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>So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield a decisive advantage in any conflict Drones gave Azerbaijan a decisive advantage in the recen

>So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield a decisive advantage in any conflict Drones gave Azerbaijan a decisive advantage in the recent conflict with Armenia: https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-karabakh-lessons-future-strike-and-defense https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-ka...

hungryforcodes 5y ago
Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against. The fact is the "killer bot" scenario is just a one time thing. After it happens, all cities or armies or whatever, will have very solid defences installed against swarming or even just loitering bots. Flying drones are incredibly fragile and exposed. They are slow and easy to kill.
- sliken 5y ago
  Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at? Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.
  - jcrawfordor 5y ago
    Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. Drones really are slow and easy to take down compared to guided rockets and especially kinetic ones, and the military has been working on means of defending against those for decades. The Phalanx is being modified to serve as an anti-UAS system, for example. The challenge is more to do with detection than firing.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      Deploying point defense technologies over a city/civilian targets has some obvious problems, though. Lasers, electronic countermeasures, tangly stuff, etc, are much more attractive than systems that fire thousands of cannon rounds per minute or that launch explosive missiles.
      - sliken 5y ago
        From the phalanx wiki: Whereas naval Phalanx systems fire tungsten armor-piercing rounds, the C-RAM uses the 20–mm HEIT-SD (High-Explosive Incendiary Tracer, Self-Destruct) ammunition, originally developed for the M163 Vulcan Air Defense System.[26][34] These rounds explode on impact with the target, or on tracer burnout, thereby greatly reducing the risk of collateral damage from rounds that fail to hit their target. Not that the risk is zero, but at least it's "greatly reduced".
        mlyle 5y ago
        You wouldn't generally let a C-RAM fire at a low angle over a city. And even if you did, the problem of how many of these you need for decent coverage becomes large, because there's no ideal placement that doesn't involve shooting straight at friendly things from some approach vectors. A CIWS is not a reasonable way to stop drone attacks on civilian targets.
        bombcar 5y ago
        And one of tue whole advantages of a drone army is that it can fly between zero and ten feet off the ground - thereby undercutting lots of defenses that are designed to point in the air.
    - sliken 5y ago
      Dunno, do agile rockets dodge? Or just follow a simple preprogrammed patterns (like low, then pop up to attack from above)? Not sure a CIWS system that can hit a mach 2 missile that doesn't dodge would necessarily handle the same $$$ spent on a N cheaper drones. How many minutes of firing do modern CIWS systems typically have? Loitering at max engagement range and dodging might well end up using ammo at a rate that the CIWS can not sustain. Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I googled the phalanx, looks like it typically has a drum of ammo that lasts for about 3 seconds. Is that 3 drones worth? 10? 100?
      - mlyle 5y ago
        > Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I guarantee you that just grazing a drone with a 20mm round will still kill it, even if you don't "hit" anything critical. :P
        sliken 5y ago
        Really? Say you blow a 1" hole in a wing that's got some balsa struts and some thin fabric? Or a wing just made out of a sheet of foam? Both are common on cheap drones. Sure the 20mm round represents an amazing amount of kinetic energy, but the drone doesn't offer any resistance, and I wouldn't expect the round to even notice. Sure the disturbance in the air might throw the drone for a few loops, but any decent software will recover. Sure hitting more substantial targets the target itself becomes of the shrapnel that causes an ever increasing zone of damage. Not clear to me that a piece of paper or thin fabric would exhibit the same behavior.
        mlyle 5y ago
        Speaking as someone who's built and destroyed lots of homebuilt aircraft, and shot lots of things with guns of various sizes... 1. I think you're conflating "cheap agile drone" with "foam or balsa+durakote fixed wing aircraft". 2. Probable engagement aspect for a drone is not "straight up", as would be necessary for your scenario. 3. A little itty bitty hole in a wing does a whole lot more than you'd think. 4. Expecting a high velocity cannon round to just punch a clean hole in the wing is a little much. Foam's a bit more robust, but a small pebble at a few miles per hour has wrecked my whole durakote day before. And yes, there's degenerate cases, like you could have a whole sheet of dollar tree foam board maybe take a hit or two.
