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For those reading just the headline and not the article, it's not talking about the U.S. military downsizing budget-wise, but how they're investing more in smal

For those reading just the headline and not the article, it's not talking about the U.S. military downsizing budget-wise, but how they're investing more in smaller-size combat drones, which per-unit might be considered cheap, cheaper than a tank or UAV at least. There's a lot of sci-fi speculating, and in theory, swarms of thousands of small drones sounds like it has a lot of potential, but as far as I can tell, still just seems like a lot of speculation. Larger drones have played a role in modern warfare for decades, and we've seen homespun videos of Ukrainian consumer drones dropping simple explosives on sleeping Russian soldiers, but the efficacy of tiny drones seems questionable. I'd be interested in what someone who actually understands modern warfare thinks about these tiny drones and the role they'll fill.

nvy 3y ago
>but the efficacy of tiny drones seems questionable. Head on over to /r/RussiaUkraineWar2022 and you can see first person video of kamikaze drones being flown into hapless Russians on the regular. These are quadcopters with a high explosive or anti-armor round zip tied to it. They get directly into the entrance of dugouts or directly into the back of a speeding truck full of troops. It seems to me the ultimate in precision munitions. Warheads literally on foreheads. What's more it seems very difficult to defend against. There's the "anti drone rifle" that's basically a jammer on an assault rifle chassis, but the armies of today need widespread anti-drone jamming over huge areas, not point defense.
- rainworld 3y ago
  hapless Russians Or, you know, hapless Ukrainians. Ukrainians may have been quicker to innovate in this area but that was a long time ago.
  - nvy 3y ago
    >Or, you know, hapless Ukrainians. Ukrainians may have been quicker to innovate in this area but that was a long time ago. What's your point?
    - chrisco255 3y ago
      Both sides use the drones. It's not a strategic advantage.
      - rainworld 3y ago
        Indeed. There’s a pervasive social media-fuelled notion of superiority in this area that does not reflect reality. It hardly gets more one-sided than /r/RussiaUkraineWar2022.
        nvy 3y ago
        I don't think I suggested the Ukrainians have superiority at all. If anything the fact that the Russians, despite their staggering incompetence, can employ drones effectively suggests that this new weapon system is an even more significant threat. As for my choice of subreddit, I'm well aware that it's biased. But I'd rather watch Russian occupiers get killed than Ukrainians fighting for their right to exist.
        rainworld 3y ago
        despite their staggering incompetence Easy on the hubris.
        nvy 3y ago
        Your precious Russia went from "we'll take Kyiv in 3 days" to, more than a year later, still being unable to achieve air superiority and fielding T-55 museum pieces as its soldiers eat moldy rations. That is complete and utter incompetence from what everyone thought was a major global power.
      - _kbh_ 3y ago
        > Both sides use the drones. It's not a strategic advantage. It may not be, but only one side is using them to inflict damage that is upwards of 100M+ USD at a time (on occasion). The Russian use of drones appears to be less effective then the Ukrainian use for whatever reason. Its crazy that a 100k drone can destroy planes that are worth tens of millions of dollars that kind of price difference will surely change some ways that wars are fought.
  - deeviant 3y ago
    What exact point are you trying to make? Why do you say the innovation was a long time ago? Drone warfare, on both sides, is literally evolving before our very eyes on daily basis. All the words militaries are taking extensive notes and it's pretty obvious the small scale drones are the future of warfare, or at least the ability to deal with them.
- ThrowawayR2 3y ago
  -brrt- Drone swarm, what drone swarm? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 And this is simply the first iteration of such systems. Drones are slow (slower than WW2 aircraft), short ranged, and not particularly stealthy. Improving any of those aspects raises the price significantly, defeating the point of cheap drones. They are a threat but not as magical as some seem to imagine.
  - rcme 3y ago
    But they’re so cheap that you can overrun your opponents defense. Who cares if they’re slow? You can shoot down any individual drone, but you can’t shoot them all down.
    - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
      Cheaper than a bullet? Seems unlikely. And if the attacker's drone swarm is that implausibly cheap, then the defender just puts up their own implausibly cheap defensive drone swarm to counter them. Checkmate.
