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UKR almost feels like yesterday's drone war. It seems pretty obvious purpose built murder bots by technologically capable powers like PRC would be fully autonom

UKR 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 ago
Strategic 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.
- esseph 1y ago
  I've been trying to judge this impact on doctrine and procurement but these things are hard to judge when it's happening. Hindsight is cheating ;) It's huge, though. Many tiers of equipment, doctrine, vehicles, product time to market improvements, RF equipment, radars, stealth tech, software, battle drills, and even new job specializations of various levels. It's intense, and a constant iteration cycle at a pace we haven't seen for at least a long time, but possibly forever.
  - energy123 1y ago
    One possible future is that wartime casualties decrease because humans in the field are just completely useless. Accompanying this positive development will be the negative tail risk of exinction.
    - esseph 1y ago
      Somebody has to build the factories that build the robots, for at least a short time... All for a reduction in casualties, though I'm terrified of a nation not having a Cost To Pay for war that isn't just in slightly hire taxes.
- maxglute 1y ago
  My comment was more specific to the article, i.e. counter "SMALL" UAS / tactical / infantry battlefield scale. Pacific theater / operation/strategic scale, IMO bigger drones and traditional loitering munitions kind of just blend together. A shaheed is just a poor man's cruise missile. Iran didn't have #s or ability to coordinate / mass #s for any strategic effect. I think Israel has like magazine depth of ~800 interceptors for low tier / subsonic threats and 1000s in stockpile. Iran was (E: *NOT) capable of saturating that. Depending on relative size / force balance, can still drag on war of attrition after factories turn with sufficient stockpiles. I'm kind of thinking nation state actors, the hedge is really storing a few 10-100,000 loitering munition tier drones in tunnels to ensure some sort of conventional MAD with neighbours. But really that's for... competent / connected nation state actors who has backup ISR, i.e. piggy off US/ eventually PRC global ISR for targeting. I imagine a resourced nation can build out shaheed tier manufacturing underground. Incidentally, we had news earlier this year that PRC/Polytech is acquiring 1M, as in 1,000,000 loitering drones. Presuming shaheed tier (2000km sky moped) since Polytech has show shaheed clones in past. That's enough to easily saturate all defenses in first island chain even if US+co prepositions every piece of interception hardware ever made or plan to acquire in next 10+ years. That's strategic level shaheed spam. My main takeaway is cheap loitering munition/drones can reasonable replace potentially short range fires (~2000km), if there's enough of them to casually bleed interceptors, AND if there's survivable theater level kill chain. Last part is really... what separates Ukraine, Iran... maybe Russia's current... hobbyist tier efforts. RU launching 500+ salvos are still trying to evade anti air, with many interceptions because they don't have ISR / killchain to eliminate antiair. It's easy to build a lot of shooters, it's hard to build out the sensors to hit important things. In a highend fight, at least one side (and possibly both) side is going has the ISR and magazine depth to ensure antiair becomes irrelevant and then it will be matter of munitions + concrete attrition math
dmurray 1y ago
American military doctrine seems to include the assumption that you will always have the manufacturing capacity and the supply lines to get all the materiel you need to the front, that you'll be bottlenecked by something else like manpower. This works pretty well for fighting limited wars where part of the justification is to develop and maintain military readiness. Would it still be true in a large scale war against China - could you pump out a million drones a day - or would you wish for a doctrine that included reusable drones?
- dgoldstein0 1y ago
  Good question. I think something to keep in mind, the US hasn't fought a war on the home front since 1865. The Spanish American war, WWI and WWII, Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf war, Afghanistan, Iraq - none of these were fought on American soil, with the exception of Pearl harbor, which was a navy base, not a major manufacturing site. So we haven't really had to reckon with what happens if our homeland is under fire - sure, we drilled for it during WWII, worrying about Nazi bombers and Japanese sabotage but neither actually happened. It doesn't look like our wars are going to get closer anytime soon, but modern planes and rocketry have much greater range than in the 1940s the last time we were at war with countries with significant resources. If we ever come head to head with China, their missile capabilities could be a real concern.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  > American military doctrine seems to include the assumption that ... Since at least WWI, the US military has been very aware of their dependence on the industrial base: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower_School_for_National_Security_and_Resource_Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower_School_fo... (That I know of, their awareness of high-capacity supply line issues goes back to at least the Civil War.) Historically, the US military had a considerable industrial base of its own - arsenals, navy yards, etc. - which could manufacture anything from a pistol cartridge up to an aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, Congress shut all of that down in the later 1900's, in favor of defense contractors. Gov't-owned facilities just couldn't compete at greasing Congressional palms.
