4 ms·

Pentagon stares down "drone swarm" threat

19 points by notamy 3y ago

peutetre 3y ago
Laser air defense systems will help: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/13/europe/britain-air-defense-laser-dragonfire-intl-hnk-ml/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/13/europe/britain-air-defens...
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  Maybe. Drones are small and hard to detect/target if they fly low. Radar systems have problems when there is a reflector (ground/water) behind the target (hence the term "below the radar"). Also, lasers have problems with certain atmospheric conditions such as rain or fog.
  - Log_out_ 3y ago
    And you can combine threats.. Rocket deployed drones. Who cares if the mlrs is dumb if the final mile is smart. Himars at the price of nye wars.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jqpabc123 3y ago
In the near future, large battleships will become known as "high value targets".
- bell-cot 3y ago
  Um...large battleships have been known as "rusting old museum ships" for the past 1/3 of a century. Any reason why an enemy might care about them?
  - jqpabc123 3y ago
    Any reason why an enemy might care about them? Battleships and carriers have a lot of firepower that needs to be neutralized at the start of any war. This will probably take a few hours in any major conflict.
    - Log_out_ 3y ago
      ? Drones submarine ala ukraine in mineconfiguration buried in the silt, you don't even need a navy for that..
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      If it was an operational warship, then a battleship would have a lot of firepower...the great majority of it very short-range, by current standards. The last time that any battleship was returned to active service, from merely being in reserve, doing that required more than 1 1/2 very expensive years of shipyard work. Now, the battleships have been left rusting for almost 3X as long as they were before that re-activation in the 1980's.
      - jqpabc123 3y ago
        I intended "battleship" in a generic manner to include the carriers which are currently being built.
        bell-cot 3y ago
        Suggestion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warship Or, for large and highly valuable warships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ship
- reaperman 3y ago
  I don't think there is even a single "battleship" deployed today, the last ones were decommissioned about 30 years ago.[0] By size, our largest naval combat ships are, of course, aircraft carriers (100,000t). Followed by amphibious assault ships (45,000t) and dock landing ships (16,000t). Then the fucking Zumwalt (16,000t), missile cruisers (9,600t), missile destroyers (8-10,000t), missile frigates (7,300t), and littoral combat ships (3-4,000t). For now they're all capable of defending small drone swarms (proven up to 14 drones) just fine using their CIWS.[1] But they may need some weapon-systems upgrades to defend against thousands of drones. The CIWS currently has a minimum burst size of 60 rounds, so if just 60 rounds is enough to reliably take out a drone, then each CIWS has enough ammo to shoot down 25 drones. Typically there are 2 Phalanx on each ship, so they could shoot down up to 50 drones each, except the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship which has 3 Phalanx (max 75 drones) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers which have 3-4 phalanx (max 100 drones). The expeditionary mobile bases (90-100,000t) do not have CIWS but generally aren't supposed to operate in heavily contested areas, and aren't considered "combat ships". 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#End_of_the_battleship_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#End_of_the_battlesh... 1: https://warriormaven.com/sea/how-did-a-us-navy-warship-destroy-a-houth-fired-14-drone-attack-swarm https://warriormaven.com/sea/how-did-a-us-navy-warship-destr...
bell-cot 3y ago
Opening para: > Swarms of low-cost drones powered by AI — perhaps hundreds of them at the same time — could soon pose an existential threat to America's hulking war machinery. Closing para: > The bottom line: In the future, the "winning side will be the one that's developed the AI-based decision-making that can outpace their adversary," Stavridis and Ackerman write. Reaction - Hey, Axios - could you offer an intelligent-reader's version of your article, which omits the SEO-stuffing with "AI" keywords? The ability of many cheap units to swarm and defeat one expensive one was really old news back in the age when horse-drawn chariots were bleeding-edge military tech. And the only place that a decent drone swarm actually needs AI is in its marketing BS.
- Log_out_ 3y ago
  The problem is also that tech advances render old platforms obsolete fast. The lecture of the day is that loose coupling modularity is the right strategy all along. Have a ship you can stow vehicles and transport containers on. Have systems that are add hoc recombineable to create fire breaks against new threats. The old artisanal approach is to little to late.
johnea 3y ago
At a much more in-your-backyard instance of this: the local PD just got a giant infusion of cash from the city council for new helicopters to wake us up with at 3am. Apparently they haven't heard about drones either...
wbshaw 3y ago
This was one of my favorite technologies in Andromeda.

