4 ms·

I think the point being made is that before Iranian drone doctrine (they were the originators of the long range drones, the FPV drones and sea drone which have

I think the point being made is that before Iranian drone doctrine (they were the originators of the long range drones, the FPV drones and sea drone which have dominated the Ukraine way too). A US CSG could simply sit in the Hormuz strait shoot down any incoming missiles and keep it open. Right now the US has 3 CSG in the middle east and nearly 50000 troops. After weeks of intensive bombing the strait remains closed and any associated asset in the region is at risk the loss of the E3 to drones is particularly shocking.

somat 7mo ago
Quick, what's the difference between a suicide drone and a guided missile?
- phil21 7mo ago
  Cost.
- baud147258 7mo ago
  Cost, I'd guess? There must be a reason why Russia and Ukraine are using more drones than missiles in their strikes. And while capabilities are somewhat different, if a ship carrying oil or LNG get hit by either one, it's going to have some consequences
- fhub 7mo ago
  At the moment, cruise speed and manufacturing price.
- colechristensen 7mo ago
  - 2-4 orders of magnitude in cost. - One of them I could reliably build a factory for in my garage.
  - jandrewrogers 7mo ago
    And one of them can't scratch the paint on a modern naval vessel. Anti-ship warheads alone weigh more than an entire Shahed-136 drone. As has been demonstrated countless times in SINKEX training, it requires literal tons of deep penetrating explosives to severely damage a modern naval vessel. And even then they usually don't actually sink. Nothing you can cheaply build in your garage will do meaningful damage to a large naval vessel. It will have neither the weight nor the penetration required.
    - subw00f 7mo ago
      Oh I wish I had the money to test your theory. And a garage too.
      - jandrewrogers 7mo ago
        You can if you live in the US! It isn’t particularly expensive either, high explosives are industrial chemistry. A few dollars per kilo. Maybe a little bit more if you want something fancy. Thanks to movies, people both seriously overestimate and underestimate the capabilities of highly engineered explosive devices, albeit in different dimensions. Generally speaking, sophisticated military targets are not susceptible to generic explosives. A drone with a hundred kilos of explosive will essentially bounce off a lot of targets. An enormous amount of engineering goes into designing an explosive device optimized to defeat that specific target. They use supercomputers to get this stuff right. Exotic engineered explosive devices are unreasonably capable. TBH, once you realize the insane amount of engineering that goes into it, it kind of takes the fun out of it. A lot of high-leverage research goes into aspects an amateur would never think about. This is in some ways a blessing. Amateurs with bad intentions almost always fail at the execution because it isn’t something you can learn by reading the Internet.
        WalterBright 7mo ago
        Amateurs who try to build their own explosives usually either fail to explode or explode killing the builder. An older friend of mine at Boeing told me how when he was a teen, he had a teen friend who built a pipe bomb. They drove off to a field to set it off. It didn't explode, so his friend went to investigate. Then it went off, and my friend had the pleasure of driving his gutted friend to the hospital to die.
        colechristensen 7mo ago
        There's a selection process at work where smart people who know what they're doing don't try to assemble bombs in their garage for fun. If there's a legitimate reason like your country is fighting an existential war the kinds of people who can do things start doing things. But it's just rare having a person smart enough to be able to do it be stupid enough to try. (and the people who do are nutjob terrorists like Timothy McVeigh)
- throwawayffffas 7mo ago
  Cost, production capacity, radar cross section, speed, range, payload. Drone means foam wings, plastic body, propellers, cheap camera, simple inertial navigation, maybe GPS, maybe 10-30 kilogram payload. Guided missile means, metal airframe, jet engine, depending on targets thermal imaging or radar terminal guidance, radar altimeters, terrain imaging radars, 100 - 500 kilogram payload. Remote guidance is a very hard problem, modern computers have made it much easier to solve. Even an 80s missile, required hundred of thousands of dollars of equipment just for guidance. Now all you need is a simple computer, a cheap camera and a cheap accelerometer. Drones are much easier to down than missiles, but they make it up in volume.
