4 ms·

Stealth planes are great for taking out air defense. Good luck defending your airspace with just drones.

by BartjeD 3y ago

lukan 3y ago
With enough drones in the air, good luck keeping that plane in stealth mode.
- foldr 3y ago
  You might catch a glimpse of it, but you won't be able to track it, which is what you need to do to shoot it down.
  - lukan 3y ago
    Depends what capabilities the drones have. And having a glimpse is already a confirmed sighting, then you can start a focused search with traditional groundbased radar - the stealth planes are not invisible, if you know something is there, you have a way better chance of tracking it. And when you have some other drones in the flightpath, you might get more than a glimpse and finally a lock. Or your own fighter jets. The idea of a stealth plane is, that you don't spot them at all, once spotted, their survival rate drops a lot.
    - foldr 3y ago
      >if you know something is there, you have a way better chance of tracking it. Fighter jets can maneuver. For a successful missile launch you need a good enough lock to track the plane precisely as it moves. Just knowing roughly where the plane was a few minutes ago doesn't help all that much when it comes to killing it.
      - lukan 3y ago
        But your fighter jets can know where to look. Supported by all your drones you can send in the flight path. One drone close enough with a heat seeking missile and that was it. And advanced radar probably also can get a lock, if the operators know something is there.
        foldr 3y ago
        To keep eyes (or IRSTs) on a maneuvering stealth jet you're either going to need insane numbers of drones or drones that have similar performance to the jet you're tracking. The sky is a big place. Either way, if this kind of thing works at all, it's not going to work out any cheaper than the existing options. Also, launch parameters for missiles are important. A missile fired from a drone flying at low subsonic speeds has far less energy, and is thus far less of a threat.
        lukan 3y ago
        "A missile fired from a drone flying at low subsonic speeds has far less energy, and is thus far less of a threat." The F35 only has a top speed of Mach 1,6 (F16 had Mach 2). And a ground to surface missile also starts at V0 = 0 so less of a threat maybe, but still a great threat. The defense of a stealth jet is not speed, but stealth. When a missile is fired at it, it might survive, but the idea is that there never will be a missile fired in the first place. Drones could negate that.
        foldr 3y ago
        A drone can’t carry a missile as big as a typical SAM.
        lukan 3y ago
        Not a cheap quadcopter. But there are bigger ones.
        foldr 3y ago
        SAMs are much bigger than anything a drone or fighter jet can launch. Here's one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system This missile weighs about 10x as much as an AMRAAM, for example. That's how it has enough propellant to launch from the ground and still have enough energy to pose a significant threat.
NickC25 3y ago
Power in numbers. Good luck defending your air defenses if your opposition can throw hundreds or thousands of drones at you, all of which can travel faster than Mach 10.
- kcb 3y ago
  Oh yea? What if I build a billion planes. Then what?
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > Good luck defending your air defenses if your opposition can throw hundreds or thousands of drones at you, all of which can travel faster than Mach 10. We used to just call those cruise missiles. I guess everything needs to just be called a drone now.
- ponector 3y ago
  Why mach 10? It is really expensive. Instead is better to get cheap slow kamikaze drones, which are 10x times cheaper to produce than to shoot down.
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
Sure. And a few armed powerboats couldn’t defeat a US carrier group. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
- lukan 3y ago
  Well, it was a bit more than that, but it is still hilarious, how they changed everything after the initial desaster, so that the US side would still win: "After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory." The alternative would have been uncomfortable after all.
  - sillywalk 3y ago
    That was so sad. The whole point of the exercise was have been to validate whether Networked Warfare doctrine "worked". But, aside from refloating the navy, some of the restrictions like the Red OPFOR wasn't allowed to shoot down V-22s or C-130s while they were invading, also, "The white cell also directed the chief of staff that the red team had to position its air defense assets out in the open so the blue forces could easily destroy them. Even after some were not destroyed, the red team was forbidden to fire upon blue forces as they conducted a live airborne drop. Van Riper asked the white cell if his forces could at least deploy the chemical weapons that he possessed, but he was again denied."[0] [0] https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/ https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r...
  - ranger207 3y ago
    Large scale exercises like that are only ever half wargames. You can do wargames all day long in Newport, but it's a little harder to get a few dozen boats and a few thousand sailors together to practice their normal operations. If you do have an exercise and the OPFOR manages to win, then it switches from half wargame half training exercise to full training exercise, or switches to a different scenario. "Ok, we lost that scenario, we'll go home and come up with a different strategy later. While everyone's here, how about let's try this different scenario instead? no, we don't want to deal with chemical weapons right now, we need work on dealing with air defenses and adding in WMDs would complicate things too much right now"
ponector 3y ago
Not really. You know what is good for taking down air defense? Long range drones. Instead of buying one stealth plane, army can buy 5000+ combat drones. And you know who has 5000+ air defense rockets ready to engage? No one!
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Air defense rockets came about because they were an improvement on crew controlled flak cannons. Now adays though it would be pretty trivial to create a flak autocannon that uses machine learning to absolutely mow down clouds of drones in a few moments.
  - ponector 3y ago
    Only if flak cannon is there. How far can it engage? 3km? How many you need to cover one airfield? Fuel storage? Ammo depot? How many airfield there are? Multiply and you need a hundred billion USD of investment. And a lot of ammo which is not cheap either. Phalanx auto cannon fire rate is 3000+ USD per second.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Theres investment on either side, one to put up the defenses another to field the drones. US spending figures are misleading because they also serve as domestic job and training programs, a different story compared to a military that has to go to the global market for their kit.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  That's old hat. A modern strike package uses decoys to overwhelm radar and only needs to deploy a fraction of them as live missiles. The TALD/MALD is a recent example of this, used as a JSOW decoy when attacking high-capability SEAD targets. > And you know who has 5000+ air defense rockets ready to engage? Probably most modern militaries with advanced ballistic point defense like the Phalanx CIWS. Mass-produced drones are slow, large, and usually don't carry an effective enough payload to disable your target. A swarm could prove effective, but usually a single supersonic cruise missile is enough to put any modern target in the "it's a gamble" territory of interception. The materiel advantage of multiple drones is vastly outweighed by the capabilities of a well-placed munition.
sillywalk 3y ago
Or drones could take out your stealth planes on the ground.