    - dougmwne 5y ago
      Does it at all change the equation that you could trivially fly the drone 2 feet above the ground?
    - baybal2 5y ago
      > Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. The thing is exactly that those drones are so slow, and low. Phalanx performance against sea skimming missiles is know to be poor. And that on dielectric, flat sea surface. Even military drones weighting few tons can fly autonomously under 100m. Ironically, it's now depressions in the terrain which will provide more air defence since they will force terrain following drones, and cruise missiles to move at oblique angles. Basically the problem is the same as with low, and slow cruise missiles, except worse.
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      Flying nape-of-the-earth is a hard counter to CIWS-style defense systems. For antiship missiles this tactic doesn't help a whole lot, but for drones over land? C-RAM can't see through a hill, let alone shoot through one.
    - tw04 5y ago
      Most of those systems are designed to target dozens of incoming targets. It’s entirely reasonable and plausible for drone swarms to number in the thousands of targets. That ciws will likely exhaust its magazine before it can take out all the drones unless I’m missing something.
      - hungryforcodes 5y ago
        Lasers. You just have to put "laser defense drones" into Google to get a whole slew of completed or in development solutions. Also EMPS, counter defensive swarms of drones. The list goes on...
        imtringued 5y ago
        Here is the system I am aware of: https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 (watch this entire video for air defense against saturation attacks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc
      - Animats 5y ago
        That's why Israel is begging the US for another billion dollars for reloads for their Iron Dome system. They're using expensive guided missiles to shoot down cheap unguided rockets.
  - lazide 5y ago
    And even drone races are slow and predictable compared to what is possible with an applied military mind and decent tools. I suspect (or hope) we already have some decent options in the top secret space. Nothing we have now (publicly) is going to do a damn against a shipping container full of 2-5 lb drones each carrying 1 lb of C4 in a swarm with cheap off the shelf sensors going 100 mph nap of the earth in a distributed pattern. And that is currently entirely doable with off the shelf drones using existing software and published techniques for peanuts. Add in some decent programming and logistics talent, and that is a huge problem.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kevinventullo 5y ago
      This made me realize something like a TAS drone race would be interesting to watch.
      - lazide 5y ago
        What is TAS? Haven’t heard that term before. total autonomous system?
        Quikinterp 5y ago
        "tool assisted speedrun" is a term in video game speedruns referring to the use of software/external tools to help with speedrunning games. So imagine a drone race where everything is programmed rather than remote controlled by a pilot
        matheusmoreira 5y ago
        Tool-assisted speedruns. People use emulators and record inputs frame-by-frame, allowing nearly perfect performance and even reliable exploitation of game vulnerabilities. I remember one where the author exploited a bug in such a way that it completely reprogrammed the game: http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html Check it out, it's incredibly fun: http://tasvideos.org/ http://tasvideos.org/ There's an entire category for movies containing arbitrary code execution: http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C3050Y.html http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C3050Y.html
  - hnuser123456 5y ago
    Here's a line of cops shooting at race drones. They would've had plenty of time to escape if they weren't sticking around to find out how long it takes to get shot down. These were race drones from 5 years ago and modern ones can be around twice as fast. Not to mention you don't want to dump a magazine upwards in your own territory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      > Not to mention you don't want to dump a magazine upwards in your own territory. That is what birdshot is for. Birdshot, e.g. "No. 9 or 10" shot, are tiny lead BBs about 2mm diameter. Because they are small, they have a large surface area to mass ratio, and consequently, they fall back down to earth at a low, safe speed. When they land on dry leaves, they bounce off and sound a bit like rain. When it is shot into the air and falls back down onto you, it won't even bruise you, let alone injure you. (However it can kill if fired directly at somebody.)