- Thlom 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
echoangle 1y ago
I don’t know if that would matter in an actual war between china and the US but sending explosives at anything that’s warm sounds like a war crime. That would probably violate proportionality.
- hovering_nox 1y ago
  lol
- lan321 1y ago
  Only the losers get to trial for war crimes, so just don't lose.
- maxglute 1y ago
  TBH once these platforms become deployed, noncombatants are signing their own suicide note even being close to battlefield. I imagine rules of engagement, expectations on civilians will simply change/devolve, i.e. most you can expect from "responsible" users is some map coordinates for murder bot no man's land where they shouldn't be. This without even mentioning we'll likely also see loitering drones hibernate as proximity mines / area denial munitions if they don't find targets. It will get very, very messy.
- Havoc 1y ago
  If there is a hot war between them any notion of civilities like war crime rules will be out the window by day three
XorNot 1y ago
That's an artillery shell. You're describing an artillery shell. What kills cheaply and indiscriminately is an airburst artillery shell.
- maxglute 1y ago
  No? Modern artillery shells cost 5-10k per (50-70k for guidance kits + programmable) and kill at medium distance, with entire logistic park (including self propelled) and isr chain for proper deployment. It's a different tier / type of capability. It kills lots/plurality of casualties... and historically... relatively cheaply. Autonomous drones potential for scenarios like close quarters, interiors, entrenched positions. Depending on battlefield transparency you can autonomously transport a shitload drones to frontlines and have them hunt / deny difficult targets that artillery can't effective engage. Drones that don't find target can area deny by being proxy mines for limited time etc etc. All potentially much cheaper once you eliminate 1 drone 1 operator constraint.
  - XorNot 1y ago
    And the drones which can do this cost (???) with a range of (???) and a flight time of (???). The problem with the "drones will do it!" narrative people put out there is that it's anything and everything but what the drone is, what it weighs, it's volume and current production are all absent figures which simply fill in as "better then whatever you just said". For example, a reasonably portable drone capable of ISR and limited infantry scale strike would be the Switchblade 300, already provided to Ukraine. This has a range of 30km a top speed of 161km/h and 20 minutes of flight time, with a 1.6 kg explosive payload - which is respectable. You could carry quite a lot of these to the front if you wanted to. That particular system cost about $50,000 a unit - optimistically. It's likely that price could be bought down, but it does include the drone, launcher and ground control system. A reasonable price today would be closer to $15,000 judging from more recent products being offered. If I hunt around a little then locally I could buy something like this[1] locally for $1,300 which has a 1kg drop payload...but only 10km of range, and a 45 minute flight time - and let's remember better radios will eat into that payload and flight time. Now obviously different drones can do different things, but the core point is the same: drones don't magically not have logistical "mass". You can't fly a bunch of drones to the front for free - you need to either recharge or refuel them at the destination. Which means you need to stockpile them. Which means they can be spotted and destroyed on the ground. The loiter times aren't "days", they're still better measured in minutes counting hours at most. All of these disadvantages apply to artillery too, of course but the point is that once you start considering the actual range brackets involved and the parameters of real systems built with current technology, including limiting technologies like energy storage, payload and physics of real explosives, the generic superweapon slips away. Ukraine is using a lot of drones because Ukraine can buy drones but can't easily get artillery and gun barrels for it. But Ukraine was also having a lot of trouble with Russia's considerable artillery advantage up until quite recently, and still is because of North Korean shell resupply. The word "drone" gets substituted in for a superweapon fulfilling every role perfectly, with no actual physical parameters which would make it imperfect - and that type of thinking should give a lot of people pause particularly in the context of Ukraine where any number of systems have had their moment in the spotlight before either falling out of favor due to adaptation or simply no longer being the most applicable to the task (i.e. the various anti-tank weapons are still doing excellent anti-tank work...there's just very few Russian tanks any more). [1] https://au.aeroodrones.com/products/aeroo-pro https://au.aeroodrones.com/products/aeroo-pro
Sharlin 1y ago
The large majority of drones used in UKR is already of the expendable munition-like type.
BobaFloutist 1y ago
>Image fuse some cheap rgb/ir/thermo with edge compute to maim any warm bodies at 100km+ speeds. "Sir, we have successfully culled the enemy deer population by 30%. Thei Department of Wildlife is issuing no further permits for this season, and their hunters are emotionally devastated. The impact on their civilian morale cannot be overstated. Where should we direct our next billion dollars? I was thinking maybe drones with long-range microwave to boil off their swimming pools...?"