Stealth planes are great for taking out air defense. Good luck defending your airspace with just drones.

lukan 3y ago

With enough drones in the air, good luck keeping that plane in stealth mode.

foldr 3y ago
You might catch a glimpse of it, but you won't be able to track it, which is what you need to do to shoot it down.
- lukan 3y ago
  Depends what capabilities the drones have. And having a glimpse is already a confirmed sighting, then you can start a focused search with traditional groundbased radar - the stealth planes are not invisible, if you know something is there, you have a way better chance of tracking it. And when you have some other drones in the flightpath, you might get more than a glimpse and finally a lock. Or your own fighter jets. The idea of a stealth plane is, that you don't spot them at all, once spotted, their survival rate drops a lot.
  - foldr 3y ago
    >if you know something is there, you have a way better chance of tracking it. Fighter jets can maneuver. For a successful missile launch you need a good enough lock to track the plane precisely as it moves. Just knowing roughly where the plane was a few minutes ago doesn't help all that much when it comes to killing it.
    - lukan 3y ago
      But your fighter jets can know where to look. Supported by all your drones you can send in the flight path. One drone close enough with a heat seeking missile and that was it. And advanced radar probably also can get a lock, if the operators know something is there.
      - foldr 3y ago
        To keep eyes (or IRSTs) on a maneuvering stealth jet you're either going to need insane numbers of drones or drones that have similar performance to the jet you're tracking. The sky is a big place. Either way, if this kind of thing works at all, it's not going to work out any cheaper than the existing options. Also, launch parameters for missiles are important. A missile fired from a drone flying at low subsonic speeds has far less energy, and is thus far less of a threat.
        lukan 3y ago
        "A missile fired from a drone flying at low subsonic speeds has far less energy, and is thus far less of a threat." The F35 only has a top speed of Mach 1,6 (F16 had Mach 2). And a ground to surface missile also starts at V0 = 0 so less of a threat maybe, but still a great threat. The defense of a stealth jet is not speed, but stealth. When a missile is fired at it, it might survive, but the idea is that there never will be a missile fired in the first place. Drones could negate that.
        foldr 3y ago
        A drone can’t carry a missile as big as a typical SAM.
        lukan 3y ago
        Not a cheap quadcopter. But there are bigger ones.
        foldr 3y ago
        SAMs are much bigger than anything a drone or fighter jet can launch. Here's one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system This missile weighs about 10x as much as an AMRAAM, for example. That's how it has enough propellant to launch from the ground and still have enough energy to pose a significant threat.