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      Fun video. Definitely showed how easy it is to shoot down drones of the consumer variety. If you can hit it with a pistol it’s easy to hit.
    - qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
      How about a super soaker instead of a pistol? Especially one of the CPS soakers that got banned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=resgaF7MeR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=resgaF7MeR4
  - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
    Current point defense systems are already capable of placing a 20mm round with a muzzle velocity of 1000m/s onto a falling mortar shell in the last three seconds of its flight time. How hard do you think drones are by comparison?
    - milesward 5y ago
      ballistic trajectory versus active evasive behavior.
      - filmfact 5y ago
        Exactly - mortars predictable trajectory against a background free of ground clutter make them easy to predict the future location of. A drone optimally randomly dodging at treetop height is a much more difficult target.
        imtringued 5y ago
        Why the hell would you dodge at tree top height? That makes absolutely no sense. Just fly a few centimeters off the ground without dodging and no air defense is going to hit you in a civilian area.
      - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
        https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a426717.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a426717.pdf A target with a 300mm frontal diameter, capable of evading at 10g, is expected to require 6 rounds to achieve a P_hit of 0.5 at 200m range, based on the parameters of your typical Phalanx CIWS. Said Phalanx weapon system might fire a burst of 1s duration in such an engagement, which is 75 rounds. For a missile engagement, that's a problematic number, but for a drone that's probably only moving a few dozen m/s and carrying a small payload, it's an entirely satisfactory engagement. Phalanx is an early 1980s weapon system. The Army is going to be fielding directed-energy SHORAD systems next year, equipped with 50kW lasers.
        5y ago
  - rckoepke 5y ago
    My university has been working with the army to engineer drone vs human engagements. They originally set out to increase the drones' efficacy against humans wielding small arms (shotguns/etc), but apparently found out that was trivial. The drones very, very quickly overwhelmingly surpass the ability of humans to engage and defeat the drones. The research pivoted very early to "training humans to more successfully defend against small drone attacks". I'm not sure how much success they've had or what success is defined as for something like this.
  - throwawayfeaxcz 5y ago
    They are slow and easy to kill compared to fighter jets, the grand parent is not talking about hobbyist drones but UCAVS.
  - saargrin 5y ago
    what does a done race have to do with a loitering munition ? have you seen a harop? its huge,its built to fly slow and for a long while and carry big payload and has zero evasion capability
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/reaper-drone-missions-afghanistan-flights https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/reaper-drone-m... Not all drones are AI, there are remote drones that are very fast and very hard to kill, pulling Gforces that would make normal pilots pass out. With the US declaration that drones are "munitions", we have effectively stated that we can launch them into the airspace of countries that we aren't technically at war with, and claim it was "border fire", like we did with Afghanistan.
- trhway 5y ago
  >Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against. no. Azerbajan/Turkey went into it only after verifying that it works, to the devastating effect, against the Russian made air-defenses in Syria and Libya. Now Ukraine has bought these drones and is starting their production. In the next year or two we'll see them being used to the same great effect in Donbass. So far Russia hasn't managed to come up with any meaningful defense. If anything the recognition of the issue has only started to dawn on them, and by the time they manage something the Turkish/Ukranian (they discuss collaborative development) drones will improve another level up - drone capabilities at the current stage (beginning of the hockey stick) are much faster to improve - add speed, a bit of stealth, [partial] autonomy, coordinated swarming. It is a new paradigm shifting generation of warfare like iron navy ships, machine guns, planes, missiles, etc. were in their respective times.
  - petre 5y ago
    Rafael Systems sells Drone Dome anti drone mobile defense.
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      I think they even proved themselves in the recent Gaza campaign.
      - trhway 5y ago
        I don't think there were any real military drones. While an RC model/quad with a grenade does qualify as a weapon, the purposely built military drones have orders of magnitude better communication over longer range, incl. remote high precision targeting, loitering times, and carry a high precision stand-off missiles (that is an important point because the defense has to shoot the small fast incoming missile while the drone itself carries several missiles and loiters outside of the CIWS/SHORAD range waiting for the window of opportunity, and thus shooting the drone itself requires much more expensive/heavy air-defense system).
