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I 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

I 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 ago
  Iron 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 ago
    Why 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 ago
  Interception 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.
  - bhouston 2y ago
    The best analysis I've seen is this Washington Post analysis that said that +24 Iranian missiles hit Israeli military/intelligence targets or were close misses: https://x.com/catebrown12/status/1842167731547721788 https://x.com/catebrown12/status/1842167731547721788 If there was 180 missiles were fired and 24 got through to targets, that is a penetration rate of 13%.
    - YZF 2y ago
      I would say that's a pretty incredible intercept ratio. We don't know if they were let through because their predicted targets or because there weren't enough interceptors or some other reason. Air bases are pretty hardened targets. Most important stuff is kept in bunkers. They're also huge. The design assumption of an air base is that it's the prime target for rocket/missile/air raid attacks (and Israel airbases have been attacked by rockets in past wars, e.g. in the Yom Kippur war). I've seen someone review satellite photos from Nevatim that seemed to indicate one or two hits to some structure. As far as we know nothing of value was hit and no one was hurt. All that said, I wouldn't want to be around when these volleys of ICBMs are fired at you. Definitely not fun. But not a war winner either as long as they're conventional warheads.
- energy123 2y ago
  > It may be that the cost per Arrow missile (for long range intercepts) is $3M as well, so they didn't fire that many of them? This. Israel knew the 3 targets in advance, according to reporting. Any jets or other valuable equipment from the two airfields would have been removed before the attack. It would have been a waste to use Arrow interceptors to protect empty hangars. Also, according to a satellite image of impact craters, many of the missiles hit dirt around the airbase, so wouldn't have been intercepted even if they needed to protect jets.
YZF 2y ago
Precision ICBMs are not low tech. They're 1-3M$ a pop. Not sure if that's what you were trying to say (that arrow/david sling/iron dome have been saturated to some large advantage by Iran). Defense against ICBMs attack definitely matters, even if they can be saturated it's not that easy, you need launchers and you need to keep them capable of launching. The ICBM defense isn't just about knocking some of those missiles (and you can selectively do that by priority) it's also about early warning. The combination of these capabilities makes a huge difference. Germany launched 1400 V2 1-ton warhead ICBMs on London and that didn't stop the British fighting. Both in Israel and in Ukraine those missiles and UAVs are not really a huge factor. Definitely combined arms is where it's at today, and today attack helicopters have a huge role to play within that scenario, what the future looks like with more sophisticated autonomous machines is hard to predict. Maybe an autonomous bi-pedal robot combined with a UAV combined with an autonomous tank combined with an autonomous jet...
- thenaturalist 2y ago
  I implied "low tech" insofar as that ICBMs are not really "autonomous" or a dynamic device. They're launched, they fly, but at some point close to reaching terminal phase, all they do is fall along a pre-calculated trajectory. Case in point with regards to Iran, a combination of factors played a role in Israel's response: They knew the launch locations, times and most likely targets. Hence were able to move out any valuable assets of targeted bases well ahead of time and, had they wanted to, could have even pre-emptively striked the launchers. The latter again, requiring combined arms and from what I've seen about military ops, there are so many factors to pay attention to with sometimes such little time windows calculated by mission planners, that I don't see all that going full on autonomously for still some time to come. Check out this video on the 2017/18 US/ coalition response to the Syrian regime perpetrating gas attacks against civilians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnbkmi3Iieo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnbkmi3Iieo The nominal number of assets involved, the number of types of naval and aerial assets involved, the highly detailed operation plan with a short window for payload launch resulting in a 2 minute window of said payloads reaching their targets simultaneously: That is such a dynamic and complex situation that the reliability required by each component in such a calculation is high. That's why all of the humans operating these assets receive years of training. Autonomous vehicles will have support roles or be optimized for high risk or standard, low-complexity scenarios, but I don't see them making huge strides to replace people in a big way in high-complexity, high-impact ops.

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 ago
Iron 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 ago
  Why 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 ago
Interception 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.
- bhouston 2y ago
  The best analysis I've seen is this Washington Post analysis that said that +24 Iranian missiles hit Israeli military/intelligence targets or were close misses: https://x.com/catebrown12/status/1842167731547721788 https://x.com/catebrown12/status/1842167731547721788 If there was 180 missiles were fired and 24 got through to targets, that is a penetration rate of 13%.
  - YZF 2y ago
    I would say that's a pretty incredible intercept ratio. We don't know if they were let through because their predicted targets or because there weren't enough interceptors or some other reason. Air bases are pretty hardened targets. Most important stuff is kept in bunkers. They're also huge. The design assumption of an air base is that it's the prime target for rocket/missile/air raid attacks (and Israel airbases have been attacked by rockets in past wars, e.g. in the Yom Kippur war). I've seen someone review satellite photos from Nevatim that seemed to indicate one or two hits to some structure. As far as we know nothing of value was hit and no one was hurt. All that said, I wouldn't want to be around when these volleys of ICBMs are fired at you. Definitely not fun. But not a war winner either as long as they're conventional warheads.
energy123 2y ago
> 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? This. Israel knew the 3 targets in advance, according to reporting. Any jets or other valuable equipment from the two airfields would have been removed before the attack. It would have been a waste to use Arrow interceptors to protect empty hangars. Also, according to a satellite image of impact craters, many of the missiles hit dirt around the airbase, so wouldn't have been intercepted even if they needed to protect jets.

YZF 2y ago

Precision ICBMs are not low tech. They're 1-3M$ a pop. Not sure if that's what you were trying to say (that arrow/david sling/iron dome have been saturated to some large advantage by Iran). Defense against ICBMs attack definitely matters, even if they can be saturated it's not that easy, you need launchers and you need to keep them capable of launching. The ICBM defense isn't just about knocking some of those missiles (and you can selectively do that by priority) it's also about early warning. The combination of these capabilities makes a huge difference. Germany launched 1400 V2 1-ton warhead ICBMs on London and that didn't stop the British fighting. Both in Israel and in Ukraine those missiles and UAVs are not really a huge factor. Definitely combined arms is where it's at today, and today attack helicopters have a huge role to play within that scenario, what the future looks like with more sophisticated autonomous machines is hard to predict. Maybe an autonomous bi-pedal robot combined with a UAV combined with an autonomous tank combined with an autonomous jet...

thenaturalist 2y ago
I implied "low tech" insofar as that ICBMs are not really "autonomous" or a dynamic device. They're launched, they fly, but at some point close to reaching terminal phase, all they do is fall along a pre-calculated trajectory. Case in point with regards to Iran, a combination of factors played a role in Israel's response: They knew the launch locations, times and most likely targets. Hence were able to move out any valuable assets of targeted bases well ahead of time and, had they wanted to, could have even pre-emptively striked the launchers. The latter again, requiring combined arms and from what I've seen about military ops, there are so many factors to pay attention to with sometimes such little time windows calculated by mission planners, that I don't see all that going full on autonomously for still some time to come. Check out this video on the 2017/18 US/ coalition response to the Syrian regime perpetrating gas attacks against civilians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnbkmi3Iieo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnbkmi3Iieo The nominal number of assets involved, the number of types of naval and aerial assets involved, the highly detailed operation plan with a short window for payload launch resulting in a 2 minute window of said payloads reaching their targets simultaneously: That is such a dynamic and complex situation that the reliability required by each component in such a calculation is high. That's why all of the humans operating these assets receive years of training. Autonomous vehicles will have support roles or be optimized for high risk or standard, low-complexity scenarios, but I don't see them making huge strides to replace people in a big way in high-complexity, high-impact ops.