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suicide drone swarm is non-economical and is a pure waste of high tech electronics in an explosion. HD surveillance drones on the other side, especially land b

by slt2021 4y ago

suicide drone swarm is non-economical and is a pure waste of high tech electronics in an explosion. HD surveillance drones on the other side, especially land based drones, like robotic dogs or sea drones. to execute forward observer role, provide realtime recon will be future. with precise targeting and intel - hitting high value target becomes trivial

tablespoon 4y ago
> suicide drone swarm is non-economical and is a pure waste of high tech electronics in an explosion. You state that very confidently, but give no reasoning at all. A Javelin missile costs (IIRC) something like $100k. A Tomahawk cruise missile costs $2m. If you shoot more than one at a target (which I'm sure happens), you've got yourself a suicide drone swarm. If you strap warheads to 5 COTS $1000 drones, and kill a tank with the swarm, that could be both 1) more economical than a Javelin, and 2) may even defeat some countermeasures (e.g. active ones optimized to attack a single threat, reactive armor designed to protect against a single hit).
- samplatt 4y ago
  No COTS drone that can carry a realistic payload is going to cost $1000. They'll cost $5000-$15000 so will still be 6x cheaper than a Tomahawk ^_^
  - kragen 4y ago
    An RPG-7V1 PG-7VR has 750 mm penetration in RHA and weighs 4.5 kg, including the rocket motor. How expensive is a COTS drone that can carry 4.5 kg? It looks like a Carbon Cub with a 15-cc engine and a 90-inch wingspan costs US$400: https://www.horizonhobby.com/product/carbon-cub-15cc-arf-90/HAN5065.html https://www.horizonhobby.com/product/carbon-cub-15cc-arf-90/... It has 1170 square inches of wing area and a claimed wing loading of "22.4 oz/sq in" which probably means 22.4 oz./sq ft. That would mean it weighs 5.1 kg, and the manual https://www.manua.ls/hangar-9/carbon-cub-15cc-arf/manual https://www.manua.ls/hangar-9/carbon-cub-15cc-arf/manual confirms it weighs 5.2 kg. The Carbon Cub surely can't carry nearly its own weight in payload. You'd probably have to scale it up by a linear factor of about 1.7, which would probably bring the cost to about US$1000. Or you could launch the drone with compressed air or put a couple of solid-fueled rocket engines on it. You probably won't sink an aircraft carrier with a Carbon Cub firing an RPG (retrofitted with guidance systems) but you should have a pretty good chance of blowing up a tank.
    - samplatt 4y ago
      Fair call! Here's Luddite Me thinking drones == battery-powered quadrotors
      - kragen 4y ago
        Oh yeah, those are pretty limited. You might look at the Switchblade and Bayraktar mentioned in the article.
jmpman 4y ago
I disagree. Given a drone high enough that it can’t be shot down with anti aircraft cannons, it must be shot down with a missile. Make the payload powerful enough that it can create damage of much higher cost than the missile, and the defender will be forced to use the missile. Now, optimize these high altitude drones for the lowest cost, and send them in a swarm. Send them during cloud cover, and a land based laser will be ineffective. Coupled with a CRPA antenna, these GPS guided drones would be hard to stop. As long as you can produce these drones for cheaper than the defensive missile, the attacker wins.
- slt2021 4y ago
  conventional warfare is going lose to drones, no doubt about that. I am not sure about hybrid/proxy wars where line between civilian and enemy is blurred (afghanistan, gaza strip). as powerful as it is, but you cant launch swarm of drones at civilian village which may host a couple insurgents. the only true countermeasure against western military tech will become hybrid conflict, where entire civilian population is an adversary, where you cannot win by military means only.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > as powerful as it is, but you cant launch swarm of drones at civilian village which may host a couple insurgents. If a hellfire missile with a few civilian casualties is acceptable, I don’t see why a swarm of drones with a few civilian casualties isn’t. Not that I think it’s acceptable in the first place, but…
    - slt2021 4y ago
      sounds like russians bombing Ukrainian villages
  - jmpman 4y ago
    Civilized countries can’t. But once this technology becomes more widely available, would Hamas hesitate to send a swarm of high altitude drone bombers into civilian populations? If ISIS had this technology, would they have hesitated to carpet bomb every city in their path?
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
The article doesn’t talk about suicide drone squad (I don’t blame you from not reading it. It’s obvious from reading the very poor comments that nearly no one did). The article talks about swarm of small drones used in group for surveillance, cheap guided ammunitions and drones used as decoy and to do electronic warfare recon in advance of fighter planes.

