5 ms·

So proponents of hundreds of cheap drones theory tend to forget that kinetic energy is 1/2mv^2. So Energy required to catch up with a fighter in increases with

by sfifs 6y ago

So proponents of hundreds of cheap drones theory tend to forget that kinetic energy is 1/2mv^2. So Energy required to catch up with a fighter in increases with square of velocity and modern fighters can all supercruise. That energy has to be stored on the drone to be expended which increases mass which increases energy require8d (linearly) and so on. If you need to add loiter time and manoeuvrability, again you need more energy and so mass. So just like the famous rocket equation, you'll find that the design space narrows down to drones that are no longer cheap or casually expendable - essentially supersonic capable cruise missiles with loiter times that tend to cost millions of dollars a piece. Certainly cheaper than manned aircraft but not something that can be used in the hundreds casually per engagement. The other option is of course what's done today - strapping a relatively cheaper air to air missile to an even more expensive but fast and survivable aircraft which brings it to the war zone and gives it kinetic energy at launch.

nostrademons 6y ago
Your tactics change too. Instead of building a drone that can keep up with a fighter, focus on area denial. Throw up tens of thousands of tiny drones into the atmosphere that each travel at say 50 mph (like a model aircraft), and train the AI to put them in the path of anything moving within that airspace. The goal isn't to hit the fighter, it's to make the fighter hit you. Think of a flock of Canada geese over an airport: they're tiny, they move slowly, but they're super unsafe to fly through. Now imagine that instead of trying to get out of the way, the geese try to get in the way - and if you get within 10 miles of one, you may have a Sidewinder on your tail. Then when not engaged in air defense, these drones engage in CAS. Taking down fighters is a secondary mission - their real role is to dominate the battlefield, and part of that is by making it so unsafe to enter the airspace above the battlefield that it's futile suicide to try.
- sfifs 6y ago
  So let's do the math for this option. F22 wingspan is about 14m. Let's go easy and say you want a one drone in a square of 30m x 30m ie ~2x the wingspan. To cover 1 sq km, you need ~1000 drones. But the operating ceiling of an f22 is about 18km and the range is about 3000km - so a 1 sq km is not enough as it will simply fly around or over especially if the difference in speeds is over a thousand km/h. So let's say you build a wall 500km wide x 15km high which may make area denial viable - that works out to 7.5 MILLION drones. I doubt the economics of drones that need to fly and loiter 18km high and carry a sidewinder as you say would work out this way - the sky is simply too big. This is without factoring that a typical war-fighter could simply shoot through such a passive defence wall from dozens of km away if they really need to and if they are moving at Mach 2, they'll be through the hole before it reforms and because of lack of speed, there's essentially no chase capability once through. These kinds of ideas while interesting remind me of the Magniot line and we all know how it fared
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    I've alluded to this in other comments and also in the one you're responding to, but I'll spell it out: the goal is not to shoot down the F-22. The goal is to control the battlefield. So you're covering that 1 sq km with 1000 drones, or maybe up to about 20 sq km with 20,000 drones. The rest of the F-22's range and service ceiling, you don't care about. You let them fly around all they want. If they want to go fly around at 50,000 feet at Mach 2, have fun. An F-22 is basically harmless to a drone: it can shoot down 12 drones with its 12 AA missiles, each of which costs > $1M, about 1000x what a drone costs. There's no pilot in a drone whose life is sacred, and there're plenty more drones where they came from. You only need to engage the F-22 if they're coming down to engage ground forces. But then they need to fly through the swarm, at a huge risk to the airplane and pilot, and the swarm can react to put as many pieces of plastic in the F-22's path as possible. If the F-22 stays up at 50K feet and drops precision-guided weapons from 30 miles away, they lose the attrition war to the drone swarm. A drone can very accurately put a bullet into each infantryman and a shaped charge on top of every tank with little resistance, unless the enemy is itself fielding autonomous drones. An F-22 can put 8 SDBs on 8 targets. Which is more efficient?
    - credit_guy 6y ago
      The thing is, F22 has radar, it can see a swarm of 20000 drones. What do you do if it just turns around and comes back 3 hours later? How many times can you have 20000 drones take off and reach 50000 feet altitude? These drones don't burn any fuel at all?
      - Redshark 6y ago
        Good point, it would require a massive charging operation somewhere in the vicinity of the battlefield since it can be assumed that these drones don't have that a particularly good deployment range. Whereas it is possible to have some jets parked on an aircraft carrier a couple hundred miles away, able of reaching the target within minutes. Much more flexibility there...
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
paganel 6y ago
> Certainly cheaper than manned aircraft but not something that can be used in the hundreds casually per engagement. That was perfectly visible in the recent Syrian Civil War. Once the Russians decided to actively step in the conflict sure that they sent a rocket or two directly from their bases in Southern Russia/Caucasus, but I suspect that was more for propaganda reasons. Soon enough they set up an air-base for good in Northern Syria (only a few tens of kms away from rebel lines) and they also brought in a battleship (or whatever is called nowadays the ship from which you can send rockets) off the coast of Syria. I'm pretty sure that proved a lot more cost-effective for them.
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Russia fired missiles into Syria directly from Russia? That's wild. Would you point me to a source where I can read more about (and/or see) that?
  - paganel 6y ago
    Am on mobile, quickly found this news article from October 2015 [1]. The links are probably dead by now, but I remember seeing videos linked to from /r/SyrianCivilWar of said missiles flying over Iraq, like I mentioned, it was excellent propaganda material. Later edit: A news article from that same timestamp [2] of Iraq complaining that it hadn’t been warned by the Russians of the latter sending missiles flying over their heads. It also includes a video of the supposed launch. Later later edit: Here's a (short) Twitter video of one of those missiles flying over Northern Iraq [3] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34465425 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34465425 [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraq-says-it-was-not-warned-about-russian-missiles-crossing-its-airspace/2015/10/09/bec6bb5c-6e8f-11e5-91eb-27ad15c2b723_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraq-says-it-was-not-wa... [3] https://twitter.com/NewsOfIraq_EN/status/668192312497950720 https://twitter.com/NewsOfIraq_EN/status/668192312497950720
    - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
      Thank you!

