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Would you need to harden individual targets if you design and deploy a defensive drone swarm that is always patrolling? It will successfully mitigate the cheap

Would you need to harden individual targets if you design and deploy a defensive drone swarm that is always patrolling? It will successfully mitigate the cheap flying drone threat as long as they aren't launched close to the target. There will probably not be any more birds in human territory however since discriminating will be counter productive anyway, hostile drones will seek to impersonate birds otherwise.

jonplackett 1y ago
It’s the same problem as air Defense now though isn’t it - asymmetry. If you have 100 drones you can just launch them all at one critical thing. If you want to defend one critical thing from 100 drones, you might need 200 drones protecting it. And you also have to have 200 for every other critical thing. And even if you do do that, they just need 150 drones.
- cakealert 1y ago
  Current air defense approaches rely on non-reusable drones: missiles with rocket fuel. With reusable drones you can deploy expensive defensive drone swarms at scale. For example: radar drones, ramming drones, gun drones, etc. I don't see how long range single drones will be a meaningful threat in such a setup, even stealth drones will not be able to maintain stealth against multiple radar drones from different angles. The skies will belong to drone swarms.
  - jonplackett 1y ago
    You still have to protect everywhere though. That’s the asymmetry I mean. All the adversary needs to do is work out how to overwhelm whatever you’ve got. Also, frankly the idea of having that many drones flying around the whole country is probably just as terrifying as an actual drone attack. Who is going to be in charge of those ‘defensive’ drones?
  - intended 1y ago
    Current air defenses depend on being able to make weaker players give up on their ideas of even trying to attack bigger players. The point being made here is that you can now have cheap attacks on boring targets, without having to risk any humans at all. And by boring targets, they're talking about things like roads, or bridges and overpasses - ways to slow the global economy to a crawl, and to force nations into blowing their resources on defending everything. > "What the Russians can’t do is harden every mile of highway, every bridge, every dam. Neither can the United States, and — critically — neither can the Chinese."
    - cakealert 1y ago
      The reason you would carry such an attack by drone is to escape attribution (and thus elimination/arrest), this becomes harder if you must launch the drone in close proximity to the target to evade a patrolling defensive drone swarm. You will most likely require a ground drone with high explosives or launching an air attack drone, which will become an expensive complex operation. Mitigating the threat of cheap drones.
      - intended 1y ago
        I think that isn't the reason. The article says: > But the threat of soft-target suicide terrorism never came to much, because a suicide bomber is a targeting system with an ego. stating that many targets which would have truly been disastrous if hit, were ignored because the attackers wanted to satiate their egos or narrative, by hitting landmarks / high profile symbolic sites.
        cakealert 1y ago
        A drone operator that is caught soon after an attack doesn't differ much from a suicide bomber that removes himself from the world during his attack.
        jonplackett 1y ago
        Really? There's a pretty massive difference in that one definitely dies, and can only do one mission. The other could control 100s of drones and also believe they won't die.

jonplackett 1y ago

It’s the same problem as air Defense now though isn’t it - asymmetry. If you have 100 drones you can just launch them all at one critical thing. If you want to defend one critical thing from 100 drones, you might need 200 drones protecting it. And you also have to have 200 for every other critical thing. And even if you do do that, they just need 150 drones.

cakealert 1y ago
Current air defense approaches rely on non-reusable drones: missiles with rocket fuel. With reusable drones you can deploy expensive defensive drone swarms at scale. For example: radar drones, ramming drones, gun drones, etc. I don't see how long range single drones will be a meaningful threat in such a setup, even stealth drones will not be able to maintain stealth against multiple radar drones from different angles. The skies will belong to drone swarms.
- jonplackett 1y ago
  You still have to protect everywhere though. That’s the asymmetry I mean. All the adversary needs to do is work out how to overwhelm whatever you’ve got. Also, frankly the idea of having that many drones flying around the whole country is probably just as terrifying as an actual drone attack. Who is going to be in charge of those ‘defensive’ drones?
- intended 1y ago
  Current air defenses depend on being able to make weaker players give up on their ideas of even trying to attack bigger players. The point being made here is that you can now have cheap attacks on boring targets, without having to risk any humans at all. And by boring targets, they're talking about things like roads, or bridges and overpasses - ways to slow the global economy to a crawl, and to force nations into blowing their resources on defending everything. > "What the Russians can’t do is harden every mile of highway, every bridge, every dam. Neither can the United States, and — critically — neither can the Chinese."
  - cakealert 1y ago
    The reason you would carry such an attack by drone is to escape attribution (and thus elimination/arrest), this becomes harder if you must launch the drone in close proximity to the target to evade a patrolling defensive drone swarm. You will most likely require a ground drone with high explosives or launching an air attack drone, which will become an expensive complex operation. Mitigating the threat of cheap drones.
    - intended 1y ago
      I think that isn't the reason. The article says: > But the threat of soft-target suicide terrorism never came to much, because a suicide bomber is a targeting system with an ego. stating that many targets which would have truly been disastrous if hit, were ignored because the attackers wanted to satiate their egos or narrative, by hitting landmarks / high profile symbolic sites.
      - cakealert 1y ago
        A drone operator that is caught soon after an attack doesn't differ much from a suicide bomber that removes himself from the world during his attack.
        jonplackett 1y ago
        Really? There's a pretty massive difference in that one definitely dies, and can only do one mission. The other could control 100s of drones and also believe they won't die.