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> Ships go through a lot of expensive missiles shooting down cheap drones. When will we have cheap drones that can take out other cheap drones?

colechristensen 1y ago
Only when we're forced. There's an ego problem with military acquisitions, people want big fancy things. When million dollar missiles are outmatched with thousand dollar drones and that becomes an actual threat is when these things change. Ukraine is working as a reality check and learning experience for what modern war would actually be like on a large scale.
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  This, agree completely. History is rhyming with the WW1 generals who viewed machine guns as an irrelevant distraction from the main job of getting the cavalry charging. It's fascinating seeing the nature of warfare literally changing before our eyes in Ukraine and still everyone's focused on building big beautiful weapons
bigyabai 1y ago
You won't, because that necessitates a faster drone that your adversary might already be fielding.
- elictronic 1y ago
  This is incorrect. You have layered responses. Faster drones mean less range, speed, or payload. So you layer your defense response to account for the different categories. This won’t be a game of mine is better faster like marketing pukes like to pretend. Just like memory caches one size does not solve all problems. Missiles, small kinetic drone interceptors, AA guns, lasers, shotgun drones, gps spoofing, jammers, and high power microwaves just to name some options. Each has its place and saying drone interceptors won’t work shows you have no idea what you are talking about.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    We're talking about surface vessels, here. What layer can a drone even occupy? Close-in intercepts are handled with CIWS systems, BMD is covered by VLS, AA handled by SAMs. Drones do not handle any of those mission profiles better than their counterparts, cost be damned. I'm entirely willing to write off drone interceptors for the foreseeable future. Layered defense certainly presents opportunities, but not for low-reliability expendable doodads.
elictronic 1y ago
They have been demonstrated already. Lasers for small/medium drones are already being tested live in conflict regions as well. We are only a few years in to the state change. Militaries take time and the big ones are learning cost lessons right now.
owlbite 1y ago
There is a significant asymmetry in the requirements: cheap attack drones only have to succeed once, cheap defense drones have to succeed every time (or intercept sufficiently far out that some more reliable backup can be deployed when they fail).
- palmotea 1y ago
  But the same is true of expensive missiles, which are apparently what's used now. Seems like having a magazine of 1000 defense drones would be a good addition to a ship already armed with anti-aircraft missiles, so you don't have to shoot a missile unless you really have to. It would level out the economics.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    The difficulty is choosing to fire a lower probability of kill weapon while defending a high-value asset (the ship) during a limited window of engagement. By definition, cheaper interceptors are shorter range, which means you have less time for a Plan B if it fails. The historical solution was to push air defense pickets farther out around high-value ships, but the US hasn't had anything affordable in that class since the Perries referenced in the article. Aka, if you have an SM-2 or ESSM to fire to defend an Arleigh Burke+ at maximum range... you're going to fire it.
    - MichaelZuo 1y ago
      I don’t think it’s even theoretically possible to defend an aircraft carrier sized target against a sufficiently concentrated missile/drone attack within say a 5 minute window 200 km offshore. Even if we assume absurdities like quadrupling the number of reactors, 100% efficient lasers, a dozen escort ships also with their own lasers, etc…
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        I expect that's a big part of the SEWIP Block III upgrade: high-power EWAR being seen as the most effective current point defense against swarms. Presumably you can pump enough energy through naval AESAs to do bad things to drones and cruise missiles, and they have the advantage of being electronically steerable and volumetrically targeted. https://www.twz.com/41829/this-is-what-the-navys-new-shipboard-electronic-warfare-system-can-actually-do https://www.twz.com/41829/this-is-what-the-navys-new-shipboa...
jandrewrogers 1y ago
Not drones, high-power lasers. The US has been testing laser weapons for terminal defense extensively, with quite a bit of success. A laser shot has about the same cost as a single 20mm cartridge and you don’t need to reload.
- Animats 1y ago
  That may work, but the enemy might attack with a thousand drones at once. So far, laser mounts are one per ship, and need several seconds on target to take down a drone. This drone video is seven years old.[1] It's a hobbyist jet aircraft. 415 mph top speed. You have to expect that by now there are militarized versions. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k
  - jandrewrogers 1y ago
    A drone with sufficient range, payload, and protection against the standard litany of modern EW and counter-measure systems would be quite expensive. Even the crappy non-survivable drones used in Ukraine are tens of thousands of dollars and that would probably tip north of $100k each if they actually had to be hardened against modern countermeasures, which aren't really a thing in Ukraine. Aside from the cost issue, launching thousands of them against a single naval target is unlikely to be feasible due to the weight and volume considerations alone. The largest drone attacks ever mustered across an entire theater of war, never mind against a single target, were in the hundreds and those didn't have to contend with much in the way of serious broad spectrum countermeasures or point defenses. You would likely be better off with several actual anti-ship missiles. A Harpoon only costs $1.4M and those are dedicated platforms purpose-built to defeat state-of-the-art defenses and countermeasures. The US Navy is testing the lasers against cruise missiles and other systems with much more protection and capability than the typical cheap drone. Current versions are lower-power testbeds but production versions are expected to be several hundred kW.
    - Animats 1y ago
      > A drone with sufficient range, payload, and protection against the standard litany of modern EW and counter-measure systems would be quite expensive. Not any more. DJI drone able to return home using visual navigation without GPS.[1] Unarmed. About US$1000. Small lightning-proof drone.[2] Aims lightning strikes. Cost not given. Ukraine EW-resistant drone.[3] Drops bombs. Currently about US$30,000. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzWIYOOKItM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzWIYOOKItM [2] https://dronexl.co/ja/2025/04/23/ntt-lightning-triggering-drone-survives-strike/ https://dronexl.co/ja/2025/04/23/ntt-lightning-triggering-dr... [3] https://interestingengineering.com/military/meet-the-shoolika-mark-6 https://interestingengineering.com/military/meet-the-shoolik...
slowmovintarget 1y ago
a.k.a... cheap missiles. They don't even need to have a payload, they just need to hit the enemy drones before they get to close.

