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>Do you need walls when you have a drone above doing surveillance and an army of quadrocopters or other robotic flying machines that are doing 24/7 patrols Do

>Do you need walls when you have a drone above doing surveillance and an army of quadrocopters or other robotic flying machines that are doing 24/7 patrols Do you really think this is a stable strategy? Drones are probably cheaper to shoot down than they are to build. At least the quadcopters. Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot. Even if war is automated, the same basic strategies apply. The fortifications will just be built and manned by robots instead of humans.

zigzigzag 10y ago
Drones of the US Military type fly very high and are thus quite difficult to shoot down, especially if they have anti-missile missiles (I doubt any currently do as they are only used in battlefields where the enemy doesn't have good missiles). Quadrocopters could certainly be shot down by robots, but probably not by humans once they get fast enough at flipping themselves around and making evasive maneuvers.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Anti missile defense other than jamming and decoys do not exist for airborne platforms. US drones operate in an uncontested environment let them try fly over Russian or Chinese airspace, the soviet shot down a bloody U2 thy can hit a globalhawk or a reaper.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM ?
    - greedo 10y ago
      HARM is typically used to engage a SAM site's radar, not the SAMs themselves. Intercepting a missile is a bit harder than nailing a stationary emitter. Plus, many SAMs use IR sensors, so if you don't detect the launch signature, it's hard to take defensive actions. DIRCM, laser based dazzlers etc can help, but not if you don't detect the launch.
VLM 10y ago
"Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot." Mounted on a smaller, lighter, much shorter range defensive quadcopter. Don't even need the fancy weapons, just collide with the larger, long range, very expensive attacking quadcopter. Nothing is ever really new, and a lot of the "drones will solve everything" talk sounds exactly like "missiles will eliminate guns in military aircraft" from the 50s/early 60s. That didn't turn out very well, and if you ignore the details that don't matter, drones are tactically merely very slow, short range, traditionally cheaper, missiles. Yeah yeah the electronic speed controllers are infinitely interesting to a EE but to a grunt a drone weapon system is tactically a lame cheap missile. So your attack helicopter of the future will have drone wingmen, but it'll also have guns. Or some infantry platoons might carry a couple anti-armor drone weapons instead of a couple AT-4 or LAW rockets, but they'll still dig trenches and carry some kind of M16 variant.

zigzigzag 10y ago

Drones of the US Military type fly very high and are thus quite difficult to shoot down, especially if they have anti-missile missiles (I doubt any currently do as they are only used in battlefields where the enemy doesn't have good missiles). Quadrocopters could certainly be shot down by robots, but probably not by humans once they get fast enough at flipping themselves around and making evasive maneuvers.

dogma1138 10y ago
Anti missile defense other than jamming and decoys do not exist for airborne platforms. US drones operate in an uncontested environment let them try fly over Russian or Chinese airspace, the soviet shot down a bloody U2 thy can hit a globalhawk or a reaper.
- ethbro 10y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM ?
  - greedo 10y ago
    HARM is typically used to engage a SAM site's radar, not the SAMs themselves. Intercepting a missile is a bit harder than nailing a stationary emitter. Plus, many SAMs use IR sensors, so if you don't detect the launch signature, it's hard to take defensive actions. DIRCM, laser based dazzlers etc can help, but not if you don't detect the launch.

VLM 10y ago

"Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot." Mounted on a smaller, lighter, much shorter range defensive quadcopter. Don't even need the fancy weapons, just collide with the larger, long range, very expensive attacking quadcopter. Nothing is ever really new, and a lot of the "drones will solve everything" talk sounds exactly like "missiles will eliminate guns in military aircraft" from the 50s/early 60s. That didn't turn out very well, and if you ignore the details that don't matter, drones are tactically merely very slow, short range, traditionally cheaper, missiles. Yeah yeah the electronic speed controllers are infinitely interesting to a EE but to a grunt a drone weapon system is tactically a lame cheap missile. So your attack helicopter of the future will have drone wingmen, but it'll also have guns. Or some infantry platoons might carry a couple anti-armor drone weapons instead of a couple AT-4 or LAW rockets, but they'll still dig trenches and carry some kind of M16 variant.