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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 e

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.

ponector 3y ago
You are right that cheap drones are slow. But they can destroy aircrafts or fuel storage for them or SAM missile launcher. Cheap (~50k USD) are disabling oil refineries in Russia right now causing losses of a more than a hundred million USD. Phalanx could cover 3km range meaning you need at least 6 for a single air field. And it has ammo for 30 seconds only. How many drones it can kill? 10? 30? And drone #50 will hit target. And for some reason navy is not waiting for Phalanx to engage in the last second before impact, they use expensive rockets. Modern army has no real answer to the attack of 100+ drones at a time.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  They really cannot. Both SAM sites and CIWs are built for this job, and drones simply aren't. A drone isn't as fast as a cruise missile or as maneuverable as a jet. Most of them boast a radio signature bigger than an F-35 and struggle to outrun a hatchback while delivering a payload smaller than an AIM-9. They cannot be effectively delivered at standoff range, and fail to damage anything but the most vulnerable assets. Swarm warfare isn't irrelevant, but propeller-driven subsonic aircraft usually end up as cannon fodder no matter how many you throw into controlled airspace.
  - maxglute 3y ago
    Currently cannot. At end of the day interceptors and CIWS are still constrained by magazine depth. Ghetto 10-50k propellor drones with 2000km+ theatre range are (basically stand off capabilities) now are just (very) poverty mans subsonic TLAMs, which themselves are weaponeered in strike packages to account for interception, ecm, duds etc. But they're still sent in numbers designed to overwhelm finite local defense. Ground reality right now is most US bases can get away with CIWS and interceptors because current garbage cheap propellor drones (Iran) are limited to dumb bulk drone attacks. But once you add some autonomous intelligence and coordinated swarm ability, a swarm of cheap propellor drone that can do basic evasion can make counter drone warfare unsustainably inefficient. A CIWS with 1500 rounds has 25-30 burst, a remotely reactive propellor drone that bleeds 3 bursts instead of 1, or a longer burst because it's no longer on a predictable trajectory and all of sudden base defense scaled to engage 200 targets goes dry engaging 50. Maybe INS and software enables limitted onboard compute to hug terrain lower, navigate in low covered approachces etc. Now an adversary who can't coordinate a 300 drone attack, can manage to pierce defense with 100. Optmize even more when software improves onboard target recognition and that tiny payload goes strait for vunerable assets. Or if base defense destroyed, it could loiter (because propeller) and lock down base for hours while defenders hide in hardened shelters. Or just glide itself into structures and sit around as unexploded ordnance that goes boom if cheap webcam recognizes motion / battery runs out. IMO there's a lot of capabilities that can be milked from a cheap platform. The next thing you know the entire economics of said base defense stops being viable. The potential danger with intelligent autonomous swarms is it's feasible that eventually they'll make the cannon fodder to successful attack exchange unfavourable / unsustainable to defenders.

ponector 3y ago

You are right that cheap drones are slow. But they can destroy aircrafts or fuel storage for them or SAM missile launcher. Cheap (~50k USD) are disabling oil refineries in Russia right now causing losses of a more than a hundred million USD. Phalanx could cover 3km range meaning you need at least 6 for a single air field. And it has ammo for 30 seconds only. How many drones it can kill? 10? 30? And drone #50 will hit target. And for some reason navy is not waiting for Phalanx to engage in the last second before impact, they use expensive rockets. Modern army has no real answer to the attack of 100+ drones at a time.

smoldesu 3y ago
They really cannot. Both SAM sites and CIWs are built for this job, and drones simply aren't. A drone isn't as fast as a cruise missile or as maneuverable as a jet. Most of them boast a radio signature bigger than an F-35 and struggle to outrun a hatchback while delivering a payload smaller than an AIM-9. They cannot be effectively delivered at standoff range, and fail to damage anything but the most vulnerable assets. Swarm warfare isn't irrelevant, but propeller-driven subsonic aircraft usually end up as cannon fodder no matter how many you throw into controlled airspace.
- maxglute 3y ago
  Currently cannot. At end of the day interceptors and CIWS are still constrained by magazine depth. Ghetto 10-50k propellor drones with 2000km+ theatre range are (basically stand off capabilities) now are just (very) poverty mans subsonic TLAMs, which themselves are weaponeered in strike packages to account for interception, ecm, duds etc. But they're still sent in numbers designed to overwhelm finite local defense. Ground reality right now is most US bases can get away with CIWS and interceptors because current garbage cheap propellor drones (Iran) are limited to dumb bulk drone attacks. But once you add some autonomous intelligence and coordinated swarm ability, a swarm of cheap propellor drone that can do basic evasion can make counter drone warfare unsustainably inefficient. A CIWS with 1500 rounds has 25-30 burst, a remotely reactive propellor drone that bleeds 3 bursts instead of 1, or a longer burst because it's no longer on a predictable trajectory and all of sudden base defense scaled to engage 200 targets goes dry engaging 50. Maybe INS and software enables limitted onboard compute to hug terrain lower, navigate in low covered approachces etc. Now an adversary who can't coordinate a 300 drone attack, can manage to pierce defense with 100. Optmize even more when software improves onboard target recognition and that tiny payload goes strait for vunerable assets. Or if base defense destroyed, it could loiter (because propeller) and lock down base for hours while defenders hide in hardened shelters. Or just glide itself into structures and sit around as unexploded ordnance that goes boom if cheap webcam recognizes motion / battery runs out. IMO there's a lot of capabilities that can be milked from a cheap platform. The next thing you know the entire economics of said base defense stops being viable. The potential danger with intelligent autonomous swarms is it's feasible that eventually they'll make the cannon fodder to successful attack exchange unfavourable / unsustainable to defenders.