        5y ago
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  The primary defense for the time being is 'hide.' US Marine tacticians, for example, are shifting priority from hardening an impromptu position (ie a foxhole) to concealing it.
  - vmh1928 5y ago
    Check out some of the Azerbaijani drone strike footage with IR on Youtube. They'll need to go deep and avoid any above ground movement and it better not look like a bunker. Unless effective drone defense (other drones?) is employed using cheap drones are a game changer.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against How? They fly just few hundred meters above the ground, launch from field runways, and for the price of a single B-2, a country can buy 2000 of them. Jamming? Even a country like Turkey was able to devise a passable inertial navigation, and and programming for autonomous operation way exceeding an easy to trick "attack anything that moves" mode. To counter them, you will need a very sizeable air force fitted with best radars possible to track them down individually, and strafe with a cannon (since no missile currently can lock onto something so small, slow, cold, and low flying.)
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    > To counter them, you will need a very sizeable air force fitted with best radars possible to track them down individually, and strafe with a cannon Or, you know, currently fielded SHORAD systems and CIWS?
    - baybal2 5y ago
      What are their range, and height of radar horizon? Even if that wouldn't be a problem, you will still need really a lot of that.
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        On the Phalanx, about 1.5 - 5.5 km? Either self-radar or tied into a broader net. That's current-gen, repurposed from something designed against cruise missiles. Next gen will probably optimize for or supplement with lighter weight projectiles, depending on whether lighter or heavier drones proliferate.
  - magicsmoke 5y ago
    What about their speed and range? If they fly fast they're not going far. If they go far they're slow moving targets. And if they go fast and far they have expensive rockets attached and you're being hit with missiles instead.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > They are slow and easy to kill. The drones flying slow, and low makes them harder to kill, not easier.
- dsq 5y ago
  They are very small, and high up. As the AI gets better they will also become better at evading fire, just as mosquitoes are really hard to get. Try catching a cat that doesn't want to be caught. Equip the cat with an explosive warhead and make it a thousand cat swarm.

hungryforcodes 5y ago

Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against. The fact is the "killer bot" scenario is just a one time thing. After it happens, all cities or armies or whatever, will have very solid defences installed against swarming or even just loitering bots. Flying drones are incredibly fragile and exposed. They are slow and easy to kill.

sliken 5y ago
Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at? Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.
- jcrawfordor 5y ago
  Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. Drones really are slow and easy to take down compared to guided rockets and especially kinetic ones, and the military has been working on means of defending against those for decades. The Phalanx is being modified to serve as an anti-UAS system, for example. The challenge is more to do with detection than firing.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Deploying point defense technologies over a city/civilian targets has some obvious problems, though. Lasers, electronic countermeasures, tangly stuff, etc, are much more attractive than systems that fire thousands of cannon rounds per minute or that launch explosive missiles.
    - sliken 5y ago
      From the phalanx wiki: Whereas naval Phalanx systems fire tungsten armor-piercing rounds, the C-RAM uses the 20–mm HEIT-SD (High-Explosive Incendiary Tracer, Self-Destruct) ammunition, originally developed for the M163 Vulcan Air Defense System.[26][34] These rounds explode on impact with the target, or on tracer burnout, thereby greatly reducing the risk of collateral damage from rounds that fail to hit their target. Not that the risk is zero, but at least it's "greatly reduced".
      - mlyle 5y ago
        You wouldn't generally let a C-RAM fire at a low angle over a city. And even if you did, the problem of how many of these you need for decent coverage becomes large, because there's no ideal placement that doesn't involve shooting straight at friendly things from some approach vectors. A CIWS is not a reasonable way to stop drone attacks on civilian targets.
        bombcar 5y ago
        And one of tue whole advantages of a drone army is that it can fly between zero and ten feet off the ground - thereby undercutting lots of defenses that are designed to point in the air.
