The Russo-Ukrainian War has nailed down the fast forward button on drone evolution. The success both sides have had with taking out expensive equipment with cheap drones has prompted a lot of the usual suspects to dust off their standard “the tank is obsolete” talking points.
But military technological evolution is always a two way street. Offense pulls ahead for a while, only for defensive countermeasures to quickly catch up. Such is the case with drone warfare, and now we’re seeing some promising approaches to cost-effective anti-drone weapons.
First up, in an “everything old is new again” war featuring static lines and trench warfare, it should be no surprise that a World War II staple, flak cannons (AKA ack-ack, AKA “Archie”) is making a comeback.
Case in point: Rheinmetall’s Skynex system.
I said SkyNEX! SkyNEX!
It uses a 35mm auto-cannon, and can use both an integrated radar and remote target acquisition (much like Patriot, etc.). I’m having trouble tracking down reliable cost per shell estimates (it uses the same AHEAD ammunition that’s been around a while), but I’m sure it’s considerably cheaper than using using ground-to-air missiles.
It’s not exactly new, since Rheinmetall was working on a 35mm system at least 15 years ago. What’s new is that it’s actually gotten to the point that Austria is taking delivery of systems and Ukraine is testing it.
A second approach that’s also been long in coming which is now finally seeing field testing is lasers:
Laser weapons have been in the works a long, long time, but the energy consumption was so high that nuclear power was required as an energy source for combat lasers (hence why the Gerald R. Ford class of aircraft carriers comes with two nuclear reactors). But battery and laser technology have continued apace, and now you can put it on existing military vehicles. Perhaps even the bed of a pickup truck for an anti-drone technical.
Defense analysts and science fiction have long wondered what the battlefield would look like when beam weapons could actually be deployed on it.
Well, we’re here.
Tags: BlueHalo Locust Laser Weapon System, drones, laser, Military, Rheinmetall, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Skynex, Stryker, technology, Ukraine, video
Buy a shotgun and LOTS of ammo
The real innovation will come when a laser system can engage multiple targets simultaneously using a domed and reflected emitters similar to the Owl you see in conference rooms.
That $8-10 million dollar laser can still be swarmed with thousands of drones totalling $2 million and it’d be worth it.
Drones may well have other uses coming up. Yesterday an Iranian-built drone hit Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’ personal residence. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Given the Secret Service’s apparent inability to protect President Trump on at least two occasions, one wonders when another Iranian drone, piloted by foreign or domestic interests, might be deployed against our country here.
Subotai Bahadur
Actually aircraft carriers come with more than one reactor on the principle that two is one and one is none. Drop a reactor and you are DIW. I was a Navy nuke and I’m not aware of any Navy nuke with fewer than two reactors.
It’s all part of the continual ratchet effect between attack and defense. Today, the attacker has the edge: Tomorrow, something else will give the defense the edge… Until attack has it again.
At that fundamental level, nothing has changed.
You’re going to have to work out the networking on these things, layer them, and make it all redundant and deep enough to stop the swarming attackers. That’s going to take time and money, as well as the actual vision to do it.
I suspect that the outcome for the near future is going to be 21st Century trench warfare, as that seems to be what the Ukrainian conflict has devolved into where they haven’t been able to do maneuver warfare. The ironic thing is, the Ukrainians seem to have done rather better at the whole “deep battle/mobility” thing than the Russians, who’re continually battering at the Ukrainian defenses and bleeding manpower and weapons like crazy. How sustainable that is? No idea; the fact that they’re now bringing in North Koreans is telling.
My guess is that the North Koreans are going to be used as front-line shock troops and rapidly attrited. It will be interesting to see if they hold to historical pattern and commit widespread atrocities once they reach combat.
@Kirk
“The best defense against a tank is another tank.”
“The best defense against a submarine is another sumbmarine.”
“The best defense against a fighter jet is another fighter jet.”
….
“The best defense against a drone swarm is another drone swarm.”
It’s coming.
@Heresolong
Is that true of SSN and SSBNs too? I never thought they had two reactors…but maybe that’s why you’re not allowed “back there”.
You can still overwhelm one with numbers. But we haven’t seen “thousands” (or even hundreds) of drones deployed at the same time anywhere during the Russo-Ukrainian War, and I doubt we’d ever see anywhere that many sent after a tactical target.
To get that many drones on one target, you need either:
1. Very smart drone-swarm AI, or
2. Thousands of human operators.
For the former, I see no indication that swarming AI has advanced more rapidly than automatic targeting AI. And adding the sensors to do effective swarming AI is going to increase the cost of each individual drone.
For the latter, that many drone control RF signals are going to be a big red arrow pointing out the control buildings and bunkers for a longer range HARM or ATACMS strike to take out.
@Andy
No but submariners are crazy. 😁
I was surface Navy but AFAIK US subs have an emergency diesel propulsion system. They also don’t have to worry as much about stopping and sitting if they have to do something to the reactor plant since they aren’t visible and can just be a hole in the water for a while.
Subotai: I’m surprised it hasn’t already happened yet. We’re wide open and completely unprotected against that threat in CONUS.
