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An aerial drone capable of materially damaging a modern navy ship costs $1-2M a piece. Anything much cheaper doesn't have the range, survivability, or required

An aerial drone capable of materially damaging a modern navy ship costs $1-2M a piece. Anything much cheaper doesn't have the range, survivability, or required warhead to do much more than scratch the paint. A cheap drone is only useful against soft targets. It is the reason Ukraine is scaling up heavy cruise missile production even though they already have vast numbers of cheap long-range drones. Being "cheap" isn't of much value if it is incapable of doing meaningful damage to the desired target. The US has been designing and building thousands of anti-ship drones since the 1970s. It isn't like they have no experience with the concept and those drones are far more capable than anything Iran has. The US Navy has assumed drone swarms as a threat model for half a century.

randomNumber7 7mo ago
These boat drones ukraine used to sink some russian ships seem to be very hard to avoid.
- jandrewrogers 7mo ago
  All large ships in the US Navy have automated weapons for killing swarms of small surface craft. They added that capability a few decades ago because they were regularly attacked by swarms of suicide speed boats packed with explosives. No one tries that anymore. Surface drones are effectively indistinguishable from that threat. Easier than avoiding torpedos, which are also long-range drones.
  - justin66 7mo ago
    > Surface drones are effectively indistinguishable from that threat. It's pretty hard to imagine a scenario from the nineties where there are so many speedboats in an attack that all four CIWS on a carrier use all their ammo at once. (that's an awful lot of suicidal jihadis, or whatever) On the other hand, if the CIWS are targeting clouds of aerial drones and jetski drones at the same time, that could be a pretty bad scene. About fifteen seconds of fire per CIWS (1550 rounds), five minutes downtime to reload, between one and three seconds to service each target...
    - jandrewrogers 7mo ago
      Interestingly, the problem the existing weapons had is that they had terrible engagement characteristics for things that were close and fast at sea level. CIWS wasn’t built for that. It wasn’t in the original threat model. They were designed for low planes and cruise missiles. The boat swarms would close the distance fast, and the US Navy was reluctant to engage potentially stupid but non-hostile targets. By the time the threat was clear the defensive weapon systems were outside their design parameters. The alternative was killing everyone a long way out even if they weren’t a clear threat. Not an issue today, they have loads of weapons purpose-engineered for that threat. But they had to learn that lesson the hard way.
- emptyfile 7mo ago
  [dead]
mayama 7mo ago
> An aerial drone capable of materially damaging a modern navy ship costs $1-2M a piece. Anything much cheaper doesn't have the range, survivability, or required warhead to do much more than scratch the paint. Problem isn't a single drone, it's the cost of intercepters. Iran could launch a swarm of 100s of drones with few antiship missiles mixed in to hone in at same time. CSG has to spend $million+ interceptors and will quickly run out of them. US hasn't taken anti drone defence seriously, or the cost of doing it seriously before going in.
- throwawayffffas 7mo ago
  > Could launch a swarm of 100s of drones. As far as I know we have never seen that happen against a single target. I believe the reasons are operational not cost related. A single truck can fit like 5 shaheds. For 100 at the same target at the same time you need to coordinate 20 crews just to get them in the air all these drones need to be controlled to some degree as well. It's possible but we have not seen such an attack. We have seen hundreds of drones targeting hundreds of targets against an entire country. So it's definitely possible, but I wager it's harder than it sounds to send 100s of shaheds against a carrier strike group. Shahed drones are very slow, and can thus be very easily distinguished from antiship missiles and can also be intercepted far befpre they reach the ships. You are thinking SM-2s. But the best way to deal with such a threat is a flight of f-18s with a bunch of laser guided rockets (like 50 or 70) and a targeting pod, intercepting the drones hundreds of miles from the target.
  - testing22321 7mo ago
    Have you seen all the Chinese light show drone videos? See them fly in massive coordinated swarms with precision? See them automatically land in charging docks in waves by the thousand? Those videos are not showing the world just a pretty light show.
- green_wheel 7mo ago
  The cheap drones Iran makes get a GPS coordinate plugged into them and they fly there. Carriers rarely stay in the same place for long so they'd be effectively useless against them.
kjellsbells 7mo ago
Do the Iranians have to win against a Navy ship or an oil tanker? Asymmetric warfare suggests they would ignore the well fortified ship and wreak havoc on commercial shipping to get the same result. The Strait of Hormuz is so shallow and narrow that they only really need to sink two or three tankers to shut the whole thing down.
- foobarian 7mo ago
  > sink two or three tankers to shut the whole thing down. How so? The narrowest point is still 20 miles wide. Is there a deepwater lane that's narrower than that, but still impacted with a wreck?
  - ceejayoz 7mo ago
    You shut it down by making the next ship go "lol fuck no".
aorloff 7mo ago
> It isn't like they have no experience with the concept and those drones are far more capable than anything Iran has. Unless Iran bought some CM-302 missiles from China, the mere threat of which appears to mean that China and Iran now control the oil in the gulf. But ELI5 me maybe I don't understand realpolitik
impossiblefork 7mo ago
That isn't really true. There are expensive and important bits on the outside-- radars, optical sensors, etc. that could be damaged by very small things. Even $400 dollar drones would force some kind of defensive system to start shooting if the ship is to remain usable. The ship would of course also become progressively more vulnerable as this goes on, so I don't agree that ships have some kind of D&D-style DR that means that anything costing below a million does nothing.
testing22321 7mo ago
Fly thousands or tens of thousands of $400 drones at the carrier, Chinese light show style, while the carrier uses up all its anti-drone Defense ammunition. Then fly in the high explosives.

