[HN Gopher] Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the dro...
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Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race
Author : seanobannon
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-03-03 15:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (seanobannon.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (seanobannon.substack.com)
| xnx wrote:
| It's shocking to me the Secretary of Defense confirmation hearing
| only mentioned "drone" once, and that was not in reference to the
| future of warfare.
|
| Ukraine has made pretty clear that drones will play a huge roll
| in future major conflicts. It's crazy that we haven't already
| shifted major portions of the defense budget from legacy weapons
| systems (e.g. tanks) to drones.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the US had drones before Ukraine occurred. The
| US does invest in drones. Maybe they will more, but we're
| probably a little way away from them assuming the role of tanks
| any time soon.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| There's things like the Anduril Bolt. They cost like 100x as
| much as devices the Ukranians are building from cardboard.
| Another major innovation is TOW style fiber optic control
| which is immune to electronic countermeasures. There's
| definitely a lot to learn, but sadly necessity is the mother
| of invention and not since WW2 has manufacturing cost really
| been a serious concern for US defense production. Seems like
| we'll need a really big war to make that essential, and then
| there's an open question whether we'd actually be able to do
| it given that nobody knows how to _do_ anything anymore.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Seems like we'll need a really big war to make that
| essential, and then there's an open question whether we'd
| actually be able to do it given that nobody knows how to do
| anything anymore.
|
| I'm not sure if I'd be rooting for this eventuality.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| No, I'm definitely not! But I can't imagine the US
| defense sector doing anything sensible otherwise.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Drone" gets used to cover a lot of things; full aircraft
| sized Reaper/Predator drones down to toy-sized quadcopters.
| It's the latter which Ukraine has been developing, including
| a unique solution to ECM: the fiber-optic drone.
|
| Small drones do not assume the role of tanks. Drones assume
| the role of WW1 aircraft: artillery spotters and very light
| bombing capability. They have this role there because both
| sides have SAM superiority over the other's airforce.
|
| Drones solve the problem that combat aircraft are too
| expensive and too easy to shoot down.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Small drones do not assume the role of tanks
|
| I'm not saying they do. I was replying to a comment.
| FreebasingLLMs wrote:
| > very light bombing capability.
|
| Define "light". Ukraine is fielding FPV drones with EFPs
| attached that can easily slice into anything armored.
| V__ wrote:
| I would be really interested in a deep analysis. Ukraine
| doesn't have air superiority and the war has evolved into
| trench warfare.. thus drones are a very usefull tool.
|
| But would this still be the case for a conflict with US
| involvement?
| rtkwe wrote:
| The major threat is SAM and other anti air. Maybe the US's
| stealth or long range cruise missiles would be enough to
| knock down and keep down the opponents anti air coverage but
| it's not guaranteed. Neither side has been able to gain safe
| access to the skies in this whole conflict, modern AA is just
| able to cover such a wide area it's hard to get ground assets
| close enough to strike.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Maybe the US's stealth or long range cruise missiles
| would be enough to knock down and keep down the opponents
| anti air coverage but it's not guaranteed.
|
| That's what those capabilities are designed to do ("SEAD"),
| but they're very expensive. And so strategic that the US
| wasn't willing to let the Ukranians have any.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Of course yeah, the main thing is they've not really been
| tested in a while against OpFor radar or AA so I have
| some reservations about it actually working long term.
| The last time they really tested at all was 2003 during
| the second Iraq war. Even if they can knock out dedicated
| AA manpads could still pose a significant threat they
| haven't had to encounter in a while.
|
| If they work like they should on paper and can keep the
| opponents pinned to the ground under US air supremacy
| it'll be great but there's always that little doubt that
| it will work as well against a more evenly match opponent
| like a theoretical US v Russia/China when it's not
| punching down so far.
| tim333 wrote:
| If you think of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, maybe not
| during the initial attack but once there were troops on the
| ground they would likely be vulnerable.
| moduspol wrote:
| Yep. It boggles my mind that we still do aircraft flyovers at
| big football games. Those should be drones doing coordinated
| light shows--even in heavy winds, rain, and unfavorable
| conditions. Just to show that we've mastered it, and that we
| can do it easily even when there are no stakes.
|
| My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good
| with drones and just strategically have decided not to
| broadcast it, but I don't think that's the way forward. It
| needs to be known that we've absolutely mastered them.
|
| You know, kind of like the Chinese have done with their drone
| shows at the Olympics and similar events.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really
| good with drones and just strategically have decided not to
| broadcast it..._
|
| What would you call the Reapers and such? The US has a
| massive fleet of large, armed drones, remotely operated, and
| quite a few are capable of being armed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicles_in_th.
