10 ms·
Marines now have an official drone-fighting handbook
- ipnon 1y agoFor infantry it is now as indispensable as an automatic rifle, grenades, radios, and so on. Fighters in Ukraine without drone support are at significant disadvantage.
- galangalalgol 1y agoWhy doesn't duckshot make short work of these things?
- tra3 1y agoA lot of these fpv drones are capable of 30mph. That’s not a lot of time to spot em and react.
- senectus1 1y agoalso.. detonating an explosive drone at only a few meters away is still likely to take you out...
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoEspecially given they have anti-personnel shrapnel.
- lazide 1y agoSome of them can go 90-120mph (off the shelf). Custom FPV drones can go even faster - some fancy ones 330+ kph (200+ mph)
- bigiain 1y agoBack in 2014/2015 I was racing FPV drones. My most insane one could accelerate from stationary (on the ground) to doing 160kmh (100mph) straight up, in about 2 seconds. It wasn't much faster horizontally, but it'd top out at over 180kmh.
- mrheosuper 1y agoDrone attacks in many ways. Some use suicide method that just ramming themself into you. Some just drop explosive from high above.
- rpcope1 1y agoEven bubba's pissin hot 3.5 magnum bird shot is probably not getting above 300 or 400 feet vertical for starters, and then you've either got to deal with hitting it dead on with a tight pattern wad or accepting that the shot is going spread enough to make it unlikely to hit it. So far as I have ever seen the energy in a shot shell wad dissipates much faster than a regular bullet, and I think you're better off trying to hit it with a regular old 556.
- rpcope1 1y agoFollowing on to this, I would not be remotely surprised if drones continue to be a threat to see something like a man portable gepard hooked up to an EW system, as given the speed those things move and how hard even hitting regular old Canadian Geese or errant clays under non-combat situations, I don't know how you would economically fight drone swarms short of a mini Phalanx CIWS or something. Maybe ironically, I wonder if we won't see things like the Bofors 40mm guns continue to be prolific if they get successfully retasked to fighting drones (and they would end up like the M2, fighting long after it was initially conceived).
- rstupek 1y agoThe US Army has this under development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSETxYGrxVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSETxYGrxVw
- wahern 1y agoFor the larger drones, yes, Ukraine is seeing success with SPAAGs: https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/20/ukraine-drone-defense/ https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/20/ukraine-drone-defense... For the smaller drones it's an even more rapidly evolving, high-tech arms race. AFAIU, over the past year most of the battlefield drones have switched to kilometers-long fiber optic tethers to avoid electronic jamming. I dunno what all the defensive measures are, but one is using other drones to cut the cable. I think they may also be using directed energy weapons, now, though not sure how widespread that is.
- 1y ago
- esseph 1y agoFPV drones can hit 80mph+ / 128kmph+ , other drones can fly much higher than a shotgun can reach. Also, swarms.
- somenameforme 1y agoLarge scale swarms will probably never be a major issue for infantry. You have a finite number of drones, even at extremely high rates of production, spread across all things you want to target. Sending a swarm at individual infantry, or even platoons is just wasteful. At scale that's thousands of drones, per day, that you could have instead sent towards more valuable targets. This, btw, is also why claims that some side is targeting civilians in otherwise 'productive' warfare (e.g. actually achieving things instead of bombing for the sake of fear/terrorism/headlines/photo ops) is usually just lying propaganda. Civilians are a worse than 0 value target meaning you completely wasted your munitions.
- maxdo 1y agoThe drone cost in hundreds of dollars , low hundreds , even optic one cost $300-400 at manufacturing. Train a soldier is hundreds of thousands. Manufacturing , both Ukraine and Russia , generally speaking technological midgets, producing as of today millions a year. Ukraines projected output is around 4 millions in 2025 China can easily produce tens of millions. Even if 1 out 4 hit your target , that’s any army of any size in the world obliterated without new recruits.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoReports (caveat: biased, pro-ukranian reports) are though that Russian soldiers barely get any training, I doubt they are worth that much. Even at the start of the war, there were stories that they had to buy their own shoes. At this point it's not even so much about scale, but about intelligence - finding viable or valuable targets. A million FPV drones won't do much good if your enemy is >100 kilometers away. The Ukranian front line is over 1000 kilometers long, but viable targets are easily a hundred kilometers from that either side. And that's just around the front lines, picking off individual soldiers or hardware won't stop this war, not when thousands are recruited and trained every month. Which is why Ukraine has done some deep strikes, taking out trains, infrastructure, refineries, air bases, etc. If they can take out the Shahed drone production facility too, that'd be a huge blow. But again, it wouldn't stop this war, just slow down attacks on civilians.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoIt probably does. But you've seen how fast these drones are right? It's the speed of aliens in the alien movie or a velociraptor from Jurassic park and much more maneuverable, smaller and can come at you from all dimensions. Now imagine a swarm coming at you, each with explosives.