energy123 1y ago

Strategic 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.

esseph 1y ago
I've been trying to judge this impact on doctrine and procurement but these things are hard to judge when it's happening. Hindsight is cheating ;) It's huge, though. Many tiers of equipment, doctrine, vehicles, product time to market improvements, RF equipment, radars, stealth tech, software, battle drills, and even new job specializations of various levels. It's intense, and a constant iteration cycle at a pace we haven't seen for at least a long time, but possibly forever.
- energy123 1y ago
  One possible future is that wartime casualties decrease because humans in the field are just completely useless. Accompanying this positive development will be the negative tail risk of exinction.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Somebody has to build the factories that build the robots, for at least a short time... All for a reduction in casualties, though I'm terrified of a nation not having a Cost To Pay for war that isn't just in slightly hire taxes.
maxglute 1y ago
My comment was more specific to the article, i.e. counter "SMALL" UAS / tactical / infantry battlefield scale. Pacific theater / operation/strategic scale, IMO bigger drones and traditional loitering munitions kind of just blend together. A shaheed is just a poor man's cruise missile. Iran didn't have #s or ability to coordinate / mass #s for any strategic effect. I think Israel has like magazine depth of ~800 interceptors for low tier / subsonic threats and 1000s in stockpile. Iran was (E: *NOT) capable of saturating that. Depending on relative size / force balance, can still drag on war of attrition after factories turn with sufficient stockpiles. I'm kind of thinking nation state actors, the hedge is really storing a few 10-100,000 loitering munition tier drones in tunnels to ensure some sort of conventional MAD with neighbours. But really that's for... competent / connected nation state actors who has backup ISR, i.e. piggy off US/ eventually PRC global ISR for targeting. I imagine a resourced nation can build out shaheed tier manufacturing underground. Incidentally, we had news earlier this year that PRC/Polytech is acquiring 1M, as in 1,000,000 loitering drones. Presuming shaheed tier (2000km sky moped) since Polytech has show shaheed clones in past. That's enough to easily saturate all defenses in first island chain even if US+co prepositions every piece of interception hardware ever made or plan to acquire in next 10+ years. That's strategic level shaheed spam. My main takeaway is cheap loitering munition/drones can reasonable replace potentially short range fires (~2000km), if there's enough of them to casually bleed interceptors, AND if there's survivable theater level kill chain. Last part is really... what separates Ukraine, Iran... maybe Russia's current... hobbyist tier efforts. RU launching 500+ salvos are still trying to evade anti air, with many interceptions because they don't have ISR / killchain to eliminate antiair. It's easy to build a lot of shooters, it's hard to build out the sensors to hit important things. In a highend fight, at least one side (and possibly both) side is going has the ISR and magazine depth to ensure antiair becomes irrelevant and then it will be matter of munitions + concrete attrition math

dmurray 1y ago

American military doctrine seems to include the assumption that you will always have the manufacturing capacity and the supply lines to get all the materiel you need to the front, that you'll be bottlenecked by something else like manpower. This works pretty well for fighting limited wars where part of the justification is to develop and maintain military readiness. Would it still be true in a large scale war against China - could you pump out a million drones a day - or would you wish for a doctrine that included reusable drones?

dgoldstein0 1y ago
Good question. I think something to keep in mind, the US hasn't fought a war on the home front since 1865. The Spanish American war, WWI and WWII, Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf war, Afghanistan, Iraq - none of these were fought on American soil, with the exception of Pearl harbor, which was a navy base, not a major manufacturing site. So we haven't really had to reckon with what happens if our homeland is under fire - sure, we drilled for it during WWII, worrying about Nazi bombers and Japanese sabotage but neither actually happened. It doesn't look like our wars are going to get closer anytime soon, but modern planes and rocketry have much greater range than in the 1940s the last time we were at war with countries with significant resources. If we ever come head to head with China, their missile capabilities could be a real concern.
bell-cot 1y ago
> American military doctrine seems to include the assumption that ... Since at least WWI, the US military has been very aware of their dependence on the industrial base: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower_School_for_National_Security_and_Resource_Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower_School_fo... (That I know of, their awareness of high-capacity supply line issues goes back to at least the Civil War.) Historically, the US military had a considerable industrial base of its own - arsenals, navy yards, etc. - which could manufacture anything from a pistol cartridge up to an aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, Congress shut all of that down in the later 1900's, in favor of defense contractors. Gov't-owned facilities just couldn't compete at greasing Congressional palms.
Thlom 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

echoangle 1y ago

I don’t know if that would matter in an actual war between china and the US but sending explosives at anything that’s warm sounds like a war crime. That would probably violate proportionality.