randomNumber7 7mo ago

These boat drones ukraine used to sink some russian ships seem to be very hard to avoid.

jandrewrogers 7mo ago
All large ships in the US Navy have automated weapons for killing swarms of small surface craft. They added that capability a few decades ago because they were regularly attacked by swarms of suicide speed boats packed with explosives. No one tries that anymore. Surface drones are effectively indistinguishable from that threat. Easier than avoiding torpedos, which are also long-range drones.
- justin66 7mo ago
  > Surface drones are effectively indistinguishable from that threat. It's pretty hard to imagine a scenario from the nineties where there are so many speedboats in an attack that all four CIWS on a carrier use all their ammo at once. (that's an awful lot of suicidal jihadis, or whatever) On the other hand, if the CIWS are targeting clouds of aerial drones and jetski drones at the same time, that could be a pretty bad scene. About fifteen seconds of fire per CIWS (1550 rounds), five minutes downtime to reload, between one and three seconds to service each target...
  - jandrewrogers 7mo ago
    Interestingly, the problem the existing weapons had is that they had terrible engagement characteristics for things that were close and fast at sea level. CIWS wasn’t built for that. It wasn’t in the original threat model. They were designed for low planes and cruise missiles. The boat swarms would close the distance fast, and the US Navy was reluctant to engage potentially stupid but non-hostile targets. By the time the threat was clear the defensive weapon systems were outside their design parameters. The alternative was killing everyone a long way out even if they weren’t a clear threat. Not an issue today, they have loads of weapons purpose-engineered for that threat. But they had to learn that lesson the hard way.
emptyfile 7mo ago
[dead]

mayama 7mo ago

> An aerial drone capable of materially damaging a modern navy ship costs $1-2M a piece. Anything much cheaper doesn't have the range, survivability, or required warhead to do much more than scratch the paint. Problem isn't a single drone, it's the cost of intercepters. Iran could launch a swarm of 100s of drones with few antiship missiles mixed in to hone in at same time. CSG has to spend $million+ interceptors and will quickly run out of them. US hasn't taken anti drone defence seriously, or the cost of doing it seriously before going in.

throwawayffffas 7mo ago
> Could launch a swarm of 100s of drones. As far as I know we have never seen that happen against a single target. I believe the reasons are operational not cost related. A single truck can fit like 5 shaheds. For 100 at the same target at the same time you need to coordinate 20 crews just to get them in the air all these drones need to be controlled to some degree as well. It's possible but we have not seen such an attack. We have seen hundreds of drones targeting hundreds of targets against an entire country. So it's definitely possible, but I wager it's harder than it sounds to send 100s of shaheds against a carrier strike group. Shahed drones are very slow, and can thus be very easily distinguished from antiship missiles and can also be intercepted far befpre they reach the ships. You are thinking SM-2s. But the best way to deal with such a threat is a flight of f-18s with a bunch of laser guided rockets (like 50 or 70) and a targeting pod, intercepting the drones hundreds of miles from the target.
- testing22321 7mo ago
  Have you seen all the Chinese light show drone videos? See them fly in massive coordinated swarms with precision? See them automatically land in charging docks in waves by the thousand? Those videos are not showing the world just a pretty light show.
green_wheel 7mo ago
The cheap drones Iran makes get a GPS coordinate plugged into them and they fly there. Carriers rarely stay in the same place for long so they'd be effectively useless against them.

kjellsbells 7mo ago

Do the Iranians have to win against a Navy ship or an oil tanker? Asymmetric warfare suggests they would ignore the well fortified ship and wreak havoc on commercial shipping to get the same result. The Strait of Hormuz is so shallow and narrow that they only really need to sink two or three tankers to shut the whole thing down.

foobarian 7mo ago
> sink two or three tankers to shut the whole thing down. How so? The narrowest point is still 20 miles wide. Is there a deepwater lane that's narrower than that, but still impacted with a wreck?
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  You shut it down by making the next ship go "lol fuck no".

aorloff 7mo ago

> It isn't like they have no experience with the concept and those drones are far more capable than anything Iran has. Unless Iran bought some CM-302 missiles from China, the mere threat of which appears to mean that China and Iran now control the oil in the gulf. But ELI5 me maybe I don't understand realpolitik

impossiblefork 7mo ago

That isn't really true. There are expensive and important bits on the outside-- radars, optical sensors, etc. that could be damaged by very small things. Even $400 dollar drones would force some kind of defensive system to start shooting if the ship is to remain usable. The ship would of course also become progressively more vulnerable as this goes on, so I don't agree that ships have some kind of D&D-style DR that means that anything costing below a million does nothing.

testing22321 7mo ago

Fly thousands or tens of thousands of $400 drones at the carrier, Chinese light show style, while the carrier uses up all its anti-drone Defense ammunition. Then fly in the high explosives.