  - sliken 5y ago
    Dunno, do agile rockets dodge? Or just follow a simple preprogrammed patterns (like low, then pop up to attack from above)? Not sure a CIWS system that can hit a mach 2 missile that doesn't dodge would necessarily handle the same $$$ spent on a N cheaper drones. How many minutes of firing do modern CIWS systems typically have? Loitering at max engagement range and dodging might well end up using ammo at a rate that the CIWS can not sustain. Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I googled the phalanx, looks like it typically has a drum of ammo that lasts for about 3 seconds. Is that 3 drones worth? 10? 100?
    - mlyle 5y ago
      > Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I guarantee you that just grazing a drone with a 20mm round will still kill it, even if you don't "hit" anything critical. :P
      - sliken 5y ago
        Really? Say you blow a 1" hole in a wing that's got some balsa struts and some thin fabric? Or a wing just made out of a sheet of foam? Both are common on cheap drones. Sure the 20mm round represents an amazing amount of kinetic energy, but the drone doesn't offer any resistance, and I wouldn't expect the round to even notice. Sure the disturbance in the air might throw the drone for a few loops, but any decent software will recover. Sure hitting more substantial targets the target itself becomes of the shrapnel that causes an ever increasing zone of damage. Not clear to me that a piece of paper or thin fabric would exhibit the same behavior.
        mlyle 5y ago
        Speaking as someone who's built and destroyed lots of homebuilt aircraft, and shot lots of things with guns of various sizes... 1. I think you're conflating "cheap agile drone" with "foam or balsa+durakote fixed wing aircraft". 2. Probable engagement aspect for a drone is not "straight up", as would be necessary for your scenario. 3. A little itty bitty hole in a wing does a whole lot more than you'd think. 4. Expecting a high velocity cannon round to just punch a clean hole in the wing is a little much. Foam's a bit more robust, but a small pebble at a few miles per hour has wrecked my whole durakote day before. And yes, there's degenerate cases, like you could have a whole sheet of dollar tree foam board maybe take a hit or two.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    Does it at all change the equation that you could trivially fly the drone 2 feet above the ground?
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. The thing is exactly that those drones are so slow, and low. Phalanx performance against sea skimming missiles is know to be poor. And that on dielectric, flat sea surface. Even military drones weighting few tons can fly autonomously under 100m. Ironically, it's now depressions in the terrain which will provide more air defence since they will force terrain following drones, and cruise missiles to move at oblique angles. Basically the problem is the same as with low, and slow cruise missiles, except worse.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    Flying nape-of-the-earth is a hard counter to CIWS-style defense systems. For antiship missiles this tactic doesn't help a whole lot, but for drones over land? C-RAM can't see through a hill, let alone shoot through one.
  - tw04 5y ago
    Most of those systems are designed to target dozens of incoming targets. It’s entirely reasonable and plausible for drone swarms to number in the thousands of targets. That ciws will likely exhaust its magazine before it can take out all the drones unless I’m missing something.
    - hungryforcodes 5y ago
      Lasers. You just have to put "laser defense drones" into Google to get a whole slew of completed or in development solutions. Also EMPS, counter defensive swarms of drones. The list goes on...
      - imtringued 5y ago
        Here is the system I am aware of: https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 (watch this entire video for air defense against saturation attacks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc
    - Animats 5y ago
      That's why Israel is begging the US for another billion dollars for reloads for their Iron Dome system. They're using expensive guided missiles to shoot down cheap unguided rockets.
- lazide 5y ago
  And even drone races are slow and predictable compared to what is possible with an applied military mind and decent tools. I suspect (or hope) we already have some decent options in the top secret space. Nothing we have now (publicly) is going to do a damn against a shipping container full of 2-5 lb drones each carrying 1 lb of C4 in a swarm with cheap off the shelf sensors going 100 mph nap of the earth in a distributed pattern. And that is currently entirely doable with off the shelf drones using existing software and published techniques for peanuts. Add in some decent programming and logistics talent, and that is a huge problem.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    This made me realize something like a TAS drone race would be interesting to watch.