Kirk: The USAF can still inflict enough damage to allow ground units to maneuver fairly freely… as long as the enemy doesn’t smuggle a swarm close to the airbases and catch them on the ground in a surprise attack. Fortunately, the only conventional peer threat left at the moment isn’t really a ground maneuver fight.
LP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjUdVxJH6yI&pp=ygUPZjE4IGRyb25lIHN3YXJt
The swarm part is already done. All that’s really left is ATR, and if you relax your requirements (say, to “vehicles”), that’s basically done, too.
Oh, and for even more fun, LEO satellite constellations (PRC is starting one, too) can now communicate with cell phone antennas, at least well enough to text (and encrypted data bursts with coordinates and mission orders is all you really need). So, if we got *serious* about swarms, we could have them up and running in a year or less if we bypassed the procurement system.
Also, on the subject of the laser, there’s no need to swap batteries. That laser is rated at 20KW tops (marginal against anything faster or more robust than a drone). The battery is rated at 100s of continuous lasing. That comes out to 2MJ or just over 1/2 KWH. Now, that’s output, so triple or quadruple that number, but it’s still really small and easily recharged by a generator or (in future platforms like OMFV) by the vehicle’s engine.
Heresolong: Correct. Subs don’t really have the space for multiple reactors and steam loops, and our subs are all single-shaft anyways. They do, however, have batteries and diesel-electric engines to limp home with in case of a SCRAM.
One of the stars of the Russo-Ukraine War has been the 2K22M1 ‘Tunguska’ (SA-19 ‘Grison’) self-propelled SHORAD system. It is armed with two, 2А38M twin barreled 30mm cannons and the the 9M311-M1 missile system. It has proven highly effective against drones. The Russians do not have enough of these systems, but they have proven highly effective against drone swarms wherever they have been deployed.
We attempted a similar cannon-based SHORAD system – the 1970’s DIVADS program – but the program was entrusted to the idiots at Ford Philco and failed development spectacularly. The U.S. Army then decided to end their embarrassment and dictated that only missile-based defense systems were necessary in the future. The Flakpanzer Gepard developed by Switzerland and Germany in the same time period is still effective and the Ukrainians have used the limited quantities they have received to great effect against drones. They are the Ukrainians’ best defense against the Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.
The Oerlikon Skymaster system shown here is a repackaging of the the later Gepard systems with a different cannon using the same 35x228mm cartridge. The problem with the missile and Swiss/German gun SHORAD systems is their expendables are extraordinarily expensive. It is also doubtful that we have sufficient (Chinese sourced) tungsten available to make the 35×228mm antiaircraft projectile warheads used by these Swiss/German guns in the volumes necessary. The Chinese are throttling tungsten supplies; the primary reason the Swiss have embargoed 35x228mm cartridges. They don’t want to be cut off from Chinese tungsten.
Some kind of SHORAD system similar to the 2K22M1 ‘Tunguska’ is desperately needed as a bridge to a laser-based system. The laser-based SHORAD systems are still many years from deployment.
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“Laser weapons have been in the works a long, long time, but the energy consumption was so high that nuclear power was required as an energy source for combat lasers”
Weird how a number of laser weapons have been fielded that didn’t require nuclear power plants to work, then.
And how many have been used in battle?
So we got like hundreds of M61 Vulcan cannons in storage, right? How hard would it be to strap these on a bunch of old Bradleys (also from storage) and field anti-drone platoons in every unit.
The nonsense about thousands of North Korean combat troops fighting Ukraine is one of the most obvious examples of wartime propaganda. No one is disputing that they have some 1500 military personnel in the vicinity, as one does with a major customer of one’s MIC. But to spin that up into thousands (maybe even over ten thousand!) of frontline soldiers is just silly. If you believe (or want to believe) that Russia is taking unsustainable casualties, then it’s a blatant appeal to your priors, and you should automatically doubt it.
How do people continue to believe that they’re smart, that they’re good judges of the trustworthiness of claims, after getting suckered by liars over and over? Setting aside the morality, ethics, and legality of domestic psyops, I think they ought to be forbidden on the practical grounds of making trusting citizens irrational and rational citizens untrusting. The long-term damage to the nation is impossible to calculate, but the most wrong answer is zero.
Where’s the mini-gun in 10 gauge, if you want to throw out lead.
For that matter, where’s the mini-gun in .223? Just as lethal against small drones at a decent range & a tenth the cost of the .50 cal.
“So we got like hundreds of M61 Vulcan cannons in storage, right? How hard would it be to strap these on a bunch of old Bradleys (also from storage) and field anti-drone platoons in every unit.”
The M163 Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS), M163, was withdrawn from U.S service in 1994 due to inadequate range. We made over 500 of them on the M113 chassis.
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“And how many [lasers] have been used in battle?”
The U.S. / Israeli Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL) shot down 28 Katyusha rockets and six artillery shells in the 2000 – 2002 period. It was abandoned a couple of years later due to size, immobility, and the very dangerous chemicals required to generate the laser beam efficiently from modest power sources.