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This type of weapon reflects the West's approach to drone warfare—multi-million-dollar pieces of equipment that will need to be right on the front line to defen

This type of weapon reflects the West's approach to drone warfare—multi-million-dollar pieces of equipment that will need to be right on the front line to defend troops and positions. I'll tell you right now, it would last about 10 minutes on the front lines in Ukraine. What many people don't realize is the sheer volume of drones being used in some of the battles along the front—it's not hundreds, but thousands. Trenches are being abandoned, and everyone is going underground. Ground drones can’t even be sent in to support front line troops anymore, as vehicles are taken out within minutes. This is a weapon of last resort, to take out what gets through to the rear. We need front line solutions which don't exist yet. Here is a quote from a piece a front line defender in the Ukrainian Arm Forces wrote. His name is Maksym Zhorin >Equally dangerous is the technological obsolescence of NATO countries and their inability to counter modern threats. Adequacy of response, means of combat, even simply understanding what real war looks like today — all of this is missing. Therefore, even a few drones have become a problem for them. I don't know what the solution to drones are because everything is evolving in real time.

kjkjadksj 1y ago
Hit their cheap drone with your cheap drone? Seems like mg bullets are cheaper as well. Hook up an mg to a webcam with motion tracking and stick it in a bush. Might not even need sophisticated tracking with sufficient volume of fire.
rdtsc 1y ago
Technologies are obsoleted at ridiculous rates during the war. Anyone still remember how HIMARS was supposed to win the war? Indeed it was absolutely fantastic at first, but everyone sort of stopped talking about it. It turns out Russians zoomed in on the weakest spot of these types of weapons - reliance on GPS. As soon as they started jamming that, the effectiveness of a whole slew of those types of weapons went way down. So now there is a whole rush to create anti-jammable GPS technology. Same thing with drones. They are a game changer but then Russians figured out they can use drones too. Moreover, they were the first ones to field fiber optic drones. Those things are bonkers. As in, if someone told me "this defense company is creating fiber optic drones" I could have bet it's a corruption scheme as the idea just seems to implausible yet here it is, now both sides use them.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  In fairness, Ukraine received nerfed versions of most of that tech from the US, increasing its susceptibility to things like GPS jamming. A lot of it was downgraded to circa 1980-1990s capability levels, which is still adequate for a lot of the Soviet era tech Russia is using. It would likely be a mistake to overfit what is happening in the Ukraine to US capabilities.
t0mas88 1y ago
NATO needs to start working on more low-tech high volume solutions. The Netherlands and Germany used to have old anti-air systems that were basically a tank undercarriage with a radar and two rapid fire machine guns. It was a system from the 1960s. Ineffective against fighter jets since those fly higher than the range of the guns, but a modern version of this would be cost effective against low tech drones. You could build something like it using an existing armoured personnel carrier, fast movable gun and a modern radar sensor. It would be helpless against jets or tanks, but I think the way to use it would be to have high-tech air defense systems shoot the jets (with very expensive missiles) at long range and use these glorified air guns to shoot the drones at much closer range.
- justsomehnguy 1y ago
  There is a reason why you won't find nor Shilka nor Tunguska there.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  >NATO needs to start working on more low-tech high volume solutions. It has. Don't be fooled that just because you haven't seen it means it doesn't exist. >The Netherlands and Germany used to have old anti-air systems that were basically a tank undercarriage with a radar and two rapid fire machine guns The GEPARD. Every country has similar. Soviet countries had the Shilka vehicles, US built https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M163_VADS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M163_VADS (and the Duster before it). Even before we put radar on these things, slapping a bunch of 50 cals on the back of a truck was standard, and Ukraine does that right now, to mild success. Currently the US is building some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM which is basically just a non-self propelled (but still technically mechanized) SPAAG, but is modern so it can even take out missiles and sometimes mortar shells! Also, Rheinmetall has been working on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyshield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyshield for quite some time, but holy shit is it pricey for what it is, and it uses special ammo too so that's sucky. Pretty much every arms manufacturer in Europe though is taking their default 30mm or 40mm cannon and slapping it and a generic small radar on whatever mobility platform they can find. The market is ravenous for it right now. It's just not a premier product though, as it's basically off the shelf hardware. Except for the US, who struggled and failed to make the M247 Sergeant York The West's current plan to entirely null small drones and Shahed style things that fly slowly is the APKWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon... The gyst is, you take dirt cheap ($3000) rockets that we have a million of, slap a $10k laser guidance package on them, and then use an F-literally whatever (or even helicopters) with bog standard targeting pods to click on a drone and make them go away. I don't think this is viable against DJIs with grenades but I'm pretty sure the plan for that is the MK-82 special delivered to any patch of warm on the FLIR If you think that can't scale, understand that since WW2, the US's entire air strategy is "fly 1000 sorties all day every day forever". It's why the US doesn't actually have that much in terms of Anti-Air platforms. Their anti-air platform is 3000 planes. They also managed to actually execute such a strategy in the first Gulf War. There's a lot happening in the Ukraine war that absolutely will not carry over, because you must understand that the Ukraine airspace is basically unused. Neither combatant has enough air power or anti-air systems to control the airspace, or to project air power. They mostly just have the occasional sortie to lob a bomb or launch cruise missiles. This would not be the case with NATO, as long as the US joins in. IMO, the biggest oversight in the west is that we should be building roughly a billion copies of the Russian Krasnopol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system) . The power of drones has been cheap precision. It used to be only the US had precision in quantity, but shitloads of drones with laser designators is a vast "democratization" of precision in weapons. The US has the Excalibur guided artillery shell, but it's been basically nulled out by GPS jamming and was too expensive anyway. Some western countries have various more effective semi-guided artillery munitions, things like the BONUS round, but they're expensive, and it's nice to have a commodity version of "I point a laser at that square centimeter and am sure that it dies for like $30k"
temptemptemp111 1y ago
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kjkjadksj 1y ago

