Head of Ukraine’s national foreign intelligence service – “We have studied…the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. We are aware of Russia’s long-term plans…at least until 2030.”
They are coffins on tracks now. The tank, the warship, the aircraft carrier. All exceptionally vulnerable to $10k drones and thus: all obsolete. Until some sort of anti-drone minigun on AI enters service, the tank sits, the warship barely floats, and the aircraft carrier is 500km away.
But: attaching some sort of infrared and visible spectrum 360 camera to a processing unit isn’t beyond the pale already. It won’t be long until these units are all back in action. Stealth drones already? Hypersonic missiles? Good old fashioned AT launchers? Reactive armour? Spaced hulls? Laser interception? Gauss canons?
We’re in an accelerated arms race right now indeed
We’ve had these for decades now. They’re called CIWS, and they’re capable of taking missiles out of the sky and turning inflatable dinghies into flotsam. They’re mounted on every aircraft carrier in the world - both US and otherwise - and we’ve fielded trailer mounted variants for at least 20 years. They were using them in Iraq to blow mortar rounds out of the air.
We have automated systems on vehicles capable of identifying a tank round traveling 1,700 meters per second via radar, figure out whether it’s going to hit or miss the vehicle, and fire an explosive at it to neutralize it if it is, all within a span of about 300 milliseconds.
The biggest issues with drones are largely man portable solutions and things that don’t send thousands of rounds of lead into the sky to rain down on a population center. Drones are small enough to fly indoors and cheap enough to be deployed in swarms. Figuring out how to counter those aspects is probably where the most energy is going to be spent.
That, and drones are both small and therefore harder to detect - especially flying close to sea level - and they can be remote controlled, which allows them to move erratically, making them much harder targets to hit. There’s definitely a reason that countries are looking into things like lasers and blasts of air to knock them out of the sky instead of just filling the area with a lot of bullets.
Six anti-drone radars, the weapon station gun is 30mm so not as beefy as a Gepard/Skynex but those are meant to take out more than drones. And, yes, AI-enabled targeting.
30mm is probably unsuited, you don’t need that calibre vs a drone, you need agility, and higher RoF.
The detection abilities all look undercooked for me too, some sort of mesh radar, infrared, and visible spectrum cameras combined with high speed classification network with targeting abilities, and realtime information about current friendly movements is still necessary to identify and confidently neutralise enemy drones. To counter jamming some sort of fibreoptic umbilical system and/or lifi would be necessary too.
And I know its being worked on, but people are being pretty hush hush about that. The challenge then being productionising these systems, it’s all very well on a test bed, but the front line has some rather extreme conditions for hardware, and software, and the manufacturing of these integrated systems is challenging too. You’ll need loads of them to really be effective. Mobile big dog type platforms would also be fabulous to run alongside a tank brigade
I wonder how fast they can produce and use those new laser weapons, they should rip most drones a new one. Currently, modern war looks a like a total cluster fuck for everyone involved, tiny accurate death from above at any time… sheesh… With laser cover, currently only available on tracks/wheels and in short supply, I think it would already look very different. I have no real clue what’s about to happen though, this war kicked off a crazy weird arms race.
The power requirements for lasers that can damage drones is pretty extreme. Ye cannae change the laws of physics captain! And so, deployments to mobile platforms likely to be probably more suited to a dedicated support type role IMO. Mounted to AFVs perhaps. LFVs anyone?
They are coffins on tracks now. The tank, the warship, the aircraft carrier. All exceptionally vulnerable to $10k drones and thus: all obsolete. Until some sort of anti-drone minigun on AI enters service, the tank sits, the warship barely floats, and the aircraft carrier is 500km away.
But: attaching some sort of infrared and visible spectrum 360 camera to a processing unit isn’t beyond the pale already. It won’t be long until these units are all back in action. Stealth drones already? Hypersonic missiles? Good old fashioned AT launchers? Reactive armour? Spaced hulls? Laser interception? Gauss canons?
We’re in an accelerated arms race right now indeed
We’ve had these for decades now. They’re called CIWS, and they’re capable of taking missiles out of the sky and turning inflatable dinghies into flotsam. They’re mounted on every aircraft carrier in the world - both US and otherwise - and we’ve fielded trailer mounted variants for at least 20 years. They were using them in Iraq to blow mortar rounds out of the air.
We have automated systems on vehicles capable of identifying a tank round traveling 1,700 meters per second via radar, figure out whether it’s going to hit or miss the vehicle, and fire an explosive at it to neutralize it if it is, all within a span of about 300 milliseconds.
The biggest issues with drones are largely man portable solutions and things that don’t send thousands of rounds of lead into the sky to rain down on a population center. Drones are small enough to fly indoors and cheap enough to be deployed in swarms. Figuring out how to counter those aspects is probably where the most energy is going to be spent.
Did not save the Moskva. Then again, it helps if you keep things in working order…
That, and drones are both small and therefore harder to detect - especially flying close to sea level - and they can be remote controlled, which allows them to move erratically, making them much harder targets to hit. There’s definitely a reason that countries are looking into things like lasers and blasts of air to knock them out of the sky instead of just filling the area with a lot of bullets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMBT
Six anti-drone radars, the weapon station gun is 30mm so not as beefy as a Gepard/Skynex but those are meant to take out more than drones. And, yes, AI-enabled targeting.
30mm is probably unsuited, you don’t need that calibre vs a drone, you need agility, and higher RoF.
The detection abilities all look undercooked for me too, some sort of mesh radar, infrared, and visible spectrum cameras combined with high speed classification network with targeting abilities, and realtime information about current friendly movements is still necessary to identify and confidently neutralise enemy drones. To counter jamming some sort of fibreoptic umbilical system and/or lifi would be necessary too.
And I know its being worked on, but people are being pretty hush hush about that. The challenge then being productionising these systems, it’s all very well on a test bed, but the front line has some rather extreme conditions for hardware, and software, and the manufacturing of these integrated systems is challenging too. You’ll need loads of them to really be effective. Mobile big dog type platforms would also be fabulous to run alongside a tank brigade
I wonder how fast they can produce and use those new laser weapons, they should rip most drones a new one. Currently, modern war looks a like a total cluster fuck for everyone involved, tiny accurate death from above at any time… sheesh… With laser cover, currently only available on tracks/wheels and in short supply, I think it would already look very different. I have no real clue what’s about to happen though, this war kicked off a crazy weird arms race.
The power requirements for lasers that can damage drones is pretty extreme. Ye cannae change the laws of physics captain! And so, deployments to mobile platforms likely to be probably more suited to a dedicated support type role IMO. Mounted to AFVs perhaps. LFVs anyone?