Get hyped for the future of overmatch™: tactical™ drone™ carriers™ with hemispheric radar. Reenact the Battle of Midway along the Kaluga corridor!More seriously, I think this is the direction ground combat will take. There will still be IFVs with infantry following up and GMLRS in the rear, but automated FPV swarms from small ground carriers with anti-FPV defenses is the next big thing. The FPVs solve the last few miles of terrain issue for the ground vehicles, the ground bots solve the logisitics of the FPVs, and making them small avoids the eggs in a basket problem of using a regular logistics truck for the FPVs.
I'm not impressed by ground drones. They seem like easy targets for flying ones.
>>65225441
>>65225441Drones are still new enough hard counters are yet to enter service but I think they'll come along in the next decade.At that point thirdies will be drone fodder while developed nations advance behind a wall of counter drone.Once counters are common it'll become a numbers game, biggest drone swarm overwelms the others defences and the slaughter spreads behind the lines.
>>65225446Normal trucks (or buhankas) are even worse. But you can't run an entire military campaign with mid-range strike alone. Eventually there have to be boots on the ground, and unless you want them to get raped too by stand-behind groups with FPVs, you need your own FPV-scale launching units to thin things out enough for the humans with VSHORAD to tiptoe in.So split up the single drone carrier truck into 4 or 5 expendable bots, give each one an anti-FPV weapon and cheap radars all around, and let them carry 30 FPVs each. It's like a WW2 naval group instead of ordinary ground war.
>>65225446>I'm not impressed by ground drones. They seem like easy targets for flying ones.It's early days, but if you think about it from a physics perspective the logical progression here is frankly pretty obvious. Eventually there will be a mixture of DEWs, extremely high reaction autoturrets, and anti-airdrone-drones (which can be tiny and fairly short range), all backed by ever improving AI and sensors. Overlapping layers upon layers on each side. And since it's all drones significant attrition is perfectly acceptable. Victory will be determined heavily by implementation quality, sheer quantity, and the logistics/economics of each side backing it all up and doing replacements.We'll probably also see more and more of the logistics chain fully automated too. Heavy cargo drones that deliver smaller combat drones and consumables the last few dozen miles towards combat lines from automated trains or heavy transporters going from factories or shipping depots. Automatic patrolling anti-drone platforms, mesh node deployment and more. Human overall planning and direction will matter for awhile longer and niche aspects but things are moving quick. None of this requires any radical new tech at all, just evolution and refinement of what already exists.
I have to admit I like the idea
this but with switchblade style loitering munitions
>>65225493so close
the concept is already in use, you are late
>>65225454There's always going to be some equalization though, defender has hard physics advantages in terms of shorter logistic lines and that it simply requires less energy and mass to shoot down an attacking drone near the target then it does to send it from the launch site. Attacker is still going to need a lot more.As a practical matter, at least for awhile there may well be second-mover advantages too. Countries that don't have much of a conventional military also don't have much of a conventional military lobbying and job security program and unions and shareholders and so on. Sure in theory the US could move fast and cheap on drones, but will it actually do so IRL if not forced? Because economics is the whole thing here, if the US still ends up spending 5-10x per munition and is slow about pumping them out then the relative advantage shrinks a lot. I'll also argue that drones also represent some level of actual paradigm shift in geopolitics, in that it makes certain capabilities feasible for shittier powers that previously were just impossible. We're seeing that with Iran, which has been able to cause a lot of damage in ways that it just would not have been able to achieve a few decades ago, PGMs of any kind along with delivery were the exclusive ability of advanced countries at one point.So I'm not going to be dismissive even for thirdies, and chinks are not picky about who they send drone parts too (and actually that's another thing, drones aren't necessarily a proliferation tech so the bar to sell it worldwide is low).
>>65225696>Countries that don't have much of a conventional military also don't have much of a conventional military lobbying and job security program and unions and shareholders and so onThis is 100% the problem slowing drones in the west, poor militaries are rapidly changing their procurement towards drones while rich countries have elected officials on the MIC payroll via donations.We need to end political donations as a concept and make it bribery prosecuted as treason but it's going to take a lot of riots to make that happen as asking nicely won't do shit.
>>65225723This post has convinced me BRICS is very strong and the west is falling
>>65225859Go be /pol/troon brownoid tourist in some other thread please.