    - lazide 5y ago
      What is TAS? Haven’t heard that term before. total autonomous system?
      - Quikinterp 5y ago
        "tool assisted speedrun" is a term in video game speedruns referring to the use of software/external tools to help with speedrunning games. So imagine a drone race where everything is programmed rather than remote controlled by a pilot
      - matheusmoreira 5y ago
        Tool-assisted speedruns. People use emulators and record inputs frame-by-frame, allowing nearly perfect performance and even reliable exploitation of game vulnerabilities. I remember one where the author exploited a bug in such a way that it completely reprogrammed the game: http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html Check it out, it's incredibly fun: http://tasvideos.org/ http://tasvideos.org/ There's an entire category for movies containing arbitrary code execution: http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C3050Y.html http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C3050Y.html
- hnuser123456 5y ago
  Here's a line of cops shooting at race drones. They would've had plenty of time to escape if they weren't sticking around to find out how long it takes to get shot down. These were race drones from 5 years ago and modern ones can be around twice as fast. Not to mention you don't want to dump a magazine upwards in your own territory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    > Not to mention you don't want to dump a magazine upwards in your own territory. That is what birdshot is for. Birdshot, e.g. "No. 9 or 10" shot, are tiny lead BBs about 2mm diameter. Because they are small, they have a large surface area to mass ratio, and consequently, they fall back down to earth at a low, safe speed. When they land on dry leaves, they bounce off and sound a bit like rain. When it is shot into the air and falls back down onto you, it won't even bruise you, let alone injure you. (However it can kill if fired directly at somebody.)
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Fun video. Definitely showed how easy it is to shoot down drones of the consumer variety. If you can hit it with a pistol it’s easy to hit.
  - qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
    How about a super soaker instead of a pistol? Especially one of the CPS soakers that got banned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=resgaF7MeR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=resgaF7MeR4
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
  Current point defense systems are already capable of placing a 20mm round with a muzzle velocity of 1000m/s onto a falling mortar shell in the last three seconds of its flight time. How hard do you think drones are by comparison?
  - milesward 5y ago
    ballistic trajectory versus active evasive behavior.
    - filmfact 5y ago
      Exactly - mortars predictable trajectory against a background free of ground clutter make them easy to predict the future location of. A drone optimally randomly dodging at treetop height is a much more difficult target.
      - imtringued 5y ago
        Why the hell would you dodge at tree top height? That makes absolutely no sense. Just fly a few centimeters off the ground without dodging and no air defense is going to hit you in a civilian area.
    - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
      https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a426717.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a426717.pdf A target with a 300mm frontal diameter, capable of evading at 10g, is expected to require 6 rounds to achieve a P_hit of 0.5 at 200m range, based on the parameters of your typical Phalanx CIWS. Said Phalanx weapon system might fire a burst of 1s duration in such an engagement, which is 75 rounds. For a missile engagement, that's a problematic number, but for a drone that's probably only moving a few dozen m/s and carrying a small payload, it's an entirely satisfactory engagement. Phalanx is an early 1980s weapon system. The Army is going to be fielding directed-energy SHORAD systems next year, equipped with 50kW lasers.
      - 5y ago
- rckoepke 5y ago
  My university has been working with the army to engineer drone vs human engagements. They originally set out to increase the drones' efficacy against humans wielding small arms (shotguns/etc), but apparently found out that was trivial. The drones very, very quickly overwhelmingly surpass the ability of humans to engage and defeat the drones. The research pivoted very early to "training humans to more successfully defend against small drone attacks". I'm not sure how much success they've had or what success is defined as for something like this.
- throwawayfeaxcz 5y ago
  They are slow and easy to kill compared to fighter jets, the grand parent is not talking about hobbyist drones but UCAVS.