by sfifs 6y ago

nostrademons 6y ago

Your tactics change too. Instead of building a drone that can keep up with a fighter, focus on area denial. Throw up tens of thousands of tiny drones into the atmosphere that each travel at say 50 mph (like a model aircraft), and train the AI to put them in the path of anything moving within that airspace. The goal isn't to hit the fighter, it's to make the fighter hit you. Think of a flock of Canada geese over an airport: they're tiny, they move slowly, but they're super unsafe to fly through. Now imagine that instead of trying to get out of the way, the geese try to get in the way - and if you get within 10 miles of one, you may have a Sidewinder on your tail. Then when not engaged in air defense, these drones engage in CAS. Taking down fighters is a secondary mission - their real role is to dominate the battlefield, and part of that is by making it so unsafe to enter the airspace above the battlefield that it's futile suicide to try.

sfifs 6y ago
So let's do the math for this option. F22 wingspan is about 14m. Let's go easy and say you want a one drone in a square of 30m x 30m ie ~2x the wingspan. To cover 1 sq km, you need ~1000 drones. But the operating ceiling of an f22 is about 18km and the range is about 3000km - so a 1 sq km is not enough as it will simply fly around or over especially if the difference in speeds is over a thousand km/h. So let's say you build a wall 500km wide x 15km high which may make area denial viable - that works out to 7.5 MILLION drones. I doubt the economics of drones that need to fly and loiter 18km high and carry a sidewinder as you say would work out this way - the sky is simply too big. This is without factoring that a typical war-fighter could simply shoot through such a passive defence wall from dozens of km away if they really need to and if they are moving at Mach 2, they'll be through the hole before it reforms and because of lack of speed, there's essentially no chase capability once through. These kinds of ideas while interesting remind me of the Magniot line and we all know how it fared
- nostrademons 6y ago
  I've alluded to this in other comments and also in the one you're responding to, but I'll spell it out: the goal is not to shoot down the F-22. The goal is to control the battlefield. So you're covering that 1 sq km with 1000 drones, or maybe up to about 20 sq km with 20,000 drones. The rest of the F-22's range and service ceiling, you don't care about. You let them fly around all they want. If they want to go fly around at 50,000 feet at Mach 2, have fun. An F-22 is basically harmless to a drone: it can shoot down 12 drones with its 12 AA missiles, each of which costs > $1M, about 1000x what a drone costs. There's no pilot in a drone whose life is sacred, and there're plenty more drones where they came from. You only need to engage the F-22 if they're coming down to engage ground forces. But then they need to fly through the swarm, at a huge risk to the airplane and pilot, and the swarm can react to put as many pieces of plastic in the F-22's path as possible. If the F-22 stays up at 50K feet and drops precision-guided weapons from 30 miles away, they lose the attrition war to the drone swarm. A drone can very accurately put a bullet into each infantryman and a shaped charge on top of every tank with little resistance, unless the enemy is itself fielding autonomous drones. An F-22 can put 8 SDBs on 8 targets. Which is more efficient?
  - credit_guy 6y ago
    The thing is, F22 has radar, it can see a swarm of 20000 drones. What do you do if it just turns around and comes back 3 hours later? How many times can you have 20000 drones take off and reach 50000 feet altitude? These drones don't burn any fuel at all?
    - Redshark 6y ago
      Good point, it would require a massive charging operation somewhere in the vicinity of the battlefield since it can be assumed that these drones don't have that a particularly good deployment range. Whereas it is possible to have some jets parked on an aircraft carrier a couple hundred miles away, able of reaching the target within minutes. Much more flexibility there...
  - meheleventyone 6y ago

paganel 6y ago

> Certainly cheaper than manned aircraft but not something that can be used in the hundreds casually per engagement. That was perfectly visible in the recent Syrian Civil War. Once the Russians decided to actively step in the conflict sure that they sent a rocket or two directly from their bases in Southern Russia/Caucasus, but I suspect that was more for propaganda reasons. Soon enough they set up an air-base for good in Northern Syria (only a few tens of kms away from rebel lines) and they also brought in a battleship (or whatever is called nowadays the ship from which you can send rockets) off the coast of Syria. I'm pretty sure that proved a lot more cost-effective for them.

SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
Russia fired missiles into Syria directly from Russia? That's wild. Would you point me to a source where I can read more about (and/or see) that?
- paganel 6y ago
  Am on mobile, quickly found this news article from October 2015 [1]. The links are probably dead by now, but I remember seeing videos linked to from /r/SyrianCivilWar of said missiles flying over Iraq, like I mentioned, it was excellent propaganda material. Later edit: A news article from that same timestamp [2] of Iraq complaining that it hadn’t been warned by the Russians of the latter sending missiles flying over their heads. It also includes a video of the supposed launch. Later later edit: Here's a (short) Twitter video of one of those missiles flying over Northern Iraq [3] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34465425 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34465425 [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraq-says-it-was-not-warned-about-russian-missiles-crossing-its-airspace/2015/10/09/bec6bb5c-6e8f-11e5-91eb-27ad15c2b723_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iraq-says-it-was-not-wa... [3] https://twitter.com/NewsOfIraq_EN/status/668192312497950720 https://twitter.com/NewsOfIraq_EN/status/668192312497950720
  - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
    Thank you!