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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 interce

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...
      - MichaelZuo 1y ago
        How does this work against a sufficiently concentrated attack?
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  I think the point is that the ship is itself an expensive and vulnerable method of delivering drones to a target (because warfare has become all about delivering more drones to the target than the other guy can cope with). If you deployed 100 patrol boats, each with 100 drones and no missiles, that is a cheaper, more efficient, more resilient solution that one ship with 1000 drones and a bunch of missiles.
  - chipsa 1y ago
    Define drones. Define missiles. How big are these drones? Are they group 1? Group 3[0]? Can this ship with missiles use its group 4 drones to find and fix these patrol boats so it can toss missiles at the opposing patrol boats? Can the patrol boats do anything about the missiles incoming at M3? Can I use some group 4 drones to drop a bunch of group 1 drones in the vicinity of those patrol boats, where they have no response because they don’t have medium anti-air capability? Vulnerable does not mean obsolete. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAS_groups_of_the_United_States_military https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAS_groups_of_the_United_State...
    - marcus_holmes 1y ago
      None of those. As we're seeing in Ukraine, the new drone wars are all about tiny commercial/consumer drones being repurposed as weapons in huge numbers [0]. Obviously, everyone scoffed at this when reports first came out. How can a $250 consumer drone take out a multi-million-dollar modern tank? Yet here we are. Neither side are fielding tanks any more because they're vulnerable to drones, and therefore obsolete [1] (caveat: we haven't seen the end of this cycle of development and response, so it's possible that tanks work out how to defend against drones and continue being relevant. I suspect it's more likely that tanks go the way of cavalry. Machine guns were the answer to cavalry. Tanks are an answer to machine guns. Drones are the answer to tanks. The answer to drones won't be better tanks). The Ukraine war is not a naval war, so we're not seeing the same rapid development of new naval military doctrine. But if a naval war kicked off, it's reasonable to expect the same rapid adoption of new technology would play out, with the same results. Large, expensive, weapon systems (in Ukraine tanks, in naval war ships) are vulnerable to massed attacks by smaller, cheaper, weapons using new tech that we haven't used like this before. [0]https://theaircurrent.com/ukraine-special-report/ukraine-drone-industry-part-1-plowshares-swords/ https://theaircurrent.com/ukraine-special-report/ukraine-dro... [1] https://www.army-technology.com/features/mbts-vs-drones-are-tanks-obsolete/?cf-view https://www.army-technology.com/features/mbts-vs-drones-are-...

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...
    - MichaelZuo 1y ago
      How does this work against a sufficiently concentrated attack?
marcus_holmes 1y ago
I think the point is that the ship is itself an expensive and vulnerable method of delivering drones to a target (because warfare has become all about delivering more drones to the target than the other guy can cope with). If you deployed 100 patrol boats, each with 100 drones and no missiles, that is a cheaper, more efficient, more resilient solution that one ship with 1000 drones and a bunch of missiles.
- chipsa 1y ago
  Define drones. Define missiles. How big are these drones? Are they group 1? Group 3[0]? Can this ship with missiles use its group 4 drones to find and fix these patrol boats so it can toss missiles at the opposing patrol boats? Can the patrol boats do anything about the missiles incoming at M3? Can I use some group 4 drones to drop a bunch of group 1 drones in the vicinity of those patrol boats, where they have no response because they don’t have medium anti-air capability? Vulnerable does not mean obsolete. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAS_groups_of_the_United_States_military https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAS_groups_of_the_United_State...
  - marcus_holmes 1y ago
    None of those. As we're seeing in Ukraine, the new drone wars are all about tiny commercial/consumer drones being repurposed as weapons in huge numbers [0]. Obviously, everyone scoffed at this when reports first came out. How can a $250 consumer drone take out a multi-million-dollar modern tank? Yet here we are. Neither side are fielding tanks any more because they're vulnerable to drones, and therefore obsolete [1] (caveat: we haven't seen the end of this cycle of development and response, so it's possible that tanks work out how to defend against drones and continue being relevant. I suspect it's more likely that tanks go the way of cavalry. Machine guns were the answer to cavalry. Tanks are an answer to machine guns. Drones are the answer to tanks. The answer to drones won't be better tanks). The Ukraine war is not a naval war, so we're not seeing the same rapid development of new naval military doctrine. But if a naval war kicked off, it's reasonable to expect the same rapid adoption of new technology would play out, with the same results. Large, expensive, weapon systems (in Ukraine tanks, in naval war ships) are vulnerable to massed attacks by smaller, cheaper, weapons using new tech that we haven't used like this before. [0]https://theaircurrent.com/ukraine-special-report/ukraine-drone-industry-part-1-plowshares-swords/ https://theaircurrent.com/ukraine-special-report/ukraine-dro... [1] https://www.army-technology.com/features/mbts-vs-drones-are-tanks-obsolete/?cf-view https://www.army-technology.com/features/mbts-vs-drones-are-...