With the "Drone Age" quickly coming upon us, what is even the answer to them in warfare? I'd never want to be a soldier but even now, I'd want to be one even less. If all it is is just you waiting around to get dunked by some pencil neck playing with a controller, what is the point? I sometimes hate the turn that the evolution of warfare takes because it just ends up making things even more miserable for everyone. Granted, it is warfare sure. Anyway, what is the answer for drones in warfare and how do you expect things to sort of evolve around drones? Like when tanks first hit the battlefield, what options were made to address them? What about when planes become widely used in combat etc?
Old school AA.The problem with drones is that they bypass modern AA systems that are designed for jet age problems. If you sent drone technology back to WW2, they'd be slaughtered by even the most basic air burst flak. That kind of AA was considered 'obsolete' because jets can just outrun flak and operate at sufficiently high altitudes, and helicopters are large enough that missile AA are preferable, but drones are small and cheap which means flak is relevant again.
>>64339397>if all it is is waiting to be fucked by a fighter fag>if all it is is waiting to be blasted by a cannon cocker>if all it is is waiting to be murdered by the musket mafia>if all it is is catching dysentery and shitting yourself to death months before your spear-toting farmer ass sees a battle
jamming plus physical countermeasures for fiber optics. drones will have an increased role but they are just a cheese strat right now
>>64339434Jamming will just result in a greater priority for autonomy.
>>64339397Install an XM556 in a fully automated mount that's programed to fire on any approaching object that's smaller than a human. Equip every vehicle with one of these on the roof. Yeah, it'll clap all the birds in the area, but whatever.
>>64339397More drones.
>>64339469Yes but with guns
>>64339421Flak was inaccurate and wasteful as shit, almost more of a psychological deterrent than a real weapon providing effective fire on target.There already are modern AA solutions for drones, and massed WWII flak spam has got nothing on them.
>>64339397There isn't one short of squad level automated hard kill counter measures. Everything else is going to be your typical move counter move evolution of warfare. Typical FPV quadcopter "drones" are just a currently convenient and cheap PGM that's both useful on the squad level and very scalable. That's an idea more than a single platform and once technology reaches the point of making that viable then the cats out of the bag. You might make X type of drone mostly obsolete but a work around will be found.>>64339421Worst idea, modern gun based AA would make sense as it's cheap but needs the automation and sensors for effective use, manual units from the olden days would be eaten for breakfast by drones coming in low and fast. Not to mention the whole thermal vision thing, good fucking luck at night.>>64339434There are no such physical countermeasures currently, unless you mean that one untested proposed one from that webm posted the other day in which case lmao. Jamming is a good idea until literally anybody figures out a reasonably cheap radar seeking drone and starts mixing them in to standard drone warfare
For the anti drone bunch.We dont care, refrain from wasting our time and yours.
>>64339421That's just not true. WWII era flak utterly lacks the means to detect drones effectively, especially with how relatively fast, low flying, and quiet they are compared to traditional aircraft. WWII era flak was also INCREDIBLY clunky and hard to aim, even getting the gun on target was a challenge with some of the systems they had. See: crank based AA being borderline useless even at the time. Flak is a decent stopgap until lasers mature, but it really does need to be;A) Organic down to the squad level. It needs to be a system that can be mounted to practically anything because the advantage of drones is low cost = you can afford to have them everywhere and fish for holes in coverage. Which means you need to not have holes in coverage, which means you need ubiquitous AA. B) Have very good sensors. Ideally highly automated sensors that filter out as much possibility of human error and reaction time as possible. You don't have the luxury of spotting incoming at some distant radar horizon so your reaction time need to be damn near instant.
>>64339397Didn't someone just recently post a thread here with a video of some rotating barbed wire that they are using in Ukraine to disable fiber optic drones by catching the wire? For the ones that aren't fiber optic, jammers. For either, there's birdshot.
>>64339525>unless you mean that one untested proposed onei dont feel like you need proof to show that a spinning length of razor wire is going to catch and cut trailing fiber optic cable
>>64339525>There are no such physical countermeasures currentlyYou are living in the past. Anti-drone technicals are the present.U.S. Special Operations Command awarded defense tech startup Allen Control Systems a contract—value and quantity undisclosed—for its Bullfrog autonomous CUAS turret, the company announced Friday. The contract will be executed by ManTech, an established defense contractor. Bullfrog is equipped with sensors and AI to spot and engage incoming drones in groups 1, 2, and 3, and can be armed with an M240, M2, M230, and M134 guns or non-kinetic weapons such as a laser dazzler. And don't forget the lasers.
>>64339543I think zoomies use flak as a euphemism for any small autocannon, because in the original context flak would be worthless against quadcopters.
>>64339421>The problem with drones is that they bypass modern AA systems that are designed for jet age problemsif you can shoot down a jet travelling at mach 2, you can shoot down a drown barely over walking speed
>>64339397>What is the "answer" to drones?Gulf War 1 or better combined arms and actual deep strikes and actual maneuver warfare to stop neo-WW1 trench idiocy. RC Jet drones with scaled down air to air + tiny AWACs + DEWs to sever fiber optic tethers as an energy saving option.
>>64339397Jamming, killing drone operators, programmed munitions, APS.
Can small drones be detected by current radars?Continuous, all-around surveillance using powerful radio waves poses the risk of the radar itself being detected and attacked.
>>64339397I think the most immediate and low-tech solution is AGLs with airburst munitions. I know Benelli was talking about an anti-drone shotgun but it sounds like a PR stunt. Shotguns can intercept drones but nowhere near reliably enough to warrant adding a whole extra guy to each squad who's just there to shoot quadcopters. From that point forward its an EW arms race until we can get lasers strong enough to at least blind a drone reliably mounted to anything bigger than a bicycle
>Turret using whatever long range rifle cartridge you want and ideally old surplus rifles>Tracks and shoots at anything it detects flying in it's range- except instead of just a camera, it has one of those extreme range microphones so before firing it does a simple check- does it go "bzzzzzzzzzz"?>If it sees something it THINKS is a drone but is silent, and said drone does not seem to be on a direct course to hit anything you designate as important, it sends a confirm request to some wagie>This prevents them from obliterating all birds in the area, but more importantly, not wasting ammo>Design system to be as dirt cheap as possible, use the classic Supcom tactic of "t1 AA creep" to achieve saturation in important areas>Also this would be one part of a greater network of drone defense, obviously this has flaws.
>>64339421people have been saying this for decades and yet literally not one nation on the planet has done this or even tried to
>>64339397Do your own homework Vlad.