      - rcme 3y ago
        How can you take down a drone with a single bullet? It’s not trivially easy to shoot them down. Also, a “defensive” drone swarm would need more advanced tracking and targeting capabilities, so it would be more expensive. Look at Israel’s Iron Dome. A single interception costs $100,000-$150,000. The rockets being intercepted cost less than $1,000. If Israel was more evenly matched, it would be cost prohibitive to intercept all of the rockets.
        aoki 3y ago
        The US just announced that it is buying off-the-shelf anti-drone systems for Ukraine that operate chain guns in single-shot mode. Drones are slow so they can use VT rounds instead of the CIWS spray-and-track method. https://eos-aus.com/defence/counter-drone-systems/slinger/ https://eos-aus.com/defence/counter-drone-systems/slinger/
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Well, large area jamming is kind of a solved problem. But then, you'll need to protect the jammers, and that's an arms race. If nobody is developing large area jammers and autonomous anti-jammer drones on that war, it would be from lack of perceived benefit, because neither is a ground braking engineering project.
  - tguvot 3y ago
    russians have large area jammers. the problem that it jams their own stuff. they also fly drone with some jammers and sdrs in order to detect presence of other drones also, i saw some clip, Ukrainians are working on automated "final approach/chase" mode for drones.
    - Gud 3y ago
      A competent military would not jam their own drones. It would be possible to synchronize the required frequency hopping to allow the encrypted communication to the drone.
      - tguvot 3y ago
        units that manage large jammers afraid to stay near front line. so they usually positioned somewhat behind and jam the hell out of everything, including their own radio communications and drones. "would be possible" implies that there is some kind of coordination. in reality most of russian drones on frontline are diy as well. for Ukrainians when jamming stops it's a tale sign that russians are going to attack
        Gud 3y ago
        I understand how it works for the Russians, but we are discussing the US military and their capabilities which is far ahead of what the Russians are capable of.
- tastyfreeze 3y ago
  A shotgun is pretty effective at downing a drone. But, that requires seeing it coming before it is inside.
  - thrill 3y ago
    I'll see your five shotgun shells and raise you six drones.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - euroderf 3y ago
      Unaffordable at the margin, and impractical, for the offense.
- hodgesrm 3y ago
  > What's more it seems very difficult to defend against. Perhaps a better word than "difficult" is "expensive." If drones are effective modern armies have no choice about defending against them. (Unless they want to lose.)
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
throw73848 3y ago
Look into loitering munition. Drone can stay up for hours, and if it recognizes target (tank, truck...) it will attack it. Most scary is fully autonomous mode (no GPS, no remote control). For past mile it uses image recognition, and can not be jammed. Now imagine what this would do to aircraft carrier! Upper decks are very vulnerable! US has three problems when it comes to drones: 1) No cheap reliable air defense. It can not take down hundreds of thousands of attacking drones. Patriots are like $1M per rocket. 2) No cheap kamikaze drones with large explosive payload. Bayraktar is basically a cruise missile at 1/1000th cost. 3) No software for self autonomy, and electronic warfare resistance. US relies to much on GPS and satellite signals that can be jammed. Source: I follow russian telegram war channels.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tguvot 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam has entered chat room
- hodgesrm 3y ago
  Yet despite such advantages the war in Ukraine is effectively a stalemate at this moment. It looks to me as if mines have been a bigger factor current operations than drones. I'm not minimizing drones by any means but there are many causes and effects in war.
  - n4r9 3y ago
    It's excruciatingly slow, but there is movement, and the front-line defenses near Robotyne have recently been penetrated. I'm half-expecting some significant progress soon.
civilitty 3y ago
