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We're talking about Taiwan. China sets them up in the fields in a few of the rural communities near Xiamen. They simultaneously lift off from the fields. They f

by blagie 5y ago

We're talking about Taiwan. China sets them up in the fields in a few of the rural communities near Xiamen. They simultaneously lift off from the fields. They fly at ~25mph. They take perhaps three hours to clear the water between Taiwan and China. There's a million of them. They're slow, but fairly agile. Looking at the video, it looks like the C-RAM system is shooting perhaps dozens of rounds per second. Shooting down a million drones would take many hours of continuous shooting, assuming every bullet hit, which it wouldn't. And a Patriot missile is $2-3 million. I think the future of warfare is likely to be cheap, small, but smart and precision. * A small drone flies into a gun barrel and explodes. * A small drone flies into a jet air intake, and explodes, spraying material designed to damage the engine as it passes through * A small drone deposits a chemical weapon in a ship's HVAC intake * A small drone sprays corrosive paint on a camera, on a jet window, other surface we look through * A small drone launches a single bullet to kill a mechanic ... and so on. I think a lot of this goes like rock-paper-scissors, where a million $1000 drones overwhelms a $1 billion ship. On the other hand, a hundred thousand $10,000 drones could probably make quick work of a million $1000 drones. And so on.

dragontamer 5y ago
> They fly at ~25mph. You know that US Warships run at 35mph to 50mph over water, right? You literally can't hit a warship at that speed.
- dTal 5y ago
  Only if the warship is at flanking speed directly away from the battle, commonly referred to as "running away". In which case, you've won.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    CRAMs have an effective range of like, 10km. As long as the ship is traveling 25mph away from a 25mph drone, its shooting them down with machine guns (and bullets are very, very cheap). A flock of drones flying at 25mph isn't a weapon, they're sitting ducks. Fully and completely ineffective at ever dealing damage to these warships. Like, 25mph means that these drones are going to be within effective range of the machine guns for 10 minutes when the ship is standing still. And these AEGIS systems on these destroyers have 300km+ effective radar range. Unless you have very expensive equipment on those drones: they'll be flying in blind and getting sniped. Either stealth (which prevents the CRAM from locking on), or superior radar (to see the ships before the ships see it), or a combination thereof. And again: if they're not standing still: the ships can basically run around in circles and the drones would never catch up.
    - blagie 5y ago
      I think that depends on the mission. 1) China doesn't need to destroy US ships; it merely needs to keep them distracted long enough to take control of Taiwan. If China moves quickly, the Taiwanese leadership are deported to Beijing, and there are boots on the ground, it's a done deal. Once that's done, it will be like Crimea. There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia. 2) Ten minutes, at a dozen shots a minute, means a gun firing at 10 RPS can take out 6,000 drones. That's 0.6% of a flock. 3) You can't run circles around a flock of millions of drones, no matter how fast you go. A flock can cover a lot of space. The best you can do is run away, which would take US forces out-of-commission. 4) The Taiwan Straight is simply not that large. It's not hard for China to be aware of everything that happens there, even with a fleet of small, cheap AUVs. Heck, they could drop a few hundred thousand of these as well, if they wanted to. 5) It's equally not hard for China to communicate with a flock of drones. A directional spread spectrum link isn't easy to jam. At that range, even an optical link is practical, and not something where we have countermeasures. 6) A million drones can effectively blanket the whole Taiwan straight. 7) In terms of stealth, I'm not sure how technology will progress, but I'm pretty sure that building drones indistinguishable from birds on radar just wouldn't be that hard. I'm also pretty sure a flock of drones could be made to emulate other forms of craft, on radar. 8) I'm also pretty sure China wouldn't telegraph what they're doing. It's not like we can prepare countermeasures. I gave one example of a disruptive technology; there are dozens of others. To be honest, I have no idea how AEGIS would deal with a million targets, nor what having that many targets would do to its ability to track things like Chinese landing craft, unless the US were explicitly prepared for this particular threat. Also, the C-RAM price-per-round is about $30. With a $1000 drone, things are cost-neutral if about 3% of rounds hit. At 10 kilometers, it would take rounds a little under 10 seconds to arrive. Even modestly chaotic trajectories would dodge most rounds.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia. Classic blunder or not, the US gets drawn into land wars in Asia fairly regularly (especially in the 21st century, where we’ve spent most of it involved in two at once.) 1950-1953 Korea, 1955-1973 Vietnam, 1991 Iraq, 2001-2021 Afghanistan, 2003-2011 Iraq II: Elecric Boogaloo, 2014-? Iraq III: Now with Syria, too.

