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I think most manned war vehicles are dead now. We are definitely entering into the era of drone-vs-human warfare. Drones are cheap and deadly and can be remot
by bhouston 2y ago
I think most manned war vehicles are dead now.
We are definitely entering into the era of drone-vs-human warfare.
Drones are cheap and deadly and can be remotely operated, and soon probably operated by AI.
- hollerith 2y agoYeah, well, the Ukrainian army is on record saying they'd rather have more artillery shells than more drones.
- rdtsc 2y agoThey work well together, so give them both.
- recursive 2y agoArtillery shells are not manned vehicles.
- HPsquared 2y agoThat's another instance of quantity beating quality. It's the same type of thing.
- ponector 2y agoThat means only they need more shells at the moment than drones. Ukraine has capacity to produce enough FPV drones.
- Animats 2y agoBoth work together. The drone finds the target. The artillery then destroys the target.
- taneq 2y agoI’d guess they can reuse the drones most of the time?
- ponector 2y agoOnly reconnaissance drones and few heavy bombers. Mostly they use kamikadze FPV drones in pair with Mavic for surveillance.
- matusp 2y agoI am not surprised, drone warfare today requires a lot of people and a lot of manhours, and it does not scale that well. Several guys are often moving the equipment on foot to get as close to the frontline as possible, so that the pilot can have a few shots at delivering a pretty small explosives to a target they might not even found. On the other hand, few conscripts can jump on a Grad and start shooting rockets on a whim.
- bamboozled 2y agoFighter jets, gone ?
- krunck 2y agoThey will be when there are AI controlled aircraft/drones that can exceed the G-force limits that humans require and can thus out maneuver any human controlled fighter.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoCan it out maneuver a missile?
- foota 2y agoThis doesn't seem right to me. The limiting factor here is the ability of an air to air missile to hit a target (and to find the target in the first place). A drone might be more survivable (if it's better at avoiding missiles because of the G-forces etc.,.), but it shouldn't be any better at destroying an enemy jet, right? That theoretical highly maneuverable drone with a highly advanced sensor suite isn't going to be cheap either. At which point, what's the advantage? You wouldn't be bound by the number of pilots, but if the drones are too expensive it doesn't matter.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hagbard_c 2y ago> what's the advantage? You wouldn't be bound by the number of pilots You gave part of the answer right there. Not only would you not be limited by the number of - hard to replace and time-consuming and expensive to train - pilots but you don't run the risk of losing them either. > but if the drones are too expensive it doesn't matter. The large expense for fighter aircraft tends not to lie in the actual production costs but in the development costs which are spread over a limited production run. Build more drones and they get less expensive per item. Build enough of them to overwhelm the enemy and you win drone superiority.
- jltsiren 2y agoHumans have a place in high-end weapon systems until there is a locally running AGI in the system. An actual near-peer war never works the way people expected, and fancy new weapon systems tend to underperform initially. In the absence of an AGI, humans can adapt their behavior in the field faster than tech companies can fix their software and deliver new features.
- throwaway48476 2y agoI've seen people training yolo models on ukraine footage.
- thenaturalist 2y agoI highly doubt that such a general presumption holds. As seen in the case of Russia’s super drone being downed by their own this week after presumably loosing control, only relying on unmanned vehicles en mass leads to a single point of failure. Disrupt or corrupt signals, disrupt the entire force. The US is the force it is because it can do combined arms like nobody else. Unique capabilities don’t matter if your opponent saturates them with low tech or combined arms. Look at last weeks Iran ICBM barrage vs. iron dome and David’s sling. Sure, unmanned vehicles bring unique capabilities to any field of battle, but combined arms is as much the future as it was the past.
- bhouston 2y ago> Look at last weeks Iran ICBM barrage vs. iron dome and David’s sling. I believe the issue was not overwhelming the defences but rather the defences (Iron Dome and David's sling) were designed for short range and slow rockets from Lebanon or Gaza and not long range fast/high rockets from Iran. It may be that the cost per Arrow missile (for long range intercepts) is $3M as well, so they didn't fire that many of them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(missile_family) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(missile_family)
- daedrdev 2y agoIron dome is only used against small rockets, and was never intended to hit ballistic or cruise missiles. Thus it's not a failure since they aren't used for that kind of defense. There are separate anti ballistic systems that were used and shot down many of the rockets.
- bhouston 2y agoWhy are you repeating what I said? I am just confused as to why you are "correcting" me in a reply when you are saying the same thing.
- jdietrich 2y agoInterception comes with risks - the debris from that missile has to land somewhere. The only person confirmed to have been killed in the recent Iranian attack was a man in the West Bank who was crushed by part of a destroyed missile. It's clear that at least some of the missiles that got through were deliberately ignored because they were on target to hit open ground.
- BurningFrog 2y agoShouldn't it be more drone-vs-drone?
- bhouston 2y ago> Shouldn't it be more drone-vs-drone? For the sake of humanity, I wish that was the case, but it won't be. Defensive drones will exist for sure, but generally the targets will be human or infrastructure, not other drones.
- ahartmetz 2y agoYou want to destroy the more valuable thing (human) with the less valuable thing (drone). It could get worse than World War 1.
- nordsieck 2y ago> I think most manned war vehicles are dead now. IMO, submarines - especially nuclear subs probably have decades of life left at a minimum. But yeah - everything else is starting to look very vulnerable.
- decafninja 2y agoWhat’s to stop development of unmanned drone SSNs? Including ones that act as motherships for underwater drone swarms to boot.
- kayodelycaon 2y agoCommunication and detection underwater is a major issue. Radio is not effective at any range. Audio datalinks are short-ranged, low-bandwidth, unreliable, easily jammed, and give away your position. Active sonar gives away your position. High speed both gives away your position and makes passive sonar useless. Torpedoes are forced to use physical wires for remote guidance because nothing else works. It would be pretty easy for someone to develop a quiet, long-range torpedo that can be launched undetected outside active sonar range. (Assuming this capability doesn’t already exist.) Also, SSNs already carry long-range drones called cruise missiles. Manned subs will take a long time to become obsolete.
- decafninja 2y agoMost of what you listed would not be necessary for an autonomous SSN without a “man in the loop” no? Order it to perform a patrol or sit on the seabed, periodically sending up an antennae to listen for updates to orders. If it receives a kill order, it starts hunting. Preposition them at strategic locations if necessary. To be fair, I’m (partly) playing devil’s advocate, but I don’t think the tech to create a fully or nearly fully autonomous attack sub is that far out. Key point is that you would have to be willing to give it more autonomy than the current crop of UAVs.
- anonylizard 2y ago
- ponector 2y agoIFV are not dead, rocket launchers as well. Even tanks are still a key. At the end people are capturing land/city, not drones. But drones are changing warfare. Drone hunting other drones, drone with self guidance - they are being used in battle right now. 500$ or even less is the cost of FPV drone with night camera capable to carry 2kg bomb. Russia is buying soldiers for up to $25000 to be killed by such cheap drone later.
- SJC_Hacker 2y agoThose drones are getting lost / shot down / missing their targets at high rate. But since they are relatively cheap, they almost effectively artillery shells right now. Don't need a high kill rate when you have lots of them.
- ponector 2y agoThat is true, not every drone hits the target. But the same with any other weapon. How many 155 shells are needed to actually hit the target? A moving target? And one regular 155mm shell is 5x more expensive than FPV drone.
- murkt 2y ago155mm shells are $3k-10k per piece. So it’s more like 5-20x than FPV drone.