attack. A more personal approach of having a defensive swarm of anti-murderbot murderbots might be inevitable, but that would require you to have access to high-rate manufacturing.

Possible: an explosive weapon that releasing fine filaments into a widely dispersed cloud. The filaments would need to be both environmentally sorta safe... and adhesive. Perhaps carbon fibers or silk or kevlar coated with a glue that really, REALLY sticky for a minute or so, then dries out and is non-toxic. Get this cloud close to an enemy drone and the filament glue themselves to the blades and either degrade performance enough that it drops from the sky, or straight-up locks the blades.

Only DEWs will be able to deal with swarms IMO, be that lasers, microwave weapons, or electronic attack.

 

[paralay]

,

 

[Orionblamblam]

Only DEWs will be able to deal with swarms IMO, be that lasers, microwave weapons, or electronic attack.

Electronic attack can be shielded/firewalled against. Lasers can be defended against with smoke. Microwaves can probably be defended against by simply wrapping the vulnerable bits in conductive mesh. All of these add cost and complexity; I suspect we're entering a new cannon-vs-armor race.

And directed energy weapons, even if 100% effective, would have a hell of a time with a *cloud* of murderbots. Lasers, after all, work great against insects but I don't see laser-armed trucks trying to take out swarms of locusts or skeeters.

Not that that wouldn't be cool, of course.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGjP9SE7tsM

 

[hagaricus]

I keep thinking the 1st & easiest tool would be issuing high-capacity magazines of tracer ammo to infantry. tracer allows them to "walk" the fire onto a moving target where normal fire degenerates to giesswork. Am I missing something?

 

[sferrin]

Only DEWs will be able to deal with swarms IMO, be that lasers, microwave weapons, or electronic attack.

Electronic attack can be shielded/firewalled against. Lasers can be defended against with smoke. Microwaves can probably be defended against by simply wrapping the vulnerable bits in conductive mesh. All of these add cost and complexity; I suspect we're entering a new cannon-vs-armor race.

And directed energy weapons, even if 100% effective, would have a hell of a time with a *cloud* of murderbots. Lasers, after all, work great against insects but I don't see laser-armed trucks trying to take out swarms of locusts or skeeters.

Not that that wouldn't be cool, of course.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGjP9SE7tsM

Good luck trying to find a gun or missile that can take down a swarm of these controlled by AI.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Good luck trying to find a gun or missile that can take a swarm of these controlled by AI.

Cough.

(h/t WhiteDemon)

 

[Grey Havoc]

I keep thinking the 1st & easiest tool would be issuing high-capacity magazines of tracer ammo to infantry. tracer allows them to "walk" the fire onto a moving target where normal fire degenerates to giesswork. Am I missing something?

Logistical issues might be a problem there.

 

[sferrin]

Good luck trying to find a gun or missile that can take a swarm of these controlled by AI.

Cough.

(h/t WhiteDemon)

Watch those videos and imagine trying to slew that turret fast enough to track them. Worse, trying to anticipate their direction.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I keep thinking the 1st & easiest tool would be issuing high-capacity magazines of tracer ammo to infantry. tracer allows them to "walk" the fire onto a moving target where normal fire degenerates to giesswork. Am I missing something?

Logistical issues might be a problem there.

That and "bullets raining back down" issues. And assuming that soldiers could even *see* a drone the size we can expect from hundreds of meters away, much less shoot it.

 

[zen]

Does the electronics in a anti-drone missile need to be very high performance?
Does the missile?

Essentially drones tend to fly at speeds and altitudes comparable at worst to WWII aircraft.

Exactly how expensive is an anti-drone missile?

 

[Orionblamblam]

Does the electronics in a anti-drone missile need to be very high performance?
Does the missile?

Essentially drones tend to fly at speeds and altitudes comparable at worst to WWII aircraft.

Exactly how expensive is an anti-drone missile?