19 points by notamy 3y ago

Laser air defense systems will help: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/13/europe/britain-air-defense-laser-dragonfire-intl-hnk-ml/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/13/europe/britain-air-defens...

jqpabc123 3y ago
Maybe. Drones are small and hard to detect/target if they fly low. Radar systems have problems when there is a reflector (ground/water) behind the target (hence the term "below the radar"). Also, lasers have problems with certain atmospheric conditions such as rain or fog.
- Log_out_ 3y ago
  And you can combine threats.. Rocket deployed drones. Who cares if the mlrs is dumb if the final mile is smart. Himars at the price of nye wars.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jqpabc123 3y ago

In the near future, large battleships will become known as "high value targets".

bell-cot 3y ago
Um...large battleships have been known as "rusting old museum ships" for the past 1/3 of a century. Any reason why an enemy might care about them?
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  Any reason why an enemy might care about them? Battleships and carriers have a lot of firepower that needs to be neutralized at the start of any war. This will probably take a few hours in any major conflict.
  - Log_out_ 3y ago
    ? Drones submarine ala ukraine in mineconfiguration buried in the silt, you don't even need a navy for that..
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    If it was an operational warship, then a battleship would have a lot of firepower...the great majority of it very short-range, by current standards. The last time that any battleship was returned to active service, from merely being in reserve, doing that required more than 1 1/2 very expensive years of shipyard work. Now, the battleships have been left rusting for almost 3X as long as they were before that re-activation in the 1980's.
    - jqpabc123 3y ago
      I intended "battleship" in a generic manner to include the carriers which are currently being built.
      - bell-cot 3y ago
        Suggestion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warship Or, for large and highly valuable warships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_ship
reaperman 3y ago
I don't think there is even a single "battleship" deployed today, the last ones were decommissioned about 30 years ago.[0] By size, our largest naval combat ships are, of course, aircraft carriers (100,000t). Followed by amphibious assault ships (45,000t) and dock landing ships (16,000t). Then the fucking Zumwalt (16,000t), missile cruisers (9,600t), missile destroyers (8-10,000t), missile frigates (7,300t), and littoral combat ships (3-4,000t). For now they're all capable of defending small drone swarms (proven up to 14 drones) just fine using their CIWS.[1] But they may need some weapon-systems upgrades to defend against thousands of drones. The CIWS currently has a minimum burst size of 60 rounds, so if just 60 rounds is enough to reliably take out a drone, then each CIWS has enough ammo to shoot down 25 drones. Typically there are 2 Phalanx on each ship, so they could shoot down up to 50 drones each, except the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship which has 3 Phalanx (max 75 drones) and the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers which have 3-4 phalanx (max 100 drones). The expeditionary mobile bases (90-100,000t) do not have CIWS but generally aren't supposed to operate in heavily contested areas, and aren't considered "combat ships". 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#End_of_the_battleship_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship#End_of_the_battlesh... 1: https://warriormaven.com/sea/how-did-a-us-navy-warship-destroy-a-houth-fired-14-drone-attack-swarm https://warriormaven.com/sea/how-did-a-us-navy-warship-destr...

bell-cot 3y ago

Opening para: > Swarms of low-cost drones powered by AI — perhaps hundreds of them at the same time — could soon pose an existential threat to America's hulking war machinery. Closing para: > The bottom line: In the future, the "winning side will be the one that's developed the AI-based decision-making that can outpace their adversary," Stavridis and Ackerman write. Reaction - Hey, Axios - could you offer an intelligent-reader's version of your article, which omits the SEO-stuffing with "AI" keywords? The ability of many cheap units to swarm and defeat one expensive one was really old news back in the age when horse-drawn chariots were bleeding-edge military tech. And the only place that a decent drone swarm actually needs AI is in its marketing BS.

Log_out_ 3y ago
The problem is also that tech advances render old platforms obsolete fast. The lecture of the day is that loose coupling modularity is the right strategy all along. Have a ship you can stow vehicles and transport containers on. Have systems that are add hoc recombineable to create fire breaks against new threats. The old artisanal approach is to little to late.

johnea 3y ago

At a much more in-your-backyard instance of this: the local PD just got a giant infusion of cash from the city council for new helicopters to wake us up with at 3am. Apparently they haven't heard about drones either...

wbshaw 3y ago

This was one of my favorite technologies in Andromeda.