4 ms·

Economics Drives Ray-Gun Resurgence

52 points by jandrewrogers 4y ago

dmix 4y ago
I've become a big fan of the /r/combatfootage subreddit since the war started and every time there's an anti-air rocket video there's a big discussion about the utility of sending a $1 million S300 anti-air rocket to take down a $100-250k Iranian kamikaze drone. Or a $100k stinger missiles for a surveillance UAV. Or even worse economics once the Patriot system vs anything, etc. The newbie argument is always to point out how wasteful it is to do that. But every time people have to point out that Ukraine's power going out for 6hrs or some civilian loss of life or protecting some military deployment zone is way more expensive/valuable in the long run. Asymmetric warfare always requires a more expensive solution. Until affordable solutions are adapted to the problem.
- Animats 4y ago
  If your enemy can make you use up your expensive weapons by attacking you with something cheap, eventually you run out of the good stuff. Then they can hit you. This has already happened in Ukraine, in both directions. Early in the war, there was a video of a Russian helicopter firing off many flares to counter heat-seeking missiles. The Ukrainian attacker waited until the flares were exhausted, then fired one heat-seeking missile and shot down the helicopter.
- cm2187 4y ago
  > But every time people have to point out that Ukraine's power going out for 6hrs or some civilian loss of life or protecting some military deployment zone is way more expensive/valuable in the long run. That's missing the point. The point is that you will run out of $1m missiles much faster than the ennemy will run out of $100k projectiles (I think the iranian drones are even cheaper than that). It's not just money, it's supply.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    I think what they meant by asymmetric warfare is that it's already not a supply issue; that's just not where the bottleneck is. The whole reason it's called asymmetric is that you're not going blow -for-blow, so you have to optimize for different things like information, allies, and maximizing hitting power per soldier
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    > The point is that you will run out of $1m missiles much faster than the ennemy will run out of $100k projectiles That depends. Even though there is a 10:1 gap to overcome it is still very well possible that the wealthier country (presumably the one wielding the $1m missiles) is going to be more than 10:1 wealthier and that to them the missiles appear cheaper than the $100k projectiles do to their opponent.
- unity1001 4y ago
  > $100-250k Iranian kamikaze drone They actually cost $25k apiece. Cheapest Soviet era SAM costs ~$500,000. Any Western counterpart to them costs $1m and above. Things are how they are now, you can overwhelm your foe entirely by raining cheap Iranian drones on them. And getting your enemy destroy them with SAMs looks much more devastating to your enemy than you actually hitting your targets...
nickpinkston 4y ago
I'm really interested to see how the arms race changes with laser / directed energy weapons. I don't see ablative armor [1] discussed very much, even though it seems like an obvious / hard to defeat countermeasure. The idea being that the target is covered with a material that turns to gas when hit by a laser - such as the ceramic tiles used on re-entering spacecraft - the idea of being the tile insulates the target from the heat damage and the smoke released by the laser hitting it both carries the laser's heat away and scatters the laser's light. You can imagine using fancy smoke generators (similar size/weight as the smoke grenade of today) that block all forms of light [2] further pushing smoke out of the surface for a larger protective bubble of scattering - perhaps activated when the ablative armor starts vaporizing and/or even being expelled through the armor's porous surface. Remember that missiles, jet drones, etc. may only take seconds to close the distance to engage your laser system, so you only need this protection to last that long. Also, energy weapons point both ways, and are very well painted targets - analogous to the "anti-radiation missiles" [3] that home-in on radar emissions to guide them to destroy enemy radars. In the ship example, a sticky smoke chemical targeted near the laser defense systems could blind or scatter them pretty effectively for hours before they could be cleared to make the systems combat operational again. Anyway - just some ideas from a non-professional military nerd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_screen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_screen (Ctrl+F for"VIRSS") [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile
- nradov 4y ago
  Ablative armor is generally too heavy and bulky to be practical for use on aircraft or missiles. And it can't really work in combination with low-observable (stealth) airframe coatings.
- rocqua 4y ago
  It seems like the range downside due to diffraction and atmospheric dispersion of most lasers rules them out way before ablative armor becomes relevant. I could imagine close-in missle defense being some kind of exception, but if you can only cover a small area, then the 'high upfront cost, low cost per shot' tradeof stops being a good tradeof. As for anti radiation missles. The 'directed' part of a directed energy weapon should make that much harder. Besides, a laser like this probably isn't firing constantly, whilst a radar station is emmiting constantly.
Animats 4y ago
100KW of optical power in a truck-sized package at last. 100KW has been said to be the point at which lasers became militarily useful.
dsq 4y ago
Making the attacker armor up their drones and missiles also means making them a lot more expensive and harder to make, to the point where firing a kinetic interceptor makes sense again. So the defender wins either way. The same goes for shiny mirrors, smoke, etc. By the time you're finished you've got a million dollar attacker.
nomilk 4y ago
Are these useless in rain or fog?
- nomilk 4y ago
  > the point is to use expensive antimissile missiles only when you must. Use lasers whenever possible and resort to expensive AA assets only when necessary (stormy weather, or thick fog).
idontwantthis 4y ago
It’s been said for every evolution in military hardware, but could this actually make war impossible (if both sides have them)? What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? And it’s so cheap to fire them, how could you come up with something that could beat it before you ran out of money? And how long before we do have MW lasers powerful enough to take out a nuclear RV? Maybe then tungsten rods from orbit finally make sense? But you could probably just destroy the satellite from the ground at that point.
- agapon 4y ago
  > What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? Lasers.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  > What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? Lots of men on foot and lots of dumb bullets. The laser shots are cheap, but the laser trucks are expensive.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Rock, paper, scissors. Interesting how that seems to work out.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  >What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? Mirrors?
  - api 4y ago
    A material would have to be absolutely perfectly reflective to survive some of these lasers.
- ethbr0 4y ago
ambicapter 4y ago
> Put it down partly to the rising demand for cheap antimissile defense, but it’s mainly the result of technical advances in high-energy lasers. I just find it funny that the article contradicts its own headline.