A Stinger missile reportedly costs about $120,000. *Far* too much for this job, but quite affordable for taking out full aircraft. What you want is a system that costs less than the drone, which in this case can be assumed to be on the order of $100 (and soon enough $1, probably less, when tiny little drones get stamped out by the millions). A system that uses roughly analogous mini-drones to hunt down enemy drones could be cheap if the kill mechanism is cheap and reusable... the enemy drone will have some sort of offensive payload, the defensive drone will have something perhaps as simple as a string with some hooks. If the defensive drone is recoverable and reusable, then it can be fairly expensive and still affordable.

A directed energy system could be *very* cheap on a per shot basis. But you'd need a lot of those, too... a laser mounted ona truck or a blimb or a helicopter might be fine out in an open field, but what about in an urban area where line of sight is short? You'd want to have laser defenses more common than street lights. Probably mounted *on* street lights for a start, and also piggybacking onto existing security camera installations. Skycrapers would likely end up bristling with lasers all up and down the corners.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Watch those videos and imagine trying to slew that turret fast enough to track them.

You might be surprised. As you point out though, heavy duty computer hardware will be needed to make it well work against massed drone attacks, swarm based and otherwise.

 

[Foo Fighter]

If you are going to take out drones in any number, you need to thin outside the box. Conventional munitions are as has been mentioned, too expensive/large or too demanding on logistic trains.

Find a method of buggering the electronice and they will not fly, simples. Stuff that small is hardly going to be hardened against emp.

 

[Orionblamblam]

If you are going to take out drones in any number, you need to thin outside the box. Conventional munitions are as has been mentioned, too expensive/large or too demanding on logistic trains.

Find a method of buggering the electronice and they will not fly, simples. Stuff that small is hardly going to be hardened against emp.

Stuff that small tends to not *need* to be hardened against EMP. The zappage a device gets from am EMP is proportional to the length of it's "antenna;" ground based infrastructure are hooked up to miles-long lines. Small devices like phones and drones have antenna - any conductive line in the thing - measured in centimeters. And you can protect your phone against EMP by putting it into a Faraday cage made out of conductive plastic wrap or light copper/aluminum mesh. Complete protection would doubtless be an interesting design and manufacturing challenge, especially if your drone needs to communicate in any way. But we're getting to the point where drones can be programmed on the ground to seek out targets based on visual or IR cues and don't need further communications to do their job. Your cell phone quite possibly is smart enough to recognize your face, so a drone should be able to do the same. "Find anyone wearing this flag patch, drop in and say 'howdy' with an ounce of C4."

 

[uk 75]

Could one develop suicide drones rather like the machines in the Robowar competition that are designed to kill one another.
A drone that acted like a raptor

 

[sferrin]

If you are going to take out drones in any number, you need to thin outside the box. Conventional munitions are as has been mentioned, too expensive/large or too demanding on logistic trains.

Find a method of buggering the electronice and they will not fly, simples. Stuff that small is hardly going to be hardened against emp.

Stuff that small tends to not *need* to be hardened against EMP. The zappage a device gets from am EMP is proportional to the length of it's "antenna;" ground based infrastructure are hooked up to miles-long lines. Small devices like phones and drones have antenna - any conductive line in the thing - measured in centimeters. And you can protect your phone against EMP by putting it into a Faraday cage made out of conductive plastic wrap or light copper/aluminum mesh. Complete protection would doubtless be an interesting design and manufacturing challenge, especially if your drone needs to communicate in any way. But we're getting to the point where drones can be programmed on the ground to seek out targets based on visual or IR cues and don't need further communications to do their job. Your cell phone quite possibly is smart enough to recognize your face, so a drone should be able to do the same. "Find anyone wearing this flag patch, drop in and say 'howdy' with an ounce of C4."

 

[hagaricus]

Does the electronics in a anti-drone missile need to be very high performance?
Does the missile?