tablespoon 4y ago

> suicide drone swarm is non-economical and is a pure waste of high tech electronics in an explosion. You state that very confidently, but give no reasoning at all. A Javelin missile costs (IIRC) something like $100k. A Tomahawk cruise missile costs $2m. If you shoot more than one at a target (which I'm sure happens), you've got yourself a suicide drone swarm. If you strap warheads to 5 COTS $1000 drones, and kill a tank with the swarm, that could be both 1) more economical than a Javelin, and 2) may even defeat some countermeasures (e.g. active ones optimized to attack a single threat, reactive armor designed to protect against a single hit).

samplatt 4y ago
No COTS drone that can carry a realistic payload is going to cost $1000. They'll cost $5000-$15000 so will still be 6x cheaper than a Tomahawk ^_^
- kragen 4y ago
  An RPG-7V1 PG-7VR has 750 mm penetration in RHA and weighs 4.5 kg, including the rocket motor. How expensive is a COTS drone that can carry 4.5 kg? It looks like a Carbon Cub with a 15-cc engine and a 90-inch wingspan costs US$400: https://www.horizonhobby.com/product/carbon-cub-15cc-arf-90/HAN5065.html https://www.horizonhobby.com/product/carbon-cub-15cc-arf-90/... It has 1170 square inches of wing area and a claimed wing loading of "22.4 oz/sq in" which probably means 22.4 oz./sq ft. That would mean it weighs 5.1 kg, and the manual https://www.manua.ls/hangar-9/carbon-cub-15cc-arf/manual https://www.manua.ls/hangar-9/carbon-cub-15cc-arf/manual confirms it weighs 5.2 kg. The Carbon Cub surely can't carry nearly its own weight in payload. You'd probably have to scale it up by a linear factor of about 1.7, which would probably bring the cost to about US$1000. Or you could launch the drone with compressed air or put a couple of solid-fueled rocket engines on it. You probably won't sink an aircraft carrier with a Carbon Cub firing an RPG (retrofitted with guidance systems) but you should have a pretty good chance of blowing up a tank.
  - samplatt 4y ago
    Fair call! Here's Luddite Me thinking drones == battery-powered quadrotors
    - kragen 4y ago
      Oh yeah, those are pretty limited. You might look at the Switchblade and Bayraktar mentioned in the article.

jmpman 4y ago

I disagree. Given a drone high enough that it can’t be shot down with anti aircraft cannons, it must be shot down with a missile. Make the payload powerful enough that it can create damage of much higher cost than the missile, and the defender will be forced to use the missile. Now, optimize these high altitude drones for the lowest cost, and send them in a swarm. Send them during cloud cover, and a land based laser will be ineffective. Coupled with a CRPA antenna, these GPS guided drones would be hard to stop. As long as you can produce these drones for cheaper than the defensive missile, the attacker wins.

slt2021 4y ago
conventional warfare is going lose to drones, no doubt about that. I am not sure about hybrid/proxy wars where line between civilian and enemy is blurred (afghanistan, gaza strip). as powerful as it is, but you cant launch swarm of drones at civilian village which may host a couple insurgents. the only true countermeasure against western military tech will become hybrid conflict, where entire civilian population is an adversary, where you cannot win by military means only.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > as powerful as it is, but you cant launch swarm of drones at civilian village which may host a couple insurgents. If a hellfire missile with a few civilian casualties is acceptable, I don’t see why a swarm of drones with a few civilian casualties isn’t. Not that I think it’s acceptable in the first place, but…
  - slt2021 4y ago
    sounds like russians bombing Ukrainian villages
- jmpman 4y ago
  Civilized countries can’t. But once this technology becomes more widely available, would Hamas hesitate to send a swarm of high altitude drone bombers into civilian populations? If ISIS had this technology, would they have hesitated to carpet bomb every city in their path?

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

The article doesn’t talk about suicide drone squad (I don’t blame you from not reading it. It’s obvious from reading the very poor comments that nearly no one did). The article talks about swarm of small drones used in group for surveillance, cheap guided ammunitions and drones used as decoy and to do electronic warfare recon in advance of fighter planes.