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Between single use aluminum/lithium-air batteries, a proper sensor suite, and the performance of that F1 follow drone I think a proper $20,000 drone would be mu

Between single use aluminum/lithium-air batteries, a proper sensor suite, and the performance of that F1 follow drone I think a proper $20,000 drone would be much more useful for the US assuming the costs are under control. They could conceivably get significantly better range than artillery and use AI (hand waving a lot here) for target selection to make up for the smaller warhead and 4x cost. With the right combination of hardware and software, drones could become an incredible general purpose weapons including anti-tank, loitering and mine-like anti-personnel, RF missile, and so on. $500-1000 drones might be useful in saturation attacks but most of that cost will be eaten up by the warhead. The drones won’t be very useful unless they’re hunter seeker style with small charges and a lot of intelligence (just like the $20k drone) for target selection. I don’t think US doctrine can support them otherwise (the vehicle to deploy them will cost 1000-10000x anyway). These classes of drones work much better for a country like Ukraine in a total war on home soil.

trhway 2y ago
>might be useful in saturation attacks with deployment of cheap point defense systems - like cheap radar (Starlink phased array is $500 or so) plus shotgun (Russians currently do "soldier with shotgun") - on every tank, IFV, truck, etc. only stealth (not an option in those price ranges really) or saturation will be the way to go. Single $20K drone would be just wasted by such point defense. To the point defense add automated predator/interceptor drones patrolling against the attack drones. Thus saturation with large autonomous hives with drones of various types - coordinators, predators, and actual attack drones.
- throwup238 2y ago
  Those point defenses might work against small slow moving $500-1000 drones, but not one moving 200+ mph with an evasive trajectory (hence why I mentioned the recent F1 drone). Add a small rocket motor to the $20k drone for final approach and it’d probably top out at 400-500mph and it can use propellers to “jump around” randomly in its flight path so targeting it is nigh impossible. That would require something closer to a proper missile defense system or CIWS and tanks/APCs/etc would not have those anyway. The whole problem with cheap drone swarms is that their range is shit and whatever you use to deploy them will just inherit the existing weaknesses - whether that’s cost, logistics, or payload. I think saturation attacks are only going to be useful against static targets with large numbers of squishy meatbag targets as a cheaper way of taking out soldiers as measured in $/life, where a (maybe very expensive) plane drops a payload of small hunter seeker drones that target every human-looking IR source in the vicinity. I think that could be a lot cheaper per kill than dropping hundred pound bombs.
  - trhway 2y ago
    >not one moving 200+ mph with an evasive trajectory that is slow. Well under RPG speeds that current active defense systems (like Trophy) easily catch. And evasion on such a slow speed isn't a real evasion - at best 1m shift in 0.01 seconds - even cheap radar would easily track and would take it out with shotgun or machine gun. > proper missile defense system or CIWS that resolves, tracks and targets 30 cm diameter missile moving at transsonic speed at 2-4km. The point defense i'm talking about would need to resolve and target a 30 cm target at 10-20m distance (the tank or APC can take a drone warhead explosion at 5m distance) which is orders or magnitude cheaper/easier (you can even put a sub-$100 car radar or LIDAR onto a rotating plate similar like on Waymo car and whenever it picks something moving toward you at a distance less than 20m - just shoot in that general direction. Yes, infantry hates being around tanks with active defense in combat as shrapnel from the ADS hits the infantry, frequent story with USSR army back then in Afghanistan for example) >Add a small rocket motor to the $20k drone for final approach and it’d probably top out at 400-500mph and it can use propellers to “jump around” randomly in its flight path so targeting it is nigh impossible. Now you're trying to invent a jumping around RPG or Javelin missile. I agree that such development will happen too (though "jumping" at 200m/s is petty hard), yet it will not be able to always jump out of the shotgun grape shot cloud at that 10m distance. So, yes, there will be race between attack and defense, and my point is that single drone approach will be left behind pretty much from the start. > cheap drone swarms is that their range is shit 50-80km communication and flying range is what we have already today. Communication - while staying cheap - can be extended further by retranslator drones (and for autonomous/AI drones the communication is much less of an issue - for example no need for high quality video, if at all), and electric drone-plane (not quad) can do up to 200km even today. >I think saturation attacks are only going to be useful against static targets I see quite opposite. Modern air-defense shoots down all single targets with high probability (except for stealth, which like $4M for one Storm Shadow stealth cruise missile). On the other hand - Pantsir-S1 can target simultaneously only 4 targets. A battery of S-300/400 can shoot only 12 missiles before reloading. Trophy and the likes easily shoots down one incoming targets and takes half-a-second or similar to get ready for the next target. And improving the simultaneous capabilities is costly. Where is saturation (horizontal scaling :) is an easy and cheap way to overwhelm/defeat such systems.
cempaka 2y ago
> These classes of drones work much better for a country like Ukraine in a total war on home soil. Who's to say that's not what Replicator is aiming for? Sans the "foreign enemy" part, perhaps