- wombatpm 1y agoOr even smaller drones with a single shot bullet, autonomous with enough intelligence to seek and target faces for their shot. Covered in Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez
- wahern 1y agoThese exist and have been used by Israel in Gaza. At least for now a remote operator has to give the OK to shoot, but the drone does the targeting itself. It's very Terminator-esque, a quadcopter with an automatic rifle that can autonomously navigate streets, loiter, and identify and aim at human targets.
- prawn 1y agoMy experience is only with consumer drones, but you could fly over a target area and release an explosive before anyone heard that it was there, especially in a noisy environment. Above 100m, unless you're at high speed/power, most people won't notice a drone at all. It's often a change in speed/direction that gives them away, otherwise it will be past you before you first notice the sound.
- red-iron-pine 1y agoplus, speaking from military experience, people don't look up. camp out at the top of a 5 story building and don't move or shoot and no one will even gaze at you. 300m straight up? might as well be in orbit.
- somenameforme 1y agoThey do. There's a lot of videos of them being taken out with birdshot. I also saw one video about modding underbarrel grenade launchers to fire a shotgun cartridge.
- esseph 1y agoA lot of US under barrel launchers have "factory" buckshot rounds. M79/M203/M320/etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M576_40_mm_grenade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M576_40_mm_grenade AK would be a different story, but Ukraine has a lot of 3d printers and those shells are one time use and not hard to make.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoThose got lucky, lucky in that they detected them in the first place and that they were able to land a shot.
- red-iron-pine 1y agoyeah the window for a lot of those FPV drones is small. I'd still rather have the shotgun, but luck is a factor. also doesn't help for the ones that are 300m straight up dropping bombs -- no buckshot will work that high up. maybe 50m at best, if you're very, very lucky with dispersion.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- energy123 1y agoThis is a quality discussion about this question: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1b0u0k0/how_effective_are_shotguns_against_small_airborne/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/1b0u0k0/how_eff...
- jojobas 1y agoEven Olympic trap shooters miss their targets sometimes, and they fly ballistic trajectories after they call "pull". Expecting a soldier with 2 months training (best case) to hit an unpredictably flying drone that appeared out of nowhere with no warning as he's trying to take cover from mortar shrapnel is quite optimistic.
- SilentTiger 1y agoBecause they're incredibly fast, exceeding 40 meters per second. You can't fire a shotgun at 80 meters. A typical shotgun's effective range is only 40 meters, and once it's within range, you only have one second to fire. Furthermore, drones are generally difficult to detect at 400 meters unless you're using a synthetic detection system. By the time you spot them, it's too late.
- petesergeant 1y agoGot to imagine there are going to be a lot of well-paid PMC jobs for Ukrainian veterans in other countries that neighbor Russia after the war.
- yahway 1y ago《Now
- Larrikin 1y agoIs the book actually available to read?
- Animats 1y agoThe manual from 2020 is available.[1] But nobody took drones that seriously back then. In that document, they're treated mostly as recon assets, not primary attack weapons. [1] https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-Library-Display/Article/900470/navmc-3500107c/ https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-L...
- SJC_Hacker 1y agoThe US military had almost exclusively considered drones as expensive systems like the Predator used for standoff ground fire support much like an attack helicopter, or for use in counterinsurgency like the Switchblade But in their defense, they never anticipated having to fight a near peer adversary on land to the extent Ukraine has. But I would argue no one really saw this coming to this degree. The Bayraktar for instance, was much along the lines of US drone philosophy, costing several million a piece, The drones used in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict were mostly used along that philosophy as well
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- andoando 1y agoOn the upside of drones, hopefully in the future war will just be among machines
- carabiner 1y agoIt will just be like countries burning piles of money until one runs out.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoIsn't that how it goes nowadays too? The US pulled out of Afghanistan after twenty years of occupation and... didn't actually change anything there, the regime went back to the one from before. I don't think that at this point there's ever any winning a war, not unless you brainwash three generations (NK) or genocide the population and remove any trace of them like in Gaza at the moment. And that's a relatively small stretch of land.
- haunter 1y agoJudging by /r/CombatFootage/ you can't really do anything against them unless you wear a full EOD suit. Once you hear it you are already dead.
- echoangle 1y agoI don’t know how you would actually defend but there is probably some selection bias too. The videos are published by the drone operators, they probably have an interest in publishing videos of successful strikes.