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    > Drone means foam wings, plastic body, propellers, cheap camera, simple inertial navigation, maybe GPS, maybe 10-30 kilogram payload. You need to seriously upgrade your level of knowledge about what is available in terms of drones today.
    - caminante 7mo ago
      I didn't take it as exhaustive. While you're alluding to high-end reapers/etc., the majority of drones in the Ukraine-Russia conflict have foam wings and low cost components.
      - jacquesm 7mo ago
        The ones that are decimating the russian oil industry are a bit more impressive than that. The foam wing ones are mostly Shaheds, the Ukrainian ones tend to be made of various plastics and/or fibreglass or composites for the more specialized stuff.
        watwut 7mo ago
        Imo foam wings and low cost components is very impressive. Low cost easy production is an actual tangible benefit. If it destroys the target and is easy cheap to make, it is a better arm.
- dyauspitr 7mo ago
  Cheap as hell, doesn’t need a launchpad and can be launched from a pick up truck, super easy to make and can be scattered all over the country so there’s no central location to bomb to stop them, fly literally meters of the ground so they’re very hard to detect and you can make tens of thousands of them very quickly and very easily.
- blitzar 7mo ago
  the good guys bomb is a guided missile, the bad guys bomb is a suicide drone cruise missiles in the hands of a bad guy is a suicide drone and a suicide drone in the hands of a good guy is a guided missile
  - m_mueller 7mo ago
    a guided missile would never be used against a civilian target! oh wait..
- rustyhancock 7mo ago
  It's a pretty fun categorization task but guided missile is too broad that could include rocket artillery! Let's say cruise missiles Vs suicide drone. The factors that make it a guided missile are presence of a rocket motor (or even turbine). Suicide drones like the ones were talking about use piston motors.
- duped 7mo ago
  Everyone is saying cost but I thought the defining factor was whether it can loiter
woeirua 7mo ago
This is delusional. Iran has thousands of ASM on the coastline. They need 1 to make it through to take out a tanker. Even the best anti missile systems we have aren’t 99.99% reliable. It was always a losing proposition. Iran has always been able to close the strait. What I don’t get is why we need to take Kharg island. Can’t we just blockade ships selling Iranian oil?
- onlypassingthru 7mo ago
  Look at who's buying the oil for the answer to your question.
- bonesss 7mo ago
  I think the collective take might be too focused on the kinetic picture to see the underlying issue(s). 1) we want Iranian oil flowing and being bought elsewhere for the economy and to avoid hard decisions in Beijing, and as we’ve recently heard ad nausea money is fungible so… if one hasn’t thought to invade, dominate and occupy mountainous terrain filled with holy people, then ‘open’ means money to The Baddies. 2) it’ll only take a few wrecks to create navigation hazards, tankers are huge and that strait is shallow and narrow. The cleanup crews are slower, they also need massive ships. 3) let’s take a 0.01% reliability of missile attacks… drones, rpgs, suicide attacks, artillery, kamikaze plane attacks, mines, and trebuchets are also out there. So, again, unless we’re invading… fuhgeddabout 100% And, fatally: 4) it’s not the missiles, it’s the threat, and who is insuring the massive money-boats. If your insurance company thought your car would, 0.01% of the time, be blown up resulting in a total wreck and complete loss of cargo and future revenue, your policy would not be what it is. You insure your oil boat for trips, and if not you don’t move it. Trump doesn’t decide this, BigBoat Insurance brokers decide this, with their wallets and vibes. 0.01% x An Oil Tanker (slow, giant, vulnerable, + oil leak cleanup and ecosystem damage, loss of life) x totally foreseeable circumstances = a ‘closed’ straight on demand. Unless, again, the plan is invado-conquering.
  - idkduu 7mo ago
    [flagged]
dlisboa 7mo ago
> A US CSG could simply sit in the Hormuz strait shoot down any incoming missiles and keep it open. They can't even do that in their own bases. Most of US defenses have been severely overestimated due to propaganda. They hadn't been tested and when they were they've shown themselves lacking.