trhway 2y ago

>might be useful in saturation attacks with deployment of cheap point defense systems - like cheap radar (Starlink phased array is $500 or so) plus shotgun (Russians currently do "soldier with shotgun") - on every tank, IFV, truck, etc. only stealth (not an option in those price ranges really) or saturation will be the way to go. Single $20K drone would be just wasted by such point defense. To the point defense add automated predator/interceptor drones patrolling against the attack drones. Thus saturation with large autonomous hives with drones of various types - coordinators, predators, and actual attack drones.

throwup238 2y ago
Those point defenses might work against small slow moving $500-1000 drones, but not one moving 200+ mph with an evasive trajectory (hence why I mentioned the recent F1 drone). Add a small rocket motor to the $20k drone for final approach and it’d probably top out at 400-500mph and it can use propellers to “jump around” randomly in its flight path so targeting it is nigh impossible. That would require something closer to a proper missile defense system or CIWS and tanks/APCs/etc would not have those anyway. The whole problem with cheap drone swarms is that their range is shit and whatever you use to deploy them will just inherit the existing weaknesses - whether that’s cost, logistics, or payload. I think saturation attacks are only going to be useful against static targets with large numbers of squishy meatbag targets as a cheaper way of taking out soldiers as measured in $/life, where a (maybe very expensive) plane drops a payload of small hunter seeker drones that target every human-looking IR source in the vicinity. I think that could be a lot cheaper per kill than dropping hundred pound bombs.
- trhway 2y ago
  >not one moving 200+ mph with an evasive trajectory that is slow. Well under RPG speeds that current active defense systems (like Trophy) easily catch. And evasion on such a slow speed isn't a real evasion - at best 1m shift in 0.01 seconds - even cheap radar would easily track and would take it out with shotgun or machine gun. > proper missile defense system or CIWS that resolves, tracks and targets 30 cm diameter missile moving at transsonic speed at 2-4km. The point defense i'm talking about would need to resolve and target a 30 cm target at 10-20m distance (the tank or APC can take a drone warhead explosion at 5m distance) which is orders or magnitude cheaper/easier (you can even put a sub-$100 car radar or LIDAR onto a rotating plate similar like on Waymo car and whenever it picks something moving toward you at a distance less than 20m - just shoot in that general direction. Yes, infantry hates being around tanks with active defense in combat as shrapnel from the ADS hits the infantry, frequent story with USSR army back then in Afghanistan for example) >Add a small rocket motor to the $20k drone for final approach and it’d probably top out at 400-500mph and it can use propellers to “jump around” randomly in its flight path so targeting it is nigh impossible. Now you're trying to invent a jumping around RPG or Javelin missile. I agree that such development will happen too (though "jumping" at 200m/s is petty hard), yet it will not be able to always jump out of the shotgun grape shot cloud at that 10m distance. So, yes, there will be race between attack and defense, and my point is that single drone approach will be left behind pretty much from the start. > cheap drone swarms is that their range is shit 50-80km communication and flying range is what we have already today. Communication - while staying cheap - can be extended further by retranslator drones (and for autonomous/AI drones the communication is much less of an issue - for example no need for high quality video, if at all), and electric drone-plane (not quad) can do up to 200km even today. >I think saturation attacks are only going to be useful against static targets I see quite opposite. Modern air-defense shoots down all single targets with high probability (except for stealth, which like $4M for one Storm Shadow stealth cruise missile). On the other hand - Pantsir-S1 can target simultaneously only 4 targets. A battery of S-300/400 can shoot only 12 missiles before reloading. Trophy and the likes easily shoots down one incoming targets and takes half-a-second or similar to get ready for the next target. And improving the simultaneous capabilities is costly. Where is saturation (horizontal scaling :) is an easy and cheap way to overwhelm/defeat such systems.

cempaka 2y ago

> These classes of drones work much better for a country like Ukraine in a total war on home soil. Who's to say that's not what Replicator is aiming for? Sans the "foreign enemy" part, perhaps