| ..
|
| It's different from the consumer/small commercial drones
| being talked about here, but the US Military is pretty darn
| good at UAVs.
| xnx wrote:
| True. This is a very different class of drone. What is the
| defense against an adversary who releases a thousand
| quadcopter style drones against a US aircraft carrier?
| nradov wrote:
| The type of quadcopter style drones that can be produced
| in the thousands have very short range and limited
| sensors. How are they going to get to the aircraft
| carrier? The lessons learned in a land conflict in
| Eastern Europe have little relevance to the Pacific
| Theater, where the US Navy intends to focus now.
| 00N8 wrote:
| The carriers aren't sailing around alone - they're
| escorted by a whole fleet (plus air patrol) that will
| intercept the drone launching vehicle at multiple dozen
| nautical miles range. Smaller quadcopter drones won't
| even get close to catching the carrier (which can travel
| over 40 kts while evading) before their batteries die.
| And even if a few hundred got through, how much damage
| can they really do? I'd imagine the flight decks can be
| patched quickly, although some radar equipment & any jets
| parked at the time of the attack would probably be lost.
|
| It's definitely a concern as part of a larger attack, but
| I don't think a quadcopter drone swarm alone is likely to
| sink a carrier or leave it combat ineffective in the long
| term.
| euroderf wrote:
| Agreed. But there's going to be "happy medium" drones
| that can be delivered by a long-range mothership. Price
| is no object when you can take out a carrier.
| nradov wrote:
| That's just silly. For attacks against surface targets,
| the bombers or strike aircraft (possibly unmanned) are
| going to continue carrying large, fast cruise missiles
| just like they have been since the 1960's. There is zero
| reason to use quadcopter type drones for this mission.
| euroderf wrote:
| Maybe figure out what types of swarms China _can_ defend
| against, and then send a different type of swarm.
| esseph wrote:
| Insanely sophisticated electronic warfare that can
| disrupt / defeat / destroy.
|
| A few nice miniguns with radars sensitive enough to pick
| up birds that fire flak.
|
| Auto cannons.
|
| Missiles.
|
| ... Lasers.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really
| good with drones and just strategically have decided not to
| broadcast it
|
| I am confused.
|
| The US has _massive_ fleets of military drones of every type
| and size that have been proven in combat environments. They
| literally pioneered the development of this type of military
| system and have been using them operationally decades before
| anyone else. Did everyone just forget this?
|
| The US has extremely mature and capable drone technology,
| much better than a lot of what is being used in Ukraine.
| Really the only question is the ability of the US to scale
| production if it needed to.
| mopsi wrote:
| Entire categories of drones are missing from the US
| arsenal, such as the ultra-cheap wire-guided ones that
| allow Ukrainians to fly 20 km into the enemy's rear, enter
| buildings, explore them from the inside, and leave behind
| presents or detonate immediately if they find any targets.
| Such drones can be seen at the start of this video, and at
| the very end too, when they are sneaking up to artillery
| and puncturing gun barrels:
| https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1893632328108220538
|
| The US leads in larger drones, like the Global Hawk, which
| is the size of a regional airliner, can stay airborne for
| more than a day, and cover tens of thousands of kilometers
| in that time. The smaller and cheaper ones are just
| expensive toys, far behind what's seen in Ukraine in terms
| of actual usefulness. A cheap Chinese agricultural sprayer
| drone with equally cheap 3D-printed drum of infantry
| grenades or an anti-tank mine strapped to it outperforms
| most "military grade" commercial offerings like Switchblade
| that cost ten times as much and are good for only a single
| use, unlike the sprayer, which returns home after dropping
| its payload.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The US has a different drone tech tree than Ukraine.
| Ukraine is adapting to the limitations of the cheap
| drones available to them. There is value in this as
| operational knowledge but it is a mistake to assume that
| the US is bound by similar constraints. They do things
| differently because they have other options. The US has
| plenty of experience designing wire-guided systems; they
| largely abandoned them for a reason.
|
| There is much to learn about drone warfare from Ukraine
| but I would not expect a conflict with advanced technical
| capabilities to look similar.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| The US doesn't try to build cheap One-Way Attack drones
| like Ukraine because the US has the most advanced air
| force in the world and utilizes that for surveillance and
| combat. They have advanced communications and battlefield
| coordination tools so that a small unit commander doesn't
| need to carry/use drones. They can get surveillance from
| those Global Hawks and call in strikes from Reapers. The
| drones allow Ukraine to conduct asymmetric warfare
| against a larger force with more resources. The US _is_
| the larger force, and so those types of drones are a
| niche product, not a primary weapon.
| nradov wrote