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I should also point out that we do already use mass weapons in the form of cruise missile strikes.
by ummonk 7y ago
I should also point out that we do already use mass weapons in the form of cruise missile strikes.
- Retric 7y agoCruse missiles are really expensive (~1.5 million each) and not really used for mass bombardment. The basic reason to use aircraft/drones is to reuse expensive components like engines and complex sensors.
- willvarfar 7y agoIranian-made cruise missiles seem super-cheap yet very effective. They also have lots of even-cheaper drones. The Houthi use them to attack oil installations and Patriot batteries. I think the recent attack on the refinery with 18? Drones and 7 cruise missiles (3 fell short?) could be referred to as “bombardment”.
- openasocket 7y agoTime will tell, but I think the answer will depend on the situation. Sure, $1.5M is a lot, but it's able to deliver 400+kg of explosives at a distance of over 1000 km, while cruising at 800+kph at an altitude of 50m. I think any drone you design with those same parameters is going to cost about the same. Now, the re-usability is nice, but that isn't free. For instance, you need to either double the fuel capacity or cut the range in half, since you want your drone to be able to make the return trip. And now you have to worry about the reliability and maintainability of the engine and sensors. Plus, you have to think about survivability of your drone: how many sorties can you expect that drone to go on before it is shot down? Whether you want to use cruise missiles or drone swarms will depend on the increased cost to purchase and maintain drone vs. a cruise missile, and the odds that it will be shot down after dropping the bomb. In a low threat environment where you have air superiority you definitely want drones, but in a high threat environment where you need to penetrate an integrated air defense network, I'm not sure.
- Retric 7y agoThe US had ~580,000 bombing missions in Vietnam each of which dropped several bombs on average. Doing that with cruse missiles would quickly hit 10+ trillion dollars. On top of that a cruse missile takes around an hour to reach a target making them of limited value vs a mobile target. They have real value vs thinks like air defenses or high value buildings, but building hundreds of thousands of them is never going to happen.
- GordonS 7y ago> The US had ~580,000 bombing missions in Vietnam each of which dropped several bombs on average. Doing that with cruse missiles would quickly hit 10+ trillion dollars. I rather hope the US never does anything like this ever again. To this day people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos are still being injured, maimed or killed by the hundreds of millions of bomblets they dropped.
- detritus 7y agoThe point being that, in an 'ideal' world, you wouldn't need anywhere near that number of cruise missiles, assuming they are able to effect accurately-targetted strikes.
- DuskStar 7y agoA cruise missile that hits the bridge the first time every time might still be more cost effective than saturation bombing the square mile surrounding the bridge until you get that one lucky bomb to connect, though. And that's what a lot of those bombing missions in Vietnam were - dumping bombs in the general vicinity of a target until you finally had one connect. With precision guided weapons, you don't need half a million bombing missions.
- smegger001 7y agoa plane (manned or otherwise) with a cheaper precision warhead is an option too.
- 7y ago
- freeflight 7y agoCheaper drones are already used in combination with more sophisticated missiles to overwhelm defenses. Afaik that's what happened with the attack on the Saudi facilities.
- imtringued 7y agoOk so just tell the engineers to fix that old B-52.