Essentially drones tend to fly at speeds and altitudes comparable at worst to WWII aircraft.

Exactly how expensive is an anti-drone missile?

If you take some off-the shelf hobby electronics components, solid rocket motor etc.. with what is publicly known about early sams & aams, I can't see it being terribly hard to produce a cheap ir-homing missile capable of downing drones for less than they cost.

 

[Orionblamblam]

ir-homing missile capable of downing drones for less than they cost.

Difficulty: how hot are drones? Your IR sensor on your missile might be little more than a modified cell phone camera... small and cheap, but I'm not sure how well it would spot a quadcopter half a kilometer away.

Maybe a beamrider of some kind.

 

[zen]

Maybe a beamrider of some kind.

Ought to be pretty cheap to achieve that.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Maybe a beamrider of some kind.

Ought to be pretty cheap to achieve that.

Maybe. Something that homes in on a reflected laser should be fairly cheap. But aiming a laser at a drone might be a neat trick; it's not a job for a handheld device, but something aimed by a machine. And that machine would probably need a millimeter-wave radar system to find and track the drone. It would be nice if the interceptors could simply home in on the reflected radar, but I'm not sure if physics would really support the idea of a homing system a centimeter in diameter. And if a cheap 1 cm receiver can home in on reflected radar, then a cheap 1 cm receiver would home in on the radar *emitter* really well, and the radar system would have swarms of murderbots shooting out of the sky at it. One-gram explosive charges would do diddly to an armored vehicle, but they'd quickly make an expensive useless mess out of a phased array radar system.

 

[zen]

True but a mmw radar need only track until a laser can be pointed. After all this type was used to assess the number of insects in a vertical slice of the atmosphere.

Ideally a modern AESA set aimed at LPI, as the whole distance thing is at worst going to be under 1km and at best 5km.
Frankly optical tracking is possible at the shorter range.

A beam rider ought to do the job.

 

[Orionblamblam]

True but a mmw radar need only track until a laser can be pointed.

Drones are small and can be *really* fast, which means they could well zip out of the laser beam. Once they do that, re-aquiring them with the laser might be a challenge... the laser would have to scan *very* fast or defocus and scan at vastly lower return brightness.

The insect example would seem likely to have just swept the beam through the sky and counted returns; it probably didn't track individual bugs.

And there remains the problem of using lasers through dust/smoke/fog.

As for optical tracking: good luck tracking low-altitude drones at long ranges through forests and urban areas.

 

[hagaricus]

I keep coming back to a cellphone.. Your average cheap phone can track a face just fine. All it needs is to be programmed to recognise the contrast between sky and flying dark thing. Also, a lot of phones now have multiple cameras.. Different angles of view and spectra maybe? More than enough processing power to turn that into direction information.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I keep coming back to a cellphone.. Your average cheap phone can track a face just fine. All it needs is to be programmed to recognise the contrast between sky and flying dark thing. Also, a lot of phones now have multiple cameras.. Different angles of view and spectra maybe? More than enough processing power to turn that into direction information.

Suggestion: take your phone outside, set the camera to the wide lens, photograph a sparrow or a hummingbird flying a block or two away, see what it looks like. How many pixels wide is it?

 

[hagaricus]

I keep coming back to a cellphone.. Your average cheap phone can track a face just fine. All it needs is to be programmed to recognise the contrast between sky and flying dark thing. Also, a lot of phones now have multiple cameras.. Different angles of view and spectra maybe? More than enough processing power to turn that into direction information.

Suggestion: take your phone outside, set the camera to the wide lens, photograph a sparrow or a hummingbird flying a block or two away, see what it looks like. How many pixels wide is it?

hence aquiring with the narrower lens and tracking with the wider?

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

We’re only on the first generation of combat drones. It won’t be long before they’re dropping micro precision guided submunitions, if they can see it from above they can kill it. Others might lob the guided submunitions such they don’t even need to overfly the target;- a really silent killer.

