3 ms·

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 re

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.
- pxmpxm 2y ago
  Pretty much this - the only way the entire premise works is if you have a huge number of cheap commodity hardware that's going for the 0.1% of a 99.9% succes rate defense system. Defense companies won't like it, because commodity is synonymous with "low margin", so it's not surprising you end up with something that's two orders of mag higher price point and a buzzworld salad ("AI enhanced" because we have added some ML-based damping to a kalman filter to charge more money) to go with it
  - Animats 2y ago
    A 99.9% successful defense system is unlikely. CWIS is nowhere near that good. Overwhelming a defense with an attack from multiple directions has worked. Read up on the sinking of the Moskva[1] and Russia's current efforts at drone defense.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2025/01/24/russia-strengthens-air-defenses-amid-rising-ukrainian-strikes/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2025/01/24/russia-...
    - trhway 2y ago
      Ukraine is currently manages on some days to send 100-200 drones into several regions in Russia. The drones are slow and small, like with 50kg warheads. Most of these drones are shot down (on various video it seems usually by smaller missiles, like Pantsir's), though a few usually do hit their targets. I think Ukraine is, while slowly, still progressively going along the direction and would come to the strategy similar like what i suggested https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529638

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.

pxmpxm 2y ago
Pretty much this - the only way the entire premise works is if you have a huge number of cheap commodity hardware that's going for the 0.1% of a 99.9% succes rate defense system. Defense companies won't like it, because commodity is synonymous with "low margin", so it's not surprising you end up with something that's two orders of mag higher price point and a buzzworld salad ("AI enhanced" because we have added some ML-based damping to a kalman filter to charge more money) to go with it
- Animats 2y ago
  A 99.9% successful defense system is unlikely. CWIS is nowhere near that good. Overwhelming a defense with an attack from multiple directions has worked. Read up on the sinking of the Moskva[1] and Russia's current efforts at drone defense.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2025/01/24/russia-strengthens-air-defenses-amid-rising-ukrainian-strikes/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikrammittal/2025/01/24/russia-...
  - trhway 2y ago
    Ukraine is currently manages on some days to send 100-200 drones into several regions in Russia. The drones are slow and small, like with 50kg warheads. Most of these drones are shot down (on various video it seems usually by smaller missiles, like Pantsir's), though a few usually do hit their targets. I think Ukraine is, while slowly, still progressively going along the direction and would come to the strategy similar like what i suggested https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529638