52 points by jandrewrogers 4y ago

dmix 4y ago

I've become a big fan of the /r/combatfootage subreddit since the war started and every time there's an anti-air rocket video there's a big discussion about the utility of sending a $1 million S300 anti-air rocket to take down a $100-250k Iranian kamikaze drone. Or a $100k stinger missiles for a surveillance UAV. Or even worse economics once the Patriot system vs anything, etc. The newbie argument is always to point out how wasteful it is to do that. But every time people have to point out that Ukraine's power going out for 6hrs or some civilian loss of life or protecting some military deployment zone is way more expensive/valuable in the long run. Asymmetric warfare always requires a more expensive solution. Until affordable solutions are adapted to the problem.

Animats 4y ago
If your enemy can make you use up your expensive weapons by attacking you with something cheap, eventually you run out of the good stuff. Then they can hit you. This has already happened in Ukraine, in both directions. Early in the war, there was a video of a Russian helicopter firing off many flares to counter heat-seeking missiles. The Ukrainian attacker waited until the flares were exhausted, then fired one heat-seeking missile and shot down the helicopter.
cm2187 4y ago
> But every time people have to point out that Ukraine's power going out for 6hrs or some civilian loss of life or protecting some military deployment zone is way more expensive/valuable in the long run. That's missing the point. The point is that you will run out of $1m missiles much faster than the ennemy will run out of $100k projectiles (I think the iranian drones are even cheaper than that). It's not just money, it's supply.
- pksebben 4y ago
  I think what they meant by asymmetric warfare is that it's already not a supply issue; that's just not where the bottleneck is. The whole reason it's called asymmetric is that you're not going blow -for-blow, so you have to optimize for different things like information, allies, and maximizing hitting power per soldier
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > The point is that you will run out of $1m missiles much faster than the ennemy will run out of $100k projectiles That depends. Even though there is a 10:1 gap to overcome it is still very well possible that the wealthier country (presumably the one wielding the $1m missiles) is going to be more than 10:1 wealthier and that to them the missiles appear cheaper than the $100k projectiles do to their opponent.
unity1001 4y ago
> $100-250k Iranian kamikaze drone They actually cost $25k apiece. Cheapest Soviet era SAM costs ~$500,000. Any Western counterpart to them costs $1m and above. Things are how they are now, you can overwhelm your foe entirely by raining cheap Iranian drones on them. And getting your enemy destroy them with SAMs looks much more devastating to your enemy than you actually hitting your targets...