It’s too early to tell what role they’ll fill in a symmetric conflict because Russia is increasingly cut off from high tech supplies. The fact that consumer drone videos of Russians getting bombed are coming out means that most infantry units don’t even have basic SIGINT to detect enemy RF emissions. That’s table stakes for a modern well equipped military with cheap civilian equivalents (Software defined radios). The smaller drones don’t seem to have any sophisticated navigation and targeting yet (the fixed wing loitering munition drones seem to be more advanced though). Otherwise they’re no less useful than the drones the US has been using since Afghanistan, just scaled down in size, capability, and cost. The US and China are no doubt closely studying this conflict and evolving designs for both drones and counter measures since its obvious they’re a significant development in modern warfare that will be used in increasingly clever ways.
- tguvot 3y ago
  russians (and ukrainians) do you sdrs extensively to detect drones, communication and jamming equipment. for some values of extensively
n4r9 3y ago
I've been following the ISW blog on Ukraine quite closely. It really does seem like small, cheap, commercially available drones are increasingly widely used on both sides. They're used not just for direct strikes, but also reconnaissance and transporting supplies. They're more expendable and easier for teams on the ground to deploy. They typically can fly at lower altitudes and therefore are better at avoiding modern air defence systems. Also they're a more recent innovation, which typically means the enemy has fewer strategies already in place to defend against it.
- Trombone12 3y ago
  Drones aren't that new militarily speaking, and aren't particularly survivable against Russian EW systems: they're simply cheap enough that Ukraine can afford to replace the current rate of losses of about 10 000 UAVs per month (Meatgrinder: Russian Tactics in the Second Year of Its Invasion of Ukraine, p. iii)
  - n4r9 3y ago
    The OP was questioning whether small drones are proving particularly useful in the Ukraine war. As far as I can tell they definitely are. Their affordability is certainly part of the reason why. Another reason is that their size, speed and altitude make them more difficult for traditional air defense systems to counteract. > These drones are too small, slow, and low for jet fighters or anti-aircraft missiles to take out https://breakingdefense.com/2023/06/dumb-and-cheap-when-facing-electronic-warfare-in-ukraine-small-drones-quantity-is-quality/ https://breakingdefense.com/2023/06/dumb-and-cheap-when-faci... > We have developed small radars capable of detecting compact, low-speed targets, which is exactly what drones are. Traditional radars often fail to detect such targets due to their low-altitude flight, as they are primarily designed to intercept high-flying objects like airplanes and missiles. https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/08/13/russians-are-working-on-a-new-low-altitude-anti-drone-sensor/ https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/08/13/russians-are-workin...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dirtyid 3y ago
"Tiny" as in commercial with endurance measured in minutes / km have little roll to fill theatre as large as IndoPac in terms of peer battle. This article talking about numbers in the 1000s for entire program when UKR is losing like 10K commercial drones PER MONTH. When DoD say tiny, I'm guessing they mean fighter sized loyal wingman tier drones, with 1500km combat radius. Attritable platforms that cost 10s of millions where savings is mostly pilot over head. And operating those at scale involved is still very dependant on complex logistics vs delivering platters of DJI to grunts given 10 hours of training. Having enough shelters, hardened, distributed... base access, and basically entire support and logistics chain because you're still going to need a fuck load of mechanics to support order of magnitude more vehicles. Maybe cheaper per whatever unit of KPI they're measuring but still going to be remarkably expensive program. I don't think the idea is bad, but I think as solution for IndoPac (read China), this is a concept where PRC already and will continue to easily outscales US while having more flexible distributed basing options vs US access to partners in region. Really this is US following, and plugging gap while they figure out NGAD, B21, or other longer / stand off range delivery options AT SCALE over next decades as they net lose ability to bring fires into IndoPac/PRC near shore because it becomes increasingly unsurvivable for US carriers and air assets in region. Carriers because PRC ISR and missiles increasing/improving incredibly fast - much more than US can scale defense which is fundmentally limited by physical dimensions of ship hulls. Air because stealth workhorse F35 was designed for Europe, doesn't have range for IndoPac without vunerable tanking. Queue solution for distributed risks / soaking up missiles while maintaining capability. Only problem is PRC industrial bases can spam more missiles and more drones and better positioned to weather the attrition game.