somat 7mo ago

Quick, what's the difference between a suicide drone and a guided missile?

phil21 7mo ago
Cost.
baud147258 7mo ago
Cost, I'd guess? There must be a reason why Russia and Ukraine are using more drones than missiles in their strikes. And while capabilities are somewhat different, if a ship carrying oil or LNG get hit by either one, it's going to have some consequences
fhub 7mo ago
At the moment, cruise speed and manufacturing price.
colechristensen 7mo ago
- 2-4 orders of magnitude in cost. - One of them I could reliably build a factory for in my garage.
- jandrewrogers 7mo ago
  And one of them can't scratch the paint on a modern naval vessel. Anti-ship warheads alone weigh more than an entire Shahed-136 drone. As has been demonstrated countless times in SINKEX training, it requires literal tons of deep penetrating explosives to severely damage a modern naval vessel. And even then they usually don't actually sink. Nothing you can cheaply build in your garage will do meaningful damage to a large naval vessel. It will have neither the weight nor the penetration required.
  - subw00f 7mo ago
    Oh I wish I had the money to test your theory. And a garage too.
    - jandrewrogers 7mo ago
      You can if you live in the US! It isn’t particularly expensive either, high explosives are industrial chemistry. A few dollars per kilo. Maybe a little bit more if you want something fancy. Thanks to movies, people both seriously overestimate and underestimate the capabilities of highly engineered explosive devices, albeit in different dimensions. Generally speaking, sophisticated military targets are not susceptible to generic explosives. A drone with a hundred kilos of explosive will essentially bounce off a lot of targets. An enormous amount of engineering goes into designing an explosive device optimized to defeat that specific target. They use supercomputers to get this stuff right. Exotic engineered explosive devices are unreasonably capable. TBH, once you realize the insane amount of engineering that goes into it, it kind of takes the fun out of it. A lot of high-leverage research goes into aspects an amateur would never think about. This is in some ways a blessing. Amateurs with bad intentions almost always fail at the execution because it isn’t something you can learn by reading the Internet.
      - WalterBright 7mo ago
        Amateurs who try to build their own explosives usually either fail to explode or explode killing the builder. An older friend of mine at Boeing told me how when he was a teen, he had a teen friend who built a pipe bomb. They drove off to a field to set it off. It didn't explode, so his friend went to investigate. Then it went off, and my friend had the pleasure of driving his gutted friend to the hospital to die.
        colechristensen 7mo ago
        There's a selection process at work where smart people who know what they're doing don't try to assemble bombs in their garage for fun. If there's a legitimate reason like your country is fighting an existential war the kinds of people who can do things start doing things. But it's just rare having a person smart enough to be able to do it be stupid enough to try. (and the people who do are nutjob terrorists like Timothy McVeigh)
throwawayffffas 7mo ago
Cost, production capacity, radar cross section, speed, range, payload. Drone means foam wings, plastic body, propellers, cheap camera, simple inertial navigation, maybe GPS, maybe 10-30 kilogram payload. Guided missile means, metal airframe, jet engine, depending on targets thermal imaging or radar terminal guidance, radar altimeters, terrain imaging radars, 100 - 500 kilogram payload. Remote guidance is a very hard problem, modern computers have made it much easier to solve. Even an 80s missile, required hundred of thousands of dollars of equipment just for guidance. Now all you need is a simple computer, a cheap camera and a cheap accelerometer. Drones are much easier to down than missiles, but they make it up in volume.
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  > Drone means foam wings, plastic body, propellers, cheap camera, simple inertial navigation, maybe GPS, maybe 10-30 kilogram payload. You need to seriously upgrade your level of knowledge about what is available in terms of drones today.
  - caminante 7mo ago
    I didn't take it as exhaustive. While you're alluding to high-end reapers/etc., the majority of drones in the Ukraine-Russia conflict have foam wings and low cost components.
    - jacquesm 7mo ago
      The ones that are decimating the russian oil industry are a bit more impressive than that. The foam wing ones are mostly Shaheds, the Ukrainian ones tend to be made of various plastics and/or fibreglass or composites for the more specialized stuff.
      - watwut 7mo ago
        Imo foam wings and low cost components is very impressive. Low cost easy production is an actual tangible benefit. If it destroys the target and is easy cheap to make, it is a better arm.
dyauspitr 7mo ago
Cheap as hell, doesn’t need a launchpad and can be launched from a pick up truck, super easy to make and can be scattered all over the country so there’s no central location to bomb to stop them, fly literally meters of the ground so they’re very hard to detect and you can make tens of thousands of them very quickly and very easily.
blitzar 7mo ago
the good guys bomb is a guided missile, the bad guys bomb is a suicide drone cruise missiles in the hands of a bad guy is a suicide drone and a suicide drone in the hands of a good guy is a guided missile
- m_mueller 7mo ago
  a guided missile would never be used against a civilian target! oh wait..
rustyhancock 7mo ago
It's a pretty fun categorization task but guided missile is too broad that could include rocket artillery! Let's say cruise missiles Vs suicide drone. The factors that make it a guided missile are presence of a rocket motor (or even turbine). Suicide drones like the ones were talking about use piston motors.
duped 7mo ago
Everyone is saying cost but I thought the defining factor was whether it can loiter

woeirua 7mo ago

This is delusional. Iran has thousands of ASM on the coastline. They need 1 to make it through to take out a tanker. Even the best anti missile systems we have aren’t 99.99% reliable. It was always a losing proposition. Iran has always been able to close the strait. What I don’t get is why we need to take Kharg island. Can’t we just blockade ships selling Iranian oil?

onlypassingthru 7mo ago
Look at who's buying the oil for the answer to your question.
bonesss 7mo ago
I think the collective take might be too focused on the kinetic picture to see the underlying issue(s). 1) we want Iranian oil flowing and being bought elsewhere for the economy and to avoid hard decisions in Beijing, and as we’ve recently heard ad nausea money is fungible so… if one hasn’t thought to invade, dominate and occupy mountainous terrain filled with holy people, then ‘open’ means money to The Baddies. 2) it’ll only take a few wrecks to create navigation hazards, tankers are huge and that strait is shallow and narrow. The cleanup crews are slower, they also need massive ships. 3) let’s take a 0.01% reliability of missile attacks… drones, rpgs, suicide attacks, artillery, kamikaze plane attacks, mines, and trebuchets are also out there. So, again, unless we’re invading… fuhgeddabout 100% And, fatally: 4) it’s not the missiles, it’s the threat, and who is insuring the massive money-boats. If your insurance company thought your car would, 0.01% of the time, be blown up resulting in a total wreck and complete loss of cargo and future revenue, your policy would not be what it is. You insure your oil boat for trips, and if not you don’t move it. Trump doesn’t decide this, BigBoat Insurance brokers decide this, with their wallets and vibes. 0.01% x An Oil Tanker (slow, giant, vulnerable, + oil leak cleanup and ecosystem damage, loss of life) x totally foreseeable circumstances = a ‘closed’ straight on demand. Unless, again, the plan is invado-conquering.
- idkduu 7mo ago
  [flagged]

dlisboa 7mo ago

> A US CSG could simply sit in the Hormuz strait shoot down any incoming missiles and keep it open. They can't even do that in their own bases. Most of US defenses have been severely overestimated due to propaganda. They hadn't been tested and when they were they've shown themselves lacking.