- saargrin 5y ago
  what does a done race have to do with a loitering munition ? have you seen a harop? its huge,its built to fly slow and for a long while and carry big payload and has zero evasion capability
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
UnpossibleJim 5y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/reaper-drone-missions-afghanistan-flights https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/reaper-drone-m... Not all drones are AI, there are remote drones that are very fast and very hard to kill, pulling Gforces that would make normal pilots pass out. With the US declaration that drones are "munitions", we have effectively stated that we can launch them into the airspace of countries that we aren't technically at war with, and claim it was "border fire", like we did with Afghanistan.
trhway 5y ago
>Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against. no. Azerbajan/Turkey went into it only after verifying that it works, to the devastating effect, against the Russian made air-defenses in Syria and Libya. Now Ukraine has bought these drones and is starting their production. In the next year or two we'll see them being used to the same great effect in Donbass. So far Russia hasn't managed to come up with any meaningful defense. If anything the recognition of the issue has only started to dawn on them, and by the time they manage something the Turkish/Ukranian (they discuss collaborative development) drones will improve another level up - drone capabilities at the current stage (beginning of the hockey stick) are much faster to improve - add speed, a bit of stealth, [partial] autonomy, coordinated swarming. It is a new paradigm shifting generation of warfare like iron navy ships, machine guns, planes, missiles, etc. were in their respective times.
- petre 5y ago
  Rafael Systems sells Drone Dome anti drone mobile defense.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    I think they even proved themselves in the recent Gaza campaign.
    - trhway 5y ago
      I don't think there were any real military drones. While an RC model/quad with a grenade does qualify as a weapon, the purposely built military drones have orders of magnitude better communication over longer range, incl. remote high precision targeting, loitering times, and carry a high precision stand-off missiles (that is an important point because the defense has to shoot the small fast incoming missile while the drone itself carries several missiles and loiters outside of the CIWS/SHORAD range waiting for the window of opportunity, and thus shooting the drone itself requires much more expensive/heavy air-defense system).
      - 5y ago
anigbrowl 5y ago
The primary defense for the time being is 'hide.' US Marine tacticians, for example, are shifting priority from hardening an impromptu position (ie a foxhole) to concealing it.
- vmh1928 5y ago
  Check out some of the Azerbaijani drone strike footage with IR on Youtube. They'll need to go deep and avoid any above ground movement and it better not look like a bunker. Unless effective drone defense (other drones?) is employed using cheap drones are a game changer.
baybal2 5y ago
> Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against How? They fly just few hundred meters above the ground, launch from field runways, and for the price of a single B-2, a country can buy 2000 of them. Jamming? Even a country like Turkey was able to devise a passable inertial navigation, and and programming for autonomous operation way exceeding an easy to trick "attack anything that moves" mode. To counter them, you will need a very sizeable air force fitted with best radars possible to track them down individually, and strafe with a cannon (since no missile currently can lock onto something so small, slow, cold, and low flying.)
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > To counter them, you will need a very sizeable air force fitted with best radars possible to track them down individually, and strafe with a cannon Or, you know, currently fielded SHORAD systems and CIWS?
  - baybal2 5y ago
    What are their range, and height of radar horizon? Even if that wouldn't be a problem, you will still need really a lot of that.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      On the Phalanx, about 1.5 - 5.5 km? Either self-radar or tied into a broader net. That's current-gen, repurposed from something designed against cruise missiles. Next gen will probably optimize for or supplement with lighter weight projectiles, depending on whether lighter or heavier drones proliferate.
- magicsmoke 5y ago
  What about their speed and range? If they fly fast they're not going far. If they go far they're slow moving targets. And if they go fast and far they have expensive rockets attached and you're being hit with missiles instead.
baybal2 5y ago
> They are slow and easy to kill. The drones flying slow, and low makes them harder to kill, not easier.
dsq 5y ago
They are very small, and high up. As the AI gets better they will also become better at evading fire, just as mosquitoes are really hard to get. Try catching a cat that doesn't want to be caught. Equip the cat with an explosive warhead and make it a thousand cat swarm.