colechristensen 1y ago

Only when we're forced. There's an ego problem with military acquisitions, people want big fancy things. When million dollar missiles are outmatched with thousand dollar drones and that becomes an actual threat is when these things change. Ukraine is working as a reality check and learning experience for what modern war would actually be like on a large scale.

marcus_holmes 1y ago
This, agree completely. History is rhyming with the WW1 generals who viewed machine guns as an irrelevant distraction from the main job of getting the cavalry charging. It's fascinating seeing the nature of warfare literally changing before our eyes in Ukraine and still everyone's focused on building big beautiful weapons

bigyabai 1y ago

You won't, because that necessitates a faster drone that your adversary might already be fielding.

elictronic 1y ago
This is incorrect. You have layered responses. Faster drones mean less range, speed, or payload. So you layer your defense response to account for the different categories. This won’t be a game of mine is better faster like marketing pukes like to pretend. Just like memory caches one size does not solve all problems. Missiles, small kinetic drone interceptors, AA guns, lasers, shotgun drones, gps spoofing, jammers, and high power microwaves just to name some options. Each has its place and saying drone interceptors won’t work shows you have no idea what you are talking about.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  We're talking about surface vessels, here. What layer can a drone even occupy? Close-in intercepts are handled with CIWS systems, BMD is covered by VLS, AA handled by SAMs. Drones do not handle any of those mission profiles better than their counterparts, cost be damned. I'm entirely willing to write off drone interceptors for the foreseeable future. Layered defense certainly presents opportunities, but not for low-reliability expendable doodads.

elictronic 1y ago

They have been demonstrated already. Lasers for small/medium drones are already being tested live in conflict regions as well. We are only a few years in to the state change. Militaries take time and the big ones are learning cost lessons right now.

owlbite 1y ago

There is a significant asymmetry in the requirements: cheap attack drones only have to succeed once, cheap defense drones have to succeed every time (or intercept sufficiently far out that some more reliable backup can be deployed when they fail).