nvy 3y ago

>but the efficacy of tiny drones seems questionable. Head on over to /r/RussiaUkraineWar2022 and you can see first person video of kamikaze drones being flown into hapless Russians on the regular. These are quadcopters with a high explosive or anti-armor round zip tied to it. They get directly into the entrance of dugouts or directly into the back of a speeding truck full of troops. It seems to me the ultimate in precision munitions. Warheads literally on foreheads. What's more it seems very difficult to defend against. There's the "anti drone rifle" that's basically a jammer on an assault rifle chassis, but the armies of today need widespread anti-drone jamming over huge areas, not point defense.

rainworld 3y ago
hapless Russians Or, you know, hapless Ukrainians. Ukrainians may have been quicker to innovate in this area but that was a long time ago.
- nvy 3y ago
  >Or, you know, hapless Ukrainians. Ukrainians may have been quicker to innovate in this area but that was a long time ago. What's your point?
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    Both sides use the drones. It's not a strategic advantage.
    - rainworld 3y ago
      Indeed. There’s a pervasive social media-fuelled notion of superiority in this area that does not reflect reality. It hardly gets more one-sided than /r/RussiaUkraineWar2022.
      - nvy 3y ago
        I don't think I suggested the Ukrainians have superiority at all. If anything the fact that the Russians, despite their staggering incompetence, can employ drones effectively suggests that this new weapon system is an even more significant threat. As for my choice of subreddit, I'm well aware that it's biased. But I'd rather watch Russian occupiers get killed than Ukrainians fighting for their right to exist.
        rainworld 3y ago
        despite their staggering incompetence Easy on the hubris.
        nvy 3y ago
        Your precious Russia went from "we'll take Kyiv in 3 days" to, more than a year later, still being unable to achieve air superiority and fielding T-55 museum pieces as its soldiers eat moldy rations. That is complete and utter incompetence from what everyone thought was a major global power.
    - _kbh_ 3y ago
      > Both sides use the drones. It's not a strategic advantage. It may not be, but only one side is using them to inflict damage that is upwards of 100M+ USD at a time (on occasion). The Russian use of drones appears to be less effective then the Ukrainian use for whatever reason. Its crazy that a 100k drone can destroy planes that are worth tens of millions of dollars that kind of price difference will surely change some ways that wars are fought.
- deeviant 3y ago
  What exact point are you trying to make? Why do you say the innovation was a long time ago? Drone warfare, on both sides, is literally evolving before our very eyes on daily basis. All the words militaries are taking extensive notes and it's pretty obvious the small scale drones are the future of warfare, or at least the ability to deal with them.
ThrowawayR2 3y ago
-brrt- Drone swarm, what drone swarm? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5_F4_Eod8 And this is simply the first iteration of such systems. Drones are slow (slower than WW2 aircraft), short ranged, and not particularly stealthy. Improving any of those aspects raises the price significantly, defeating the point of cheap drones. They are a threat but not as magical as some seem to imagine.
- rcme 3y ago
  But they’re so cheap that you can overrun your opponents defense. Who cares if they’re slow? You can shoot down any individual drone, but you can’t shoot them all down.
  - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
    Cheaper than a bullet? Seems unlikely. And if the attacker's drone swarm is that implausibly cheap, then the defender just puts up their own implausibly cheap defensive drone swarm to counter them. Checkmate.
    - rcme 3y ago
      How can you take down a drone with a single bullet? It’s not trivially easy to shoot them down. Also, a “defensive” drone swarm would need more advanced tracking and targeting capabilities, so it would be more expensive. Look at Israel’s Iron Dome. A single interception costs $100,000-$150,000. The rockets being intercepted cost less than $1,000. If Israel was more evenly matched, it would be cost prohibitive to intercept all of the rockets.
      - aoki 3y ago
        The US just announced that it is buying off-the-shelf anti-drone systems for Ukraine that operate chain guns in single-shot mode. Drones are slow so they can use VT rounds instead of the CIWS spray-and-track method. https://eos-aus.com/defence/counter-drone-systems/slinger/ https://eos-aus.com/defence/counter-drone-systems/slinger/
marcosdumay 3y ago
Well, large area jamming is kind of a solved problem. But then, you'll need to protect the jammers, and that's an arms race. If nobody is developing large area jammers and autonomous anti-jammer drones on that war, it would be from lack of perceived benefit, because neither is a ground braking engineering project.
- tguvot 3y ago
  russians have large area jammers. the problem that it jams their own stuff. they also fly drone with some jammers and sdrs in order to detect presence of other drones also, i saw some clip, Ukrainians are working on automated "final approach/chase" mode for drones.
  - Gud 3y ago
    A competent military would not jam their own drones. It would be possible to synchronize the required frequency hopping to allow the encrypted communication to the drone.
    - tguvot 3y ago
      units that manage large jammers afraid to stay near front line. so they usually positioned somewhat behind and jam the hell out of everything, including their own radio communications and drones. "would be possible" implies that there is some kind of coordination. in reality most of russian drones on frontline are diy as well. for Ukrainians when jamming stops it's a tale sign that russians are going to attack
      - Gud 3y ago
        I understand how it works for the Russians, but we are discussing the US military and their capabilities which is far ahead of what the Russians are capable of.
tastyfreeze 3y ago
A shotgun is pretty effective at downing a drone. But, that requires seeing it coming before it is inside.
- thrill 3y ago
  I'll see your five shotgun shells and raise you six drones.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - euroderf 3y ago
    Unaffordable at the margin, and impractical, for the offense.
hodgesrm 3y ago
> What's more it seems very difficult to defend against. Perhaps a better word than "difficult" is "expensive." If drones are effective modern armies have no choice about defending against them. (Unless they want to lose.)