nickpinkston 4y ago

I'm really interested to see how the arms race changes with laser / directed energy weapons. I don't see ablative armor [1] discussed very much, even though it seems like an obvious / hard to defeat countermeasure. The idea being that the target is covered with a material that turns to gas when hit by a laser - such as the ceramic tiles used on re-entering spacecraft - the idea of being the tile insulates the target from the heat damage and the smoke released by the laser hitting it both carries the laser's heat away and scatters the laser's light. You can imagine using fancy smoke generators (similar size/weight as the smoke grenade of today) that block all forms of light [2] further pushing smoke out of the surface for a larger protective bubble of scattering - perhaps activated when the ablative armor starts vaporizing and/or even being expelled through the armor's porous surface. Remember that missiles, jet drones, etc. may only take seconds to close the distance to engage your laser system, so you only need this protection to last that long. Also, energy weapons point both ways, and are very well painted targets - analogous to the "anti-radiation missiles" [3] that home-in on radar emissions to guide them to destroy enemy radars. In the ship example, a sticky smoke chemical targeted near the laser defense systems could blind or scatter them pretty effectively for hours before they could be cleared to make the systems combat operational again. Anyway - just some ideas from a non-professional military nerd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_screen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_screen (Ctrl+F for"VIRSS") [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-radiation_missile

nradov 4y ago
Ablative armor is generally too heavy and bulky to be practical for use on aircraft or missiles. And it can't really work in combination with low-observable (stealth) airframe coatings.
rocqua 4y ago
It seems like the range downside due to diffraction and atmospheric dispersion of most lasers rules them out way before ablative armor becomes relevant. I could imagine close-in missle defense being some kind of exception, but if you can only cover a small area, then the 'high upfront cost, low cost per shot' tradeof stops being a good tradeof. As for anti radiation missles. The 'directed' part of a directed energy weapon should make that much harder. Besides, a laser like this probably isn't firing constantly, whilst a radar station is emmiting constantly.

Animats 4y ago

100KW of optical power in a truck-sized package at last. 100KW has been said to be the point at which lasers became militarily useful.

dsq 4y ago

Making the attacker armor up their drones and missiles also means making them a lot more expensive and harder to make, to the point where firing a kinetic interceptor makes sense again. So the defender wins either way. The same goes for shiny mirrors, smoke, etc. By the time you're finished you've got a million dollar attacker.

nomilk 4y ago

Are these useless in rain or fog?

nomilk 4y ago
> the point is to use expensive antimissile missiles only when you must. Use lasers whenever possible and resort to expensive AA assets only when necessary (stormy weather, or thick fog).

idontwantthis 4y ago

It’s been said for every evolution in military hardware, but could this actually make war impossible (if both sides have them)? What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? And it’s so cheap to fire them, how could you come up with something that could beat it before you ran out of money? And how long before we do have MW lasers powerful enough to take out a nuclear RV? Maybe then tungsten rods from orbit finally make sense? But you could probably just destroy the satellite from the ground at that point.

agapon 4y ago
> What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? Lasers.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
> What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? Lots of men on foot and lots of dumb bullets. The laser shots are cheap, but the laser trucks are expensive.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Rock, paper, scissors. Interesting how that seems to work out.
RobotToaster 4y ago
>What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles? Mirrors?
- api 4y ago
  A material would have to be absolutely perfectly reflective to survive some of these lasers.
ethbr0 4y ago

ambicapter 4y ago

> Put it down partly to the rising demand for cheap antimissile defense, but it’s mainly the result of technical advances in high-energy lasers. I just find it funny that the article contradicts its own headline.