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Why just 1000? Why not 100M? From the war in Ukraine it seems that future wars will be fought by swarms of cheap drones. Most of them will never hit a target. S
by whatever1 3y ago
Why just 1000? Why not 100M? From the war in Ukraine it seems that future wars will be fought by swarms of cheap drones. Most of them will never hit a target. Some of them though will do so. Ships, tanks, soldiers, jets, nothing stands a chance.
It seems to me that the country that develops the best supply chain of cheap drones will be the one that will be able to win any war.
- halJordan 3y agoThese are not the quadcopters used to sight in artillery or drop grenades. These are loyal wingmen to be used alongside manned fighters dogfighting j20s deep in the pacific. The 1000 comes from giving the 300-odd f35 fleet 3 wingmen. The cheapness comes from them being 1/10 the cost of a manned fighter.
- WeylandYutani 3y agoReminds me of Ace Combat 7. Does the US Air Force have a union? They won't be happy being replaced by drones.
- rasz 3y agoFor the price of one of those + accompanying Jet you can manufacture >10K autonomous drones with 100km range, enough to overwhelm any carrier defenses and wreak havoc on the deck.
- dmos62 3y agoKeep in mind, that counting small drones is a fairly new problem. What works today might not work tomorrow.
- rasz 3y agoWould US fare better than russia tonight? <50 drones resulting in probably around $300-500mil in hardware damages alone (6x Il-76, potentially refinery and electronics factory). And those are primitive loud improvised drones flying slow and quite high. Even the best AA system will run out of ammo under heavier assault. Patriot in Kyiv got overwhelmed with less than 20 cruise missiles it could easily track, now make that hundreds of targets gliding few meters above the surface to the target.
- CameronNemo 3y agoYou seem to think we should copy Russia's strategy of scattering swarms of drones across the territory of their enemy. These 'kamikaze' drones are highly damaging and dangerous to civilian life. Maybe the US military should focus on how the heck we can defend against these vast swarms of kill bots, instead of flooding the skies with more and more AI death squads. Edit: and to people pessimistically saying that the US military doesn't prioritize civilian lives... I think we'd agree that should change
- pokepim 3y ago[dead]
- fellowniusmonk 3y agoThere was a paper on HN about a year ago published by the DoD (if memory serves) that roughly speaking the only way to combat drones is by having more, possibly smaller, drones. So I think at least one "how" has been arrived at.
- CameronNemo 3y agoYeah well maybe they should think a bit harder. I am not taking the DoD's word on it. We really can't use directed energy weapons to snipe them out of the air? Scatter pebbles and rocks in the air space above them to ground them? Use a dozen helicopters to drop huge nets on top of them Scooby Doo style? Come on people, time to get creative. If your only solution to swarms of death bots is more death bots, then you won't see a single willing dollar from me.
- nradov 3y agoThe US military is retooling to confront China in the Western Pacific theater. They need drones with sufficient range to fly from US and allied bases in the region to Taiwan. Those won't be cheap. The battle space is completely different from what you see in Ukraine.
- imtringued 3y agoWhy have 1000 highly capable weapons if you can have 100 million weapons that are useless after they run out of energy within five minutes?