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

throw73848 3y ago

Look into loitering munition. Drone can stay up for hours, and if it recognizes target (tank, truck...) it will attack it. Most scary is fully autonomous mode (no GPS, no remote control). For past mile it uses image recognition, and can not be jammed. Now imagine what this would do to aircraft carrier! Upper decks are very vulnerable! US has three problems when it comes to drones: 1) No cheap reliable air defense. It can not take down hundreds of thousands of attacking drones. Patriots are like $1M per rocket. 2) No cheap kamikaze drones with large explosive payload. Bayraktar is basically a cruise missile at 1/1000th cost. 3) No software for self autonomy, and electronic warfare resistance. US relies to much on GPS and satellite signals that can be jammed. Source: I follow russian telegram war channels.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tguvot 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Beam has entered chat room
hodgesrm 3y ago
Yet despite such advantages the war in Ukraine is effectively a stalemate at this moment. It looks to me as if mines have been a bigger factor current operations than drones. I'm not minimizing drones by any means but there are many causes and effects in war.
- n4r9 3y ago
  It's excruciatingly slow, but there is movement, and the front-line defenses near Robotyne have recently been penetrated. I'm half-expecting some significant progress soon.

civilitty 3y ago

It’s too early to tell what role they’ll fill in a symmetric conflict because Russia is increasingly cut off from high tech supplies. The fact that consumer drone videos of Russians getting bombed are coming out means that most infantry units don’t even have basic SIGINT to detect enemy RF emissions. That’s table stakes for a modern well equipped military with cheap civilian equivalents (Software defined radios). The smaller drones don’t seem to have any sophisticated navigation and targeting yet (the fixed wing loitering munition drones seem to be more advanced though). Otherwise they’re no less useful than the drones the US has been using since Afghanistan, just scaled down in size, capability, and cost. The US and China are no doubt closely studying this conflict and evolving designs for both drones and counter measures since its obvious they’re a significant development in modern warfare that will be used in increasingly clever ways.