Quadcopter type drones may be small but with so many moving parts so they’re very vulnerable. A warhead thingy that throws out a large weighted net would do the trick….. tangling all those props.. Spiderman eat your heart out.

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cAebNE2L41g

 

[shin_getter]

The biggest problem for drone "defenses", especially those on surface vehicles, is that drones have superior mobility and good chance of spotting defenses before the inverse. (in a lot of terrains) Any defense have finite engagement capability, and the drone attacker can just fly around identify threats and allocated forces to defeat the weakest point of defenses.

The strategic counter-measure is two fold:
1. One is to have greater mobility than cheap drones (aka expensive drones) and counter mass them.
2. Two is to have means to equalize the information contest against a drone force, either in defeating ISR elements or deceiving it.
3. Third is to shoot the shooter, and counterattack staging points
4. Fourth is to actually have ground inception capability. This is difficult against the entire range of opponent munition and platforms.

Which approach would work depends on the situational factors.

1. For forces with air superiority of the conventional kind together with strategic depth (oceans, uninhabited lands) between launch points and targets, patrols by aircraft enables the widest coverage for cost. AEW aircraft would have sensors upgraded, new munitions from (cheap) missiles to DEW to guns to drones with guns can all be put to use against different category of targets. I do expect a stricter separation between expensive wide area sensors and terminal engagement platform that may take losses in interception.

I am unsure how many tiers of aircraft that counter would exist, but one can imagine it similar to ships like: 1st rate, 2nd rate, 3rd rate or battleship, heavy cruiser, light cruiser, destroyer, torpedo boat. I think mobility and payload (ability to carry powerful sensors or energy weapons) would sort the aircraft types from 6th generation down to quadcopters.

2. For forces without air superiority or lacking in strategic depth, a ground heavy defense will rely on concealment to deal with a more mobile force. Traditional large vehicles can not do that. I believe concealed ground sensors (drones that lands, or drone dropped sensors may be the convenient choice) will enable early warning.

The terrain will determine what kind of assets can be concealed within it, and thus what kind of force is survivable against a drone attacker. In terrains where concealment is great, high powered swarm killing force can be hidden within, safe from unfavorable engagements. Such a force will evolve to be very sophisticated however, as the drone attacker will use all available means to detect the opponent main force, with smaller, terrain navigating vehicles. As such, even when long range sensors fail, one still has to fight to defeat short range sensors with minimum exposure of high powered systems.

3. Counter attacking opponent drone launch points is basic symmetry

4. Ground Interception capability is what some people are calling for, in a hope of turning back time in how wars are fought. This will not be a full answer except against very outmatched opponents that can not gain even local superiority. Weapons and defenses naturally reach a equilibrium where both are situationally useful. Relative force concentrations and distance between forces will determine effectiveness.

It perhaps makes sense to think of defense platform as enablers for complex munitions that will be universal. What we normally think of defense systems are those that provide munitions with energy (guns) and location via aim. With missiles, energy is internal to the munition and location depends on guidance.

 

[Basil]

Could be the cheapest-per-shot hard kill system against drones:

Our Systems - smart-shooter

See-Through Optics

www.smart-shooter.com

 

[zen]

True but a mmw radar need only track until a laser can be pointed.

Drones are small and can be *really* fast, which means they could well zip out of the laser beam. Once they do that, re-aquiring them with the laser might be a challenge... the laser would have to scan *very* fast or defocus and scan at vastly lower return brightness.

The insect example would seem likely to have just swept the beam through the sky and counted returns; it probably didn't track individual bugs.

And there remains the problem of using lasers through dust/smoke/fog.

As for optical tracking: good luck tracking low-altitude drones at long ranges through forests and urban areas.

Now this is getting silly and frankly playing word games.

Drones cover a wide spectrum of sizes and capabilities.
As a rule of thumb, smaller means they have to get closer for the limited size sensors to resolve potential targets clearly.