palmotea 1y ago
But the same is true of expensive missiles, which are apparently what's used now. Seems like having a magazine of 1000 defense drones would be a good addition to a ship already armed with anti-aircraft missiles, so you don't have to shoot a missile unless you really have to. It would level out the economics.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  The difficulty is choosing to fire a lower probability of kill weapon while defending a high-value asset (the ship) during a limited window of engagement. By definition, cheaper interceptors are shorter range, which means you have less time for a Plan B if it fails. The historical solution was to push air defense pickets farther out around high-value ships, but the US hasn't had anything affordable in that class since the Perries referenced in the article. Aka, if you have an SM-2 or ESSM to fire to defend an Arleigh Burke+ at maximum range... you're going to fire it.
  - MichaelZuo 1y ago
    I don’t think it’s even theoretically possible to defend an aircraft carrier sized target against a sufficiently concentrated missile/drone attack within say a 5 minute window 200 km offshore. Even if we assume absurdities like quadrupling the number of reactors, 100% efficient lasers, a dozen escort ships also with their own lasers, etc…
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      I expect that's a big part of the SEWIP Block III upgrade: high-power EWAR being seen as the most effective current point defense against swarms. Presumably you can pump enough energy through naval AESAs to do bad things to drones and cruise missiles, and they have the advantage of being electronically steerable and volumetrically targeted. https://www.twz.com/41829/this-is-what-the-navys-new-shipboard-electronic-warfare-system-can-actually-do https://www.twz.com/41829/this-is-what-the-navys-new-shipboa...

jandrewrogers 1y ago

Not drones, high-power lasers. The US has been testing laser weapons for terminal defense extensively, with quite a bit of success. A laser shot has about the same cost as a single 20mm cartridge and you don’t need to reload.

Animats 1y ago
That may work, but the enemy might attack with a thousand drones at once. So far, laser mounts are one per ship, and need several seconds on target to take down a drone. This drone video is seven years old.[1] It's a hobbyist jet aircraft. 415 mph top speed. You have to expect that by now there are militarized versions. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  A drone with sufficient range, payload, and protection against the standard litany of modern EW and counter-measure systems would be quite expensive. Even the crappy non-survivable drones used in Ukraine are tens of thousands of dollars and that would probably tip north of $100k each if they actually had to be hardened against modern countermeasures, which aren't really a thing in Ukraine. Aside from the cost issue, launching thousands of them against a single naval target is unlikely to be feasible due to the weight and volume considerations alone. The largest drone attacks ever mustered across an entire theater of war, never mind against a single target, were in the hundreds and those didn't have to contend with much in the way of serious broad spectrum countermeasures or point defenses. You would likely be better off with several actual anti-ship missiles. A Harpoon only costs $1.4M and those are dedicated platforms purpose-built to defeat state-of-the-art defenses and countermeasures. The US Navy is testing the lasers against cruise missiles and other systems with much more protection and capability than the typical cheap drone. Current versions are lower-power testbeds but production versions are expected to be several hundred kW.
  - Animats 1y ago
    > A drone with sufficient range, payload, and protection against the standard litany of modern EW and counter-measure systems would be quite expensive. Not any more. DJI drone able to return home using visual navigation without GPS.[1] Unarmed. About US$1000. Small lightning-proof drone.[2] Aims lightning strikes. Cost not given. Ukraine EW-resistant drone.[3] Drops bombs. Currently about US$30,000. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzWIYOOKItM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzWIYOOKItM [2] https://dronexl.co/ja/2025/04/23/ntt-lightning-triggering-drone-survives-strike/ https://dronexl.co/ja/2025/04/23/ntt-lightning-triggering-dr... [3] https://interestingengineering.com/military/meet-the-shoolika-mark-6 https://interestingengineering.com/military/meet-the-shoolik...

slowmovintarget 1y ago

a.k.a... cheap missiles. They don't even need to have a payload, they just need to hit the enemy drones before they get to close.