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Define cheap and multiply by thousands. Ukrainian front line drones stopped being DJIs years ago. They're now much closer to $3000 USD+ at the low end for an I

by XorNot 8mo ago

Define cheap and multiply by thousands. Ukrainian front line drones stopped being DJIs years ago. They're now much closer to $3000 USD+ at the low end for an ISR vehicle. $8000+ for the more capable FPV kamikazes is the estimate for Russian models. Which is comparable to a 155mm artillery shell. But with a lot less payload. There's already literally millions of drones being produced and used per year in that conflict - and they've made a big impact, but the stability of the frontline also reveals that the impact of "swarms" is hardly overpowering (the obsession with them is also weird - if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing you'd do is put them all close together).

sofixa 8mo ago
> overpowering As Iran shows, you don't need overpowering. You need to hit the enemy where it hurts them, like strategic infrastructure. > "swarms" ... (the obsession with them is also weird - if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing you'd do is put them all close together) On the contrary, a swarm allows you to overwhelm the enemy air defences, which allows you to hit targets, including those same air defences, without having to disable them first. Cf. Iran destroying a THAAD radar.
- XorNot 8mo ago
  Right - until anti-air measures designed to deal with voluminous relatively low performance threats get deployed. There's a reason Ukraine has been rolling out old school anti-aircraft and flak guns, and the modern variants are now starting to be produced - i.e. area effect microwave weapons and high energy lasers. Systems which aren't very useful if your adversary is highly capable, but which are effective if your adversary is relatively fragile. Again: volume turned out to be relatively useless in WW1 when the adversary had well placed machine guns. But it's also an apples to oranges comparison: THAAD is in no way designed to intercept drone threats. The story here is closer to the US started a fight without actually investing in the sort of defenses which would deal with it - i.e. with a rack of Ukranian interceptor drones as part of the air defenses, the THAAD radar likely makes it.

by XorNot 8mo ago

sofixa 8mo ago

> overpowering As Iran shows, you don't need overpowering. You need to hit the enemy where it hurts them, like strategic infrastructure. > "swarms" ... (the obsession with them is also weird - if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing you'd do is put them all close together) On the contrary, a swarm allows you to overwhelm the enemy air defences, which allows you to hit targets, including those same air defences, without having to disable them first. Cf. Iran destroying a THAAD radar.

XorNot 8mo ago
Right - until anti-air measures designed to deal with voluminous relatively low performance threats get deployed. There's a reason Ukraine has been rolling out old school anti-aircraft and flak guns, and the modern variants are now starting to be produced - i.e. area effect microwave weapons and high energy lasers. Systems which aren't very useful if your adversary is highly capable, but which are effective if your adversary is relatively fragile. Again: volume turned out to be relatively useless in WW1 when the adversary had well placed machine guns. But it's also an apples to oranges comparison: THAAD is in no way designed to intercept drone threats. The story here is closer to the US started a fight without actually investing in the sort of defenses which would deal with it - i.e. with a rack of Ukranian interceptor drones as part of the air defenses, the THAAD radar likely makes it.