NickC25 3y ago

Power in numbers. Good luck defending your air defenses if your opposition can throw hundreds or thousands of drones at you, all of which can travel faster than Mach 10.

kcb 3y ago
Oh yea? What if I build a billion planes. Then what?
giantrobot 3y ago
> Good luck defending your air defenses if your opposition can throw hundreds or thousands of drones at you, all of which can travel faster than Mach 10. We used to just call those cruise missiles. I guess everything needs to just be called a drone now.
ponector 3y ago
Why mach 10? It is really expensive. Instead is better to get cheap slow kamikaze drones, which are 10x times cheaper to produce than to shoot down.

lowbloodsugar 3y ago

Sure. And a few armed powerboats couldn’t defeat a US carrier group. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

lukan 3y ago
Well, it was a bit more than that, but it is still hilarious, how they changed everything after the initial desaster, so that the US side would still win: "After the war game was restarted, its participants were forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory." The alternative would have been uncomfortable after all.
- sillywalk 3y ago
  That was so sad. The whole point of the exercise was have been to validate whether Networked Warfare doctrine "worked". But, aside from refloating the navy, some of the restrictions like the Red OPFOR wasn't allowed to shoot down V-22s or C-130s while they were invading, also, "The white cell also directed the chief of staff that the red team had to position its air defense assets out in the open so the blue forces could easily destroy them. Even after some were not destroyed, the red team was forbidden to fire upon blue forces as they conducted a live airborne drop. Van Riper asked the white cell if his forces could at least deploy the chemical weapons that he possessed, but he was again denied."[0] [0] https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/ https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r...
- ranger207 3y ago
  Large scale exercises like that are only ever half wargames. You can do wargames all day long in Newport, but it's a little harder to get a few dozen boats and a few thousand sailors together to practice their normal operations. If you do have an exercise and the OPFOR manages to win, then it switches from half wargame half training exercise to full training exercise, or switches to a different scenario. "Ok, we lost that scenario, we'll go home and come up with a different strategy later. While everyone's here, how about let's try this different scenario instead? no, we don't want to deal with chemical weapons right now, we need work on dealing with air defenses and adding in WMDs would complicate things too much right now"

ponector 3y ago

Not really. You know what is good for taking down air defense? Long range drones. Instead of buying one stealth plane, army can buy 5000+ combat drones. And you know who has 5000+ air defense rockets ready to engage? No one!

kjkjadksj 3y ago
Air defense rockets came about because they were an improvement on crew controlled flak cannons. Now adays though it would be pretty trivial to create a flak autocannon that uses machine learning to absolutely mow down clouds of drones in a few moments.
- ponector 3y ago
  Only if flak cannon is there. How far can it engage? 3km? How many you need to cover one airfield? Fuel storage? Ammo depot? How many airfield there are? Multiply and you need a hundred billion USD of investment. And a lot of ammo which is not cheap either. Phalanx auto cannon fire rate is 3000+ USD per second.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Theres investment on either side, one to put up the defenses another to field the drones. US spending figures are misleading because they also serve as domestic job and training programs, a different story compared to a military that has to go to the global market for their kit.
smoldesu 3y ago
That's old hat. A modern strike package uses decoys to overwhelm radar and only needs to deploy a fraction of them as live missiles. The TALD/MALD is a recent example of this, used as a JSOW decoy when attacking high-capability SEAD targets. > And you know who has 5000+ air defense rockets ready to engage? Probably most modern militaries with advanced ballistic point defense like the Phalanx CIWS. Mass-produced drones are slow, large, and usually don't carry an effective enough payload to disable your target. A swarm could prove effective, but usually a single supersonic cruise missile is enough to put any modern target in the "it's a gamble" territory of interception. The materiel advantage of multiple drones is vastly outweighed by the capabilities of a well-placed munition.

sillywalk 3y ago

Or drones could take out your stealth planes on the ground.