hovering_nox 1y ago
lol
lan321 1y ago
Only the losers get to trial for war crimes, so just don't lose.
maxglute 1y ago
TBH once these platforms become deployed, noncombatants are signing their own suicide note even being close to battlefield. I imagine rules of engagement, expectations on civilians will simply change/devolve, i.e. most you can expect from "responsible" users is some map coordinates for murder bot no man's land where they shouldn't be. This without even mentioning we'll likely also see loitering drones hibernate as proximity mines / area denial munitions if they don't find targets. It will get very, very messy.
Havoc 1y ago
If there is a hot war between them any notion of civilities like war crime rules will be out the window by day three

XorNot 1y ago

That's an artillery shell. You're describing an artillery shell. What kills cheaply and indiscriminately is an airburst artillery shell.

maxglute 1y ago
No? Modern artillery shells cost 5-10k per (50-70k for guidance kits + programmable) and kill at medium distance, with entire logistic park (including self propelled) and isr chain for proper deployment. It's a different tier / type of capability. It kills lots/plurality of casualties... and historically... relatively cheaply. Autonomous drones potential for scenarios like close quarters, interiors, entrenched positions. Depending on battlefield transparency you can autonomously transport a shitload drones to frontlines and have them hunt / deny difficult targets that artillery can't effective engage. Drones that don't find target can area deny by being proxy mines for limited time etc etc. All potentially much cheaper once you eliminate 1 drone 1 operator constraint.
- XorNot 1y ago
  And the drones which can do this cost (???) with a range of (???) and a flight time of (???). The problem with the "drones will do it!" narrative people put out there is that it's anything and everything but what the drone is, what it weighs, it's volume and current production are all absent figures which simply fill in as "better then whatever you just said". For example, a reasonably portable drone capable of ISR and limited infantry scale strike would be the Switchblade 300, already provided to Ukraine. This has a range of 30km a top speed of 161km/h and 20 minutes of flight time, with a 1.6 kg explosive payload - which is respectable. You could carry quite a lot of these to the front if you wanted to. That particular system cost about $50,000 a unit - optimistically. It's likely that price could be bought down, but it does include the drone, launcher and ground control system. A reasonable price today would be closer to $15,000 judging from more recent products being offered. If I hunt around a little then locally I could buy something like this[1] locally for $1,300 which has a 1kg drop payload...but only 10km of range, and a 45 minute flight time - and let's remember better radios will eat into that payload and flight time. Now obviously different drones can do different things, but the core point is the same: drones don't magically not have logistical "mass". You can't fly a bunch of drones to the front for free - you need to either recharge or refuel them at the destination. Which means you need to stockpile them. Which means they can be spotted and destroyed on the ground. The loiter times aren't "days", they're still better measured in minutes counting hours at most. All of these disadvantages apply to artillery too, of course but the point is that once you start considering the actual range brackets involved and the parameters of real systems built with current technology, including limiting technologies like energy storage, payload and physics of real explosives, the generic superweapon slips away. Ukraine is using a lot of drones because Ukraine can buy drones but can't easily get artillery and gun barrels for it. But Ukraine was also having a lot of trouble with Russia's considerable artillery advantage up until quite recently, and still is because of North Korean shell resupply. The word "drone" gets substituted in for a superweapon fulfilling every role perfectly, with no actual physical parameters which would make it imperfect - and that type of thinking should give a lot of people pause particularly in the context of Ukraine where any number of systems have had their moment in the spotlight before either falling out of favor due to adaptation or simply no longer being the most applicable to the task (i.e. the various anti-tank weapons are still doing excellent anti-tank work...there's just very few Russian tanks any more). [1] https://au.aeroodrones.com/products/aeroo-pro https://au.aeroodrones.com/products/aeroo-pro

Sharlin 1y ago

The large majority of drones used in UKR is already of the expendable munition-like type.

BobaFloutist 1y ago

>Image fuse some cheap rgb/ir/thermo with edge compute to maim any warm bodies at 100km+ speeds. "Sir, we have successfully culled the enemy deer population by 30%. Thei Department of Wildlife is issuing no further permits for this season, and their hunters are emotionally devastated. The impact on their civilian morale cannot be overstated. Where should we direct our next billion dollars? I was thinking maybe drones with long-range microwave to boil off their swimming pools...?"