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Quantity has a quality all its' own. A swarm of a thousand quadcopters negates any drawbacks you've mentioned, and would be cheaper than even a single Bayraktar

Quantity has a quality all its' own. A swarm of a thousand quadcopters negates any drawbacks you've mentioned, and would be cheaper than even a single Bayraktar or Reaper (not even including their 6 figure weapons payload). And we're already seeing drone carrying "motherships" that drop multiple quads and have RF repeaters to extend range to 50km+. It's a lot like the switch from battleships to aircraft carriers in the early 20th century. When a single squadron of cloth and wooden biplanes became capable of sinking a 50,000 ton armored warship that took 5 years to build, the writing was on the wall, and the countries who didn't adapt lost.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago
The USA isn't going to fight a trench warfare style war with China. We would fight a standoff/siege war and would overwhelm China's defenses and take out China's production capabilities. China's production is mainly in the east, whereas the USA's is spread out across the country. China imports it oil (making them susceptible to siege) while the USA is a net exporter. There is a reason we are developing Rapid Dragon (named after a Chinese siege weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) . It quickly converts our 1500+ supply chain heavy aircraft fleet into stand-off attack platforms.
rgmerk 2y ago
War in East Asia, were it to happen, will be nothing like war in Europe - as was the case in WWII.
AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
I'm still talking about the tiny high quantity quads, they can't do anything if they don't have the range to get from the launch location to the target and stand off range is the oldest advantage in warfare. I guarantee the ones fielded in the next ~5 years will start to look like the new high speed bullet quads but with a blended wing between the rotors so they're not wasting energy plowing diagonally through the air. You may see configurations that can tail stand or enter a hover briefly and some that fly entirely conventionally, but the current paradigm of quads hovering near targets is going to be short lived as defenses ratchet up. As I said, the chips are going to be the issue. If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything. They'll be moving toward relying on spread spectrum and variations of basic image recognition up through spicier algorithms for localization and targeting.
- onion2k 2y ago
  I would be willing to bet a very large sum that China has the capability to drop 10,000 drones from a high altitude plane over US soil in one go, with the range to strike anywhere on the US mainland. I have no basis for this claim apart from the fact it's a really obvious thing to do.
  - Teever 2y ago
    Yep. Imagine a near future with a mothership balloon carrying thousands of drones the size of a deck of cards or so with a 20g explosive, gps, facial recognition, and something to detect cellphone signals and a small solar panel. Drop a load over an area with the faces of targets preprogrammed into them and let them flit about looking for cell phone signal sources and if the face that's near the signal is a match explode on their neck. Imagine releasing that over an airbase. These things can either attack immediately or just fall down to the area around and lie in wait recharging with their panel. What's the counter to that?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ramesh31 2y ago
  >they can't do anything if they don't have the range to get from the launch location to the target and stand off range is the oldest advantage in warfare. They can. Ukraine and Russia both have started using repeater drones for over-the-horizon capabilities with quadcopters. They can also be mesh linked, and combined with carrier drones to give you arbitrary standoff range for FPV attacks: https://x.com/wilendhornets/status/1772345701772513445 https://x.com/wilendhornets/status/1772345701772513445 >If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything. But you can't. If you could, we wouldn't be seeing hundreds of these videos per week. The inverse square law applies no matter how advanced the jamming technology gets. You can protect fixed installations with huge high powered EW arrays, but the individual soldier on the battlefield is completely defenseless. The best they can hope for is a small bubble of protection from whoever in your unit is carrying the 30lbs of jamming gear and batteries, or the limited capabilities of a vehicle mounted system (that can easily be destroyed with artillery or ATGM).

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

The USA isn't going to fight a trench warfare style war with China. We would fight a standoff/siege war and would overwhelm China's defenses and take out China's production capabilities. China's production is mainly in the east, whereas the USA's is spread out across the country. China imports it oil (making them susceptible to siege) while the USA is a net exporter. There is a reason we are developing Rapid Dragon (named after a Chinese siege weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) . It quickly converts our 1500+ supply chain heavy aircraft fleet into stand-off attack platforms.

rgmerk 2y ago

War in East Asia, were it to happen, will be nothing like war in Europe - as was the case in WWII.

AnarchismIsCool 2y ago

I'm still talking about the tiny high quantity quads, they can't do anything if they don't have the range to get from the launch location to the target and stand off range is the oldest advantage in warfare. I guarantee the ones fielded in the next ~5 years will start to look like the new high speed bullet quads but with a blended wing between the rotors so they're not wasting energy plowing diagonally through the air. You may see configurations that can tail stand or enter a hover briefly and some that fly entirely conventionally, but the current paradigm of quads hovering near targets is going to be short lived as defenses ratchet up. As I said, the chips are going to be the issue. If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything. They'll be moving toward relying on spread spectrum and variations of basic image recognition up through spicier algorithms for localization and targeting.

onion2k 2y ago
I would be willing to bet a very large sum that China has the capability to drop 10,000 drones from a high altitude plane over US soil in one go, with the range to strike anywhere on the US mainland. I have no basis for this claim apart from the fact it's a really obvious thing to do.
- Teever 2y ago
  Yep. Imagine a near future with a mothership balloon carrying thousands of drones the size of a deck of cards or so with a 20g explosive, gps, facial recognition, and something to detect cellphone signals and a small solar panel. Drop a load over an area with the faces of targets preprogrammed into them and let them flit about looking for cell phone signal sources and if the face that's near the signal is a match explode on their neck. Imagine releasing that over an airbase. These things can either attack immediately or just fall down to the area around and lie in wait recharging with their panel. What's the counter to that?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ramesh31 2y ago
>they can't do anything if they don't have the range to get from the launch location to the target and stand off range is the oldest advantage in warfare. They can. Ukraine and Russia both have started using repeater drones for over-the-horizon capabilities with quadcopters. They can also be mesh linked, and combined with carrier drones to give you arbitrary standoff range for FPV attacks: https://x.com/wilendhornets/status/1772345701772513445 https://x.com/wilendhornets/status/1772345701772513445 >If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything. But you can't. If you could, we wouldn't be seeing hundreds of these videos per week. The inverse square law applies no matter how advanced the jamming technology gets. You can protect fixed installations with huge high powered EW arrays, but the individual soldier on the battlefield is completely defenseless. The best they can hope for is a small bubble of protection from whoever in your unit is carrying the 30lbs of jamming gear and batteries, or the limited capabilities of a vehicle mounted system (that can easily be destroyed with artillery or ATGM).