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> If each drone costs US$50 then you can launch 180 million drones for the cost of an aircraft carrier. In a world of frictionless pulleys and spherical cows y

> If each drone costs US$50 then you can launch 180 million drones for the cost of an aircraft carrier. In a world of frictionless pulleys and spherical cows yes, in the real world, no. In the real world aircraft carriers and their attendant battle groups do not just park within visible range of a coast. Your drone swarm needs to find the carrier's battle group, get within launch range for your $50 drones (without being shot down), maintain some sort of identification of the carrier (or whatever ship), and then make a terminal approach. A carrier's air group maintains a perimeter hundreds of miles away from the carrier group. Not just fighters flying CAP but AWACS planes keeping track of the airspace. No one is going to hide a million drones launching towards a carrier group. It would be unlikely hide even a hundred drones. A drone carrier large enough to launch a non-trivial number of suicide drones is also unlikely to go undetected. Even if everything went right and someone managed to damage an aircraft carrier with a drone swarm, the carrier group alone has enough land attack weaponry to seriously hurt the source in retaliation. A nuclear response to an attack of a US carrier would not be outside the realm of possibility either. Attacking a US carrier group is a really dumb idea even if you've got a really clever weapon.

kragen 4y ago
You don't have to hide the million drones if the carrier group doesn't have enough firepower to destroy them all before they reach the carrier. But you might be able to, if they're small enough. Or underwater. If you can provoke nuclear retaliation, you win twice, at least to the extent that anyone can "win" a battle nowadays: first, you sink Enemy A's carrier (or, more realistically, permanently incapacitate it), and second, you draw Enemy A's nukes onto Enemy B's territory where you launched the drones from.

kragen 4y ago

You don't have to hide the million drones if the carrier group doesn't have enough firepower to destroy them all before they reach the carrier. But you might be able to, if they're small enough. Or underwater. If you can provoke nuclear retaliation, you win twice, at least to the extent that anyone can "win" a battle nowadays: first, you sink Enemy A's carrier (or, more realistically, permanently incapacitate it), and second, you draw Enemy A's nukes onto Enemy B's territory where you launched the drones from.