Essentially the smaller they are the closer they have to get to you, to see you and identify you.
And that in turn increases their vulnerability to detection and countering.

Bigger drones carry better sensors and can stay further away.

SO in terms of counters. Larger drones are more likely missile targets. Albeit simpler missiles, because even these larger drones are slow flying and currently don't possess much defensive capability.

Smaller drones might seem high speed. In fact they are even slower.
None of them seem to be built for high G maneuvers.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Essentially the smaller they are the closer they have to get to you, to see you and identify you.
And that in turn increases their vulnerability to detection and countering.

Does it? There is no law of physics saying that a drone can't get to the size of a fly... and the form of a fly. A human target can be *easily* killed by something the size of a fly: all it needs to do is touch you and deposit a disease or a toxin, without you even noticing it.

Note how difficult flies are to kill *now,* and right now they are not actively trying to hide from you, avoid your detection or kill you. Now imagine that a thousand smart-flies have decided that *you* need their attention. If a van stops at a stop light half a block from your place and waits thirty seconds while a load of smart-flies are quietly disgorged, with more as the van cruises by, how are you to detect them?

 

[GruntFox]

Here's the thing, everything I've seen indicates that you'll need AGIs (what the popular consensus calls AIs) in your drones to make them effective, largely because a bunch of insurgents with off-the-shelf computer parts and some assistance from Iran brought down a USAF stealth UAV. Now imagine the resources of a nation that wants drones taken out of the equation (like Iran or North Korea).

... at least unless you want your very valuable drone handler within a few hundred meters of your drone, making them easier to take both of them out...

 

[Kat Tsun]

"Insurgents" is an interesting description of an elite special forces intelligence unit of a industrial, nuclear nation.

Unless you mean that time the Predator drones were being watched by Iraqi militias in Sadr City or whatever. Skygrabber is pretty normal and a commercially available software though. So you're complaining about Internet software piracy? What's the problem? Bosnians and Serbs were both able to intercept basic satellite commo with Yagi antennae with not much of an issue. Vietnamese were able to listen to American radio communications in Vietnam. So what?

It's not a material problem until you start getting into substantial investments only capable by industrial states, as proven by the fact that no Predator was damaged or destroyed by hacking, but plenty have been lost due to incompetence of the pilots or simple missile weapons.

Drone swarms aren't real since baby sized quadcopters can't carry lethal weapons and a single swarm is far more noticeable than a single Black Hornet Nano or something. This is something to do with quadcopters until we start making diesel powered drones...and then you have reinvented the anti-tank missile, including the cost. So it's not much of a problem. If Javelin swarms aren't a thing it's hard to believe that "drone swarms" will become a thing anymore than waves of cruise missiles are a thing.

However, since the only people who have demonstrated any ability to maintain major cruise missile barrages across strategic objects for a protracted war is Russia, that's probably the case for any hypothetical anti-tank missile or drone swarms as well. That's just par the course for deindustrialized, financialized Western countries.

The actual solution to drones is to build enough tanks and train enough troops that you can eat the losses and keep fighting until you can transition to a wartime economy that pits macroeconomic factors against each other. This won't work unless the West unifies as a single state, at least against someone like India or China, and it isn't clear what threat outside the West would warrant such investment, so it's unlikely it will happen. Peacetime investment in armaments in anticipation of a hypothetical war tends to frighten banksters, who would rather spend the money on stock buybacks and tax breaks.

Weapon system specifics won't materially affect the calculus of losses to something like an anti-tank loitering drone with a 4 kg warhead or a medium range anti-tank missile with a 8 kg warhead, at least not if the tank isn't fundamentally different than prior tanks, which no current tank appears to be. The difference between an APS like QuickKill or Mongoose and an HPM or laser is essentially marginal except that one takes advantage of past decades of inbuilt funding based on weird promises.