- noeltock 1y agoWe produce drones in Ukraine, yes, hit-rate is lower, but still worth it given cost.
- worldsayshi 1y agoI heard of Ukrainian drone operators that had +500 kills and that was a couple of years ago...
- Brybry 1y agoSmall arms fire can take out small drones. I believe both Russia and Ukraine train some soldiers via shooting target/dummy drones and skeet.[1] And there are videos out there of Ukrainians and Russians successfully shooting down fpv drones. [2][3][4] (Content warning: war videos but there shouldn't be any gore in them) [1] https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1948675201983553864 https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1948675201983553864 [2] https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1920365175766483080 https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1920365175766483080 [3] https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1936508342622437560 https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1936508342622437560 [4] https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1923488508015956341 https://xcancel.com/RALee85/status/1923488508015956341
- Cthulhu_ 1y agor/ukrainewarvideoreport has been full of it for three years, but mind the survivorship (well, opposite of that) bias - the Ukranian war propaganda / media machine only publishes successes, the Russian one is suppressed or simply not posted on Reddit. Just because you don't see failed strikes doesn't mean they don't happen. The vehicles have drone shields, the roads have nets, and there's heaps of electronic countermeasures in place. That said, if you're out in the field and there's one above you, you're boned. Can't imagine the horrors of vibing, then having a grenade plop down next to you.
- maxglute 1y agoUKR almost feels like yesterday's drone war. It seems pretty obvious purpose built murder bots by technologically capable powers like PRC would be fully autonomous and expendable like actual munitions. Image fuse some cheap rgb/ir/thermo with edge compute to maim any warm bodies at 100km+ speeds. Don't even bother to reusable / save material. Just send them out to indiscriminately detonate like cheap smart munitions that they should be.
- energy123 1y agoStrategic depth is a factor. In the Israel/Iran war, Iran's Shahed drones weren't useful due to the large distance. They could be shot down at a leisurely pace. If Iran was fighting a nearby country like Iraq, it would be a very different story. On the other hand, Israel made use of surveillance drones inside Iran, but only due to methods employed to shrink the strategic depth, either by smuggling them into Iran, or doing a clandestine launch from allies like Azerbaijan. But obviously, such tactics are not durable in a war of attrition, and they're not applicable to high-volume Shahed-like suicide attacks. In the Pacific theatre, Taiwan is very close to China, so possibly, attack drones will be useful similar to the Ukraine/Russia war. There are also many different types of drones being employed. The short-range small quadcopters, all the way up to large Predator drones. Shaheds are kind of in the middle in terms of size. The boundary can be blurred too between loitering munitions (Switchblade) and drones. For the suicide quadcopter drones, there is a realization that Skynet is the next step in the arms race. Full edge autonomy over the kill chain. No need for data link (susceptible to electronic warfare) or trained pilots or added round-trip latency. Anti-drone tech is also changing. Interceptor drones, net-dropping drones, ground-based laser, electronic warfare, and small guided ground- or air-launched interceptors. Also have to consider the combined arms picture, none of this can be reasoned about in a vacuum. But I suppose my main takeaway is - no two theatres are the same, AND there is a diversity in drones. So to collectivize a takeaway around "drones" would be a reasoning error. One thing will be certain when it comes to wars between nearby countries. You need to knock out the enemy's industrial production quickly with bombers. Or have your own industrial production that can maintain pacing and avoid culmination in a war of attrition.
- 1y ago
- MaxPock 1y agoTook them long .Drones are democratizing the battlefield and that is a welcome development. In a future conflict America engages in,social media will be full of videos of Smiths from Iowa and Kansas being chased and blown by drones in some country in Asia or Middle East.
- masteruvpuppetz 1y agoSaw the importance of drone fighting in Pakistan's recent clashes with India. They sent drones to big cities like Lahore/Karachi so IMO even Police and Civil Defense should also get these trainings.
- roncesvalles 1y agoBoth India and Pakistan were surprisingly well-prepared for drone warfare in the recent exchange in May, for both offense and defense. The US seems behind in comparison.
- Yizahi 1y agoSo, what is the effective range of this handbook? Can it be used to intercept and destroy ruzzian Lancet drone? Is it single use handbook or can be reloaded?
- Daugh2005 1y agoThis is a great post. I like this topic. I found many interesting things on this site. Thanks for posting this.
- Daugh2005 1y ago[dead]
- tr1mple 1y agohttps://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2025/08/04/the-marines-now-have-an-official-drone-fighting-handbook https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2025... this handbook is public but i cant find it. Maybe one of you has it? If so, can you send it? I would be very grateful