by blagie 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

> They fly at ~25mph. You know that US Warships run at 35mph to 50mph over water, right? You literally can't hit a warship at that speed.

dTal 5y ago
Only if the warship is at flanking speed directly away from the battle, commonly referred to as "running away". In which case, you've won.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  CRAMs have an effective range of like, 10km. As long as the ship is traveling 25mph away from a 25mph drone, its shooting them down with machine guns (and bullets are very, very cheap). A flock of drones flying at 25mph isn't a weapon, they're sitting ducks. Fully and completely ineffective at ever dealing damage to these warships. Like, 25mph means that these drones are going to be within effective range of the machine guns for 10 minutes when the ship is standing still. And these AEGIS systems on these destroyers have 300km+ effective radar range. Unless you have very expensive equipment on those drones: they'll be flying in blind and getting sniped. Either stealth (which prevents the CRAM from locking on), or superior radar (to see the ships before the ships see it), or a combination thereof. And again: if they're not standing still: the ships can basically run around in circles and the drones would never catch up.
  - blagie 5y ago
    I think that depends on the mission. 1) China doesn't need to destroy US ships; it merely needs to keep them distracted long enough to take control of Taiwan. If China moves quickly, the Taiwanese leadership are deported to Beijing, and there are boots on the ground, it's a done deal. Once that's done, it will be like Crimea. There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia. 2) Ten minutes, at a dozen shots a minute, means a gun firing at 10 RPS can take out 6,000 drones. That's 0.6% of a flock. 3) You can't run circles around a flock of millions of drones, no matter how fast you go. A flock can cover a lot of space. The best you can do is run away, which would take US forces out-of-commission. 4) The Taiwan Straight is simply not that large. It's not hard for China to be aware of everything that happens there, even with a fleet of small, cheap AUVs. Heck, they could drop a few hundred thousand of these as well, if they wanted to. 5) It's equally not hard for China to communicate with a flock of drones. A directional spread spectrum link isn't easy to jam. At that range, even an optical link is practical, and not something where we have countermeasures. 6) A million drones can effectively blanket the whole Taiwan straight. 7) In terms of stealth, I'm not sure how technology will progress, but I'm pretty sure that building drones indistinguishable from birds on radar just wouldn't be that hard. I'm also pretty sure a flock of drones could be made to emulate other forms of craft, on radar. 8) I'm also pretty sure China wouldn't telegraph what they're doing. It's not like we can prepare countermeasures. I gave one example of a disruptive technology; there are dozens of others. To be honest, I have no idea how AEGIS would deal with a million targets, nor what having that many targets would do to its ability to track things like Chinese landing craft, unless the US were explicitly prepared for this particular threat. Also, the C-RAM price-per-round is about $30. With a $1000 drone, things are cost-neutral if about 3% of rounds hit. At 10 kilometers, it would take rounds a little under 10 seconds to arrive. Even modestly chaotic trajectories would dodge most rounds.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia. Classic blunder or not, the US gets drawn into land wars in Asia fairly regularly (especially in the 21st century, where we’ve spent most of it involved in two at once.) 1950-1953 Korea, 1955-1973 Vietnam, 1991 Iraq, 2001-2021 Afghanistan, 2003-2011 Iraq II: Elecric Boogaloo, 2014-? Iraq III: Now with Syria, too.