You'd need things like multispectral camouflage, like those weird Peltier thermoelectric panels, or something. i.e. things no one has, and break away from the concept of battalions, and major attacks being anything more than a single tank and like five dudes, which no Western nation seems to have done. Conversely, the Russian Army (and the Naval Infantry in Chechnya w/ the 876th BTG operations) has pretty much accepted that future is company-size tactical units conducting independent operations akin to a battalion (i.e. the nexus of combined arms fire support) and the platoon or rifle squad is the main tactical element by which the captain plans his assaults on objects.

The French have also accepted this recently, since Operation Serval, but their thinking is less developed than Russia's re: GTIAs. OTOH the French are actually well positioned economically to take advantage of any experience gained so they may be able to leapfrog them in practice even if their theory is lacking.

Drone swarms don't materially appear to be any different on a battlefield where battalions are replaced by companies and companies by platoons except as a means of making a minefield move faster. Analogously, it appears to be a XXI century equivalent of the FASCAM minefields or something, in that it's able to be moved rapidly and disperse a small amount of explosive payload across an area. If you had an impossible quadcopter that could weigh a pound while carrying two pounds of explosive I guess that would be an issue though.

 

[zen]

Flies are not noted for optical sensors of multi-kilometer resolution to cm quality.

Granted their sense of smell is vastly superior.

But to 'see' they have to get close....very close.

 

[hagaricus]

Maybe an idea to define terms at this point before we start discussing how many kamikaze nanobots can swarm on the head of a pin.

Drones today range from things like sentinel to the likes of the black hornet, clearly they require different countermeasures, and whilst a sentinel is easily worth the expenditure of conventional AAA, and a black hornet is clearly vulnerable to a shotgun, it seems to me it's the gap in the 250g to tens-of-kg reconnaissance and attack drones that seem to be in need of a novel solution.

As pointed out before, this type of UAV is frequently out of range/hard to hit with small arms and too small and cheap to be "worthy" of manpads etc.

In terms of asymmetrical warfare, if you can cause the enemy to exhaust its expensive high-tech stuff defending against your numerically superior cheap low-tech stuff, you're doing well

says me from my armchair.

 

[shin_getter]

Drones are hard to out detect. As in, sensors platforms suitable of detecting drones are themselves easy to detect. The simple cause is that aircraft can have good mobility at minimum size and complexity, while land and sea vehicles suffers mobility wise if it is too small. Now, remove the requirement for mobility and ground clutter enables stealth: this points to air dropped and air landed sensors. A fly in flight is easy to detect due to noise (energy emissions) while an ant is far harder to detect, and you just dump out ants out more mobile platforms.

----------
One may ask, what is the really novel thing about "drone" technology? The miniaturization and cost reduction of sensing, communication and compute enables such systems to be fitted to increasingly smaller and cheaper platforms.

For platforms where sensing and compute do not dominate the costs, the impact is small. For applications where cost of sensing and compute limits application, the change is dramatic.

Guided munitions against structures, aircraft, ships, and tanks all have integrated sensing and compute decades back. Technology means the relevant systems can be cheaper or higher performing, but constraints in this domain usually wasn't the main limiting factor.

From an attack perspective, what is new is even smaller scale:
1. Anti infantry missiles like switchblade 300
2. Anti infantry bomber from DJI with ducktaped bomb dispenser and up
3. Anti light vehicle guided "rocket", general purpose guided artillery

People have thought a lot about air defense for armored formations. People have not figured out air defense for a fireteam.

The other new thing is electrical aircraft. It have low costs but also low range. I believe this category of aircraft would define the "close fight": it would be tightly integrated to land platforms and conduct defensive missions when fighting a modern long range engagement (when 25km NLOS ATGM, 70km guided ramjet shells and 160km MRLS becomes common).

