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Author Topic: Military Drones Changing the Game  (Read 25299 times)

littleman

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #15 on: February 01, 2024, 06:10:39 PM »
Incredible footage.  I wonder how long it will take for the navies of the world to implement signal jamming technology.   I am also sure self-navigating drone boats are right around the corner or here already too, so the counter to that will have to be more creative.  It will probably be something like fully automated perimeter guarding attack systems.  They'll have to have a ton of redundancy, I sure eventually someone is going to swarm a ship with dozens of attack drones, maybe by sea and air at the same time.  Such systems will very likely cause false triggers. 
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grnidone

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #16 on: February 01, 2024, 06:21:42 PM »
How much better would we be if we took our money and used it to research making people well instead of killing them? I am so very tired of new ways of war.
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littleman

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #17 on: February 01, 2024, 06:44:12 PM »
>I am so very tired of new ways of war.

I hear you.   It would be nice if there were new ways to prevent war.  The best I could come up with is democracy.  Since the POTUS has had the ability to do military action without a declaration of war from Congress the US has been involved in endless conflicts.  The consolidation of power is fueling most of the wars today.
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Brad

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #18 on: February 01, 2024, 07:22:46 PM »
Ukraine is working on a number of different drone types.

1. Ground based rescue drones.  These are sort of self propelled stretchers that can go out into no-mans-land and pick up wounded soldiers (if they are able to haul themselves onboard) in places where its too dangerous to send a human team.

2. Not really a special drone type, but I've seen helicopter type drones lead walking wounded back to Ukraine lines and also lead surrendering Russian soldiers to a place they can give themselves up.

3. Mine clearance drones - not so much intended to clear mines under fire but to systematically clear fields and roads without exposing humans to danger.  This is going to be a huge growth industry not just in Ukraine.

4. Explosive vehicles:  Ukraine remotely drove an old AFV loaded with explosives, several kilometers across contested ground and then under a bridge where they detonated it, partially destroying same.

5. Automatic mine layers.  These can lay hundreds of both anti-tank and anti-personal mines in a very short time.  Russia uses these a lot.  I'm not 100% sure if these are drones or if the Russians sacrifice a human driver.
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rcjordan

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #19 on: February 02, 2024, 05:10:44 PM »
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rcjordan

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #20 on: February 03, 2024, 06:03:02 PM »
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Brad

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #21 on: February 03, 2024, 06:46:49 PM »
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rcjordan

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #22 on: February 04, 2024, 03:03:12 AM »
Russia Has Massed 500 Tanks For An Attack On Kupyansk. Thousands Of Ukrainian Drones Await Them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/03/russia-has-massed-500-tanks-for-an-attack-on-kupyansk-thousands-of-ukrainian-drones-await-them/

Five hundred tanks. More than 600 fighting vehicles. Hundreds of howitzers. Forty thousand troops. According to Ukraine’s eastern command, Russia has assembled a huge field army in eastern Ukraine opposite the free Ukrainian city of Kupyansk.
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rcjordan

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #23 on: February 12, 2024, 12:30:20 PM »
>dead men walking

"In 1982, the legendary Admiral Hyman Rickover stunned Congress by testifying that in a war with the Soviet Union, U.S. aircraft carriers would survive for “48 hours.” In the four decades since, the carrier’s vulnerability has dramatically increased. Anti-ship missiles have become far more accurate and long-ranged since Rickover’s testimony, as the unrefueled range of an aircraft carrier’s air wing has shrunk from well over 1,000 nautical miles to barely 600 now. This leaves carrier commanders with two unpalatable options: stay out of enemy range but become operationally irrelevant or sail close enough but put a $13 billion vessel and its 5,000 sailors at risk."

https://time.com/6693320/us-navy-yemen-middle-east/
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creative666

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #24 on: February 12, 2024, 04:47:29 PM »
Quote from: rcjordan on February 12, 2024, 12:30:20 PM
>dead men walking

"In 1982, the legendary Admiral Hyman Rickover stunned Congress by testifying that in a war with the Soviet Union, U.S. aircraft carriers would survive for “48 hours.” In the four decades since, the carrier’s vulnerability has dramatically increased. Anti-ship missiles have become far more accurate and long-ranged since Rickover’s testimony, as the unrefueled range of an aircraft carrier’s air wing has shrunk from well over 1,000 nautical miles to barely 600 now. This leaves carrier commanders with two unpalatable options: stay out of enemy range but become operationally irrelevant or sail close enough but put a $13 billion vessel and its 5,000 sailors at risk."

https://time.com/6693320/us-navy-yemen-middle-east/

Depending on who the enemey is - are most wars going to be a 'stalemate'... technologically at least? Will it not come down to the one who is willing to go all in and hope that the rest of world are too caught up in their own politics to call their bluff? Like Russia/Ukraine?
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Brad

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #25 on: February 12, 2024, 08:08:14 PM »
Relatively cheap missiles and drones are going to change the whole dynamic and balance of power.  Players like Iran know this but it's only just dawning on the Great Powers.  You don't need to buy warplanes at over $1 billion each to tactically or strategically bomb your neighbor or a country 4 states away.  The guys in Yemen aren't even a  state actor and they have half shut down the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and worse our warships start running out of surface to air missiles in only 2 weeks and have to sail off to reload.

Rickover is right.  The days of surface warships are not quite over but they are numbered.  In the medium term it effects how we design ships and what types of ships we build.  I expect drones to have replaced most fighters on super carriers towards the end of the carriers lifetime.  But this is going to seriously effect America's ability to project power.
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rcjordan

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #26 on: February 12, 2024, 08:37:01 PM »
>The days of surface warships are not quite over but they are numbered.

But based upon what little military history I know, nations don't change -or drop- military assets until they get their a## kicked using them.  We'll have to lose 2 or 3 carriers & XX thousand personnel in a week's time.
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Brad

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #27 on: February 12, 2024, 10:54:17 PM »
>a## kicked  >history

That is my fear here.  Pearl Harbor, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, battleships were obsolete but we stubbornly hung on to them and lost them to a bunch of cheap airplanes.  "We are always fighting the last war."  One problem is flag officers tend to be old and the military tends to be hidebound and resistant to change.  For example the USN has been signaling for years that they don't need more super carriers, but Congress keeps insisting they build more.

Carriers won't become obsolete overnight, but little countries will start stocking up on cruise missiles and drones and someday they will be able to hit back.

This goes for land warfare too.  A cheap drone and a cheap bazooka can take out the best tanks ever made.  Drones dropping lowly hand grenades can hunt soldiers in trenches and foxholes relentlessly.  There is almost nowhere to hide.

And it's not just us, China, Russia, UK, France are all in the same boat.

This is part of why Australia is putting so much in on building submarines - and nuclear ones at that.
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Brad

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #28 on: February 14, 2024, 11:23:25 AM »
Marines to Test Logistics Drone Inspired by Drug Running Narco Subs

https://news.usni.org/2024/02/13/marine-to-test-logistics-drone-inspired-by-drug-running-narco-subs
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littleman

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Re: Military Drones Changing the Game
« Reply #29 on: February 14, 2024, 06:30:18 PM »
>The days of surface warships are not quite over but they are numbered.

I am way out of my area of expertise here, but it does seem to be conceivable that counter drone technology is within grasps for first world nations with the budget to spend.  Stuff like signal jamming, IR vision and heat guided counter drones, laser or conventional small arms guided by tracking systems all seem doable.  I know militaries are  bureaucracies and the wheels of change happen slowly, but we're a bunch of old spammers and we see it coming, surely those who do this stuff for a living are watching what's happening and taking notes?
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