Hit their cheap drone with your cheap drone? Seems like mg bullets are cheaper as well. Hook up an mg to a webcam with motion tracking and stick it in a bush. Might not even need sophisticated tracking with sufficient volume of fire.

rdtsc 1y ago

Technologies are obsoleted at ridiculous rates during the war. Anyone still remember how HIMARS was supposed to win the war? Indeed it was absolutely fantastic at first, but everyone sort of stopped talking about it. It turns out Russians zoomed in on the weakest spot of these types of weapons - reliance on GPS. As soon as they started jamming that, the effectiveness of a whole slew of those types of weapons went way down. So now there is a whole rush to create anti-jammable GPS technology. Same thing with drones. They are a game changer but then Russians figured out they can use drones too. Moreover, they were the first ones to field fiber optic drones. Those things are bonkers. As in, if someone told me "this defense company is creating fiber optic drones" I could have bet it's a corruption scheme as the idea just seems to implausible yet here it is, now both sides use them.

jandrewrogers 1y ago
In fairness, Ukraine received nerfed versions of most of that tech from the US, increasing its susceptibility to things like GPS jamming. A lot of it was downgraded to circa 1980-1990s capability levels, which is still adequate for a lot of the Soviet era tech Russia is using. It would likely be a mistake to overfit what is happening in the Ukraine to US capabilities.

t0mas88 1y ago

NATO needs to start working on more low-tech high volume solutions. The Netherlands and Germany used to have old anti-air systems that were basically a tank undercarriage with a radar and two rapid fire machine guns. It was a system from the 1960s. Ineffective against fighter jets since those fly higher than the range of the guns, but a modern version of this would be cost effective against low tech drones. You could build something like it using an existing armoured personnel carrier, fast movable gun and a modern radar sensor. It would be helpless against jets or tanks, but I think the way to use it would be to have high-tech air defense systems shoot the jets (with very expensive missiles) at long range and use these glorified air guns to shoot the drones at much closer range.

justsomehnguy 1y ago
There is a reason why you won't find nor Shilka nor Tunguska there.
mrguyorama 1y ago
>NATO needs to start working on more low-tech high volume solutions. It has. Don't be fooled that just because you haven't seen it means it doesn't exist. >The Netherlands and Germany used to have old anti-air systems that were basically a tank undercarriage with a radar and two rapid fire machine guns The GEPARD. Every country has similar. Soviet countries had the Shilka vehicles, US built https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M163_VADS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M163_VADS (and the Duster before it). Even before we put radar on these things, slapping a bunch of 50 cals on the back of a truck was standard, and Ukraine does that right now, to mild success. Currently the US is building some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM which is basically just a non-self propelled (but still technically mechanized) SPAAG, but is modern so it can even take out missiles and sometimes mortar shells! Also, Rheinmetall has been working on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyshield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyshield for quite some time, but holy shit is it pricey for what it is, and it uses special ammo too so that's sucky. Pretty much every arms manufacturer in Europe though is taking their default 30mm or 40mm cannon and slapping it and a generic small radar on whatever mobility platform they can find. The market is ravenous for it right now. It's just not a premier product though, as it's basically off the shelf hardware. Except for the US, who struggled and failed to make the M247 Sergeant York The West's current plan to entirely null small drones and Shahed style things that fly slowly is the APKWS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon... The gyst is, you take dirt cheap ($3000) rockets that we have a million of, slap a $10k laser guidance package on them, and then use an F-literally whatever (or even helicopters) with bog standard targeting pods to click on a drone and make them go away. I don't think this is viable against DJIs with grenades but I'm pretty sure the plan for that is the MK-82 special delivered to any patch of warm on the FLIR If you think that can't scale, understand that since WW2, the US's entire air strategy is "fly 1000 sorties all day every day forever". It's why the US doesn't actually have that much in terms of Anti-Air platforms. Their anti-air platform is 3000 planes. They also managed to actually execute such a strategy in the first Gulf War. There's a lot happening in the Ukraine war that absolutely will not carry over, because you must understand that the Ukraine airspace is basically unused. Neither combatant has enough air power or anti-air systems to control the airspace, or to project air power. They mostly just have the occasional sortie to lob a bomb or launch cruise missiles. This would not be the case with NATO, as long as the US joins in. IMO, the biggest oversight in the west is that we should be building roughly a billion copies of the Russian Krasnopol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnopol_(weapon_system) . The power of drones has been cheap precision. It used to be only the US had precision in quantity, but shitloads of drones with laser designators is a vast "democratization" of precision in weapons. The US has the Excalibur guided artillery shell, but it's been basically nulled out by GPS jamming and was too expensive anyway. Some western countries have various more effective semi-guided artillery munitions, things like the BONUS round, but they're expensive, and it's nice to have a commodity version of "I point a laser at that square centimeter and am sure that it dies for like $30k"

temptemptemp111 1y ago

[dead]