Given the advantage in sensing capability of micro-aircraft outlined on top, in a meeting engagement land forces will start and become heavily engaged beyond LOS. A "close" fight is induced only when a defender, lacking in long range fire superiority, uses defensible terrain to limit long range fires and such plans become increasingly compromised by improved sensing. Attempts for from an attacker to force a close fight without long range superiority is likely to end in disaster as it has increasingly happened.

Musketry and Cold Steel have coexisted for centuries, and the increasing relevance of the gun was gradual but certain. "Artillery" as we know it have coexisted with closer forms of combat for a century and that conceptualization of warfare (range, sensor shooter separation-networking) can gradually and certainly increase. From a vehicle perspective, whether the projectile it launches use rocket power, explosive power, electrical power, or gas power can be generalized into a smooth curve of cost-endurance-velocity relation and optimization for mission shall determine design.

The compensation to increasing firepower of the gun was not increase in cavalry to "force shock against increased firepower", but new method of war and completely new technology of armored internal combustion machines. The compensation to increasing ranged firepower from the new "long range precision fires" is still to be determined.

If Javelin swarms aren't a thing it's hard to believe that "drone swarms" will become a thing anymore than waves of cruise missiles are a thing.

But Javelin swarms are a thing. A few days of transportation enabled sufficient supply of ammo to halt the premier ground threat dead in its tracks. In the decade before that, some constrained supply enables to some rebels to stop one of the largest tank forces hard and stall out the war into a decade long slog. While very large ammo stockpiles are possible by reducing requirements, redevelop using modern tech. and plan for scale, given the low force sizes (on both sides) it is not useful. While more munition helps, it is of less value than increasing capability in other domains that is far more lacking, like the artillery fight, the air war while there are only so many tanks and decades of production is looking to be lost in 2 years.

 

[Orionblamblam]

But to 'see' they have to get close....very close.

They can see you from across the street. They can be carried to that position by any of a number of methods: in a car, on a person, by a larger drone, via balloon, riding on the backs of trained dogs. Someone can sprinkle them on the mail truck that goes by the targets address.

 

[Orionblamblam]

If Javelin swarms aren't a thing it's hard to believe that "drone swarms" will become a thing anymore than waves of cruise missiles are a thing.

How about "cell phone swarms?" Are those a thing? A cell phone has *more* than enough tech for the job, and they can be had for well under $100 without the bells and whistles, and even the much more expensive versions are made in numbers measuring... what? Billions? Mass produce cell-tech-level drones in the millions, and there ya go. An anti-tank missile, in contrast, is necessarily a fair heavy thing full of expensive explosives and rocket propellants that had to be precisely formed under careful conditions. A drone need only be cheap plastic bits, cheap electric motors and repurposed cell phone tech.

When I was in grade school, electronic calculators were sufficiantly rare technology that they actually locked down the school when someone stole one from a teacher. They were sizable items that needed to be plugged into the wall. By the time I was in junior high, calculators were thin, flimsy, solar powered bits of tech-trash that could be purchased for sub-$1 next to the gum in the checkout aisle. Something exorbitant went to "swarm" in just a few years due to some modest tech improvements and a buttload of mass production. If the DoD or the Chinese military decided that they needed a billion of the drones I saw today at WalMart for $30, and weren't willing to screw around with the typical kickbacks and incompentance, the mass production of them could easily drive the price down to a few bucks or less.

 

[zen]

Right....

So next years war will be fought by tiny insect sized drones able to fly tens of kilometers accurately by GPS and INS and through their onboard processing recognise their targets at over a hundred meters and either signal back the imagery with accurate location data in real time by satellite or....deploy tiny poison missiles to kill ?

And no system can counter them.....


Supposedly.....


Or perhaps it might actually be achievable with a drone the size of a medium sized bird.
But your tiny drone is in fact visible and track-able by extent technologies and curiously enough if your insect drone is possible then it's relatively short ranged counter is ironically cheaper. Since all it has to do is Intercept the drone at 100m and could be guided by the multifunctional system fitted to your helmet.......