tguvot 3y ago
russians (and ukrainians) do you sdrs extensively to detect drones, communication and jamming equipment. for some values of extensively

n4r9 3y ago

I've been following the ISW blog on Ukraine quite closely. It really does seem like small, cheap, commercially available drones are increasingly widely used on both sides. They're used not just for direct strikes, but also reconnaissance and transporting supplies. They're more expendable and easier for teams on the ground to deploy. They typically can fly at lower altitudes and therefore are better at avoiding modern air defence systems. Also they're a more recent innovation, which typically means the enemy has fewer strategies already in place to defend against it.

Trombone12 3y ago
Drones aren't that new militarily speaking, and aren't particularly survivable against Russian EW systems: they're simply cheap enough that Ukraine can afford to replace the current rate of losses of about 10 000 UAVs per month (Meatgrinder: Russian Tactics in the Second Year of Its Invasion of Ukraine, p. iii)
- n4r9 3y ago
  The OP was questioning whether small drones are proving particularly useful in the Ukraine war. As far as I can tell they definitely are. Their affordability is certainly part of the reason why. Another reason is that their size, speed and altitude make them more difficult for traditional air defense systems to counteract. > These drones are too small, slow, and low for jet fighters or anti-aircraft missiles to take out https://breakingdefense.com/2023/06/dumb-and-cheap-when-facing-electronic-warfare-in-ukraine-small-drones-quantity-is-quality/ https://breakingdefense.com/2023/06/dumb-and-cheap-when-faci... > We have developed small radars capable of detecting compact, low-speed targets, which is exactly what drones are. Traditional radars often fail to detect such targets due to their low-altitude flight, as they are primarily designed to intercept high-flying objects like airplanes and missiles. https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/08/13/russians-are-working-on-a-new-low-altitude-anti-drone-sensor/ https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/08/13/russians-are-workin...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dirtyid 3y ago

"Tiny" as in commercial with endurance measured in minutes / km have little roll to fill theatre as large as IndoPac in terms of peer battle. This article talking about numbers in the 1000s for entire program when UKR is losing like 10K commercial drones PER MONTH. When DoD say tiny, I'm guessing they mean fighter sized loyal wingman tier drones, with 1500km combat radius. Attritable platforms that cost 10s of millions where savings is mostly pilot over head. And operating those at scale involved is still very dependant on complex logistics vs delivering platters of DJI to grunts given 10 hours of training. Having enough shelters, hardened, distributed... base access, and basically entire support and logistics chain because you're still going to need a fuck load of mechanics to support order of magnitude more vehicles. Maybe cheaper per whatever unit of KPI they're measuring but still going to be remarkably expensive program. I don't think the idea is bad, but I think as solution for IndoPac (read China), this is a concept where PRC already and will continue to easily outscales US while having more flexible distributed basing options vs US access to partners in region. Really this is US following, and plugging gap while they figure out NGAD, B21, or other longer / stand off range delivery options AT SCALE over next decades as they net lose ability to bring fires into IndoPac/PRC near shore because it becomes increasingly unsurvivable for US carriers and air assets in region. Carriers because PRC ISR and missiles increasing/improving incredibly fast - much more than US can scale defense which is fundmentally limited by physical dimensions of ship hulls. Air because stealth workhorse F35 was designed for Europe, doesn't have range for IndoPac without vunerable tanking. Queue solution for distributed risks / soaking up missiles while maintaining capability. Only problem is PRC industrial bases can spam more missiles and more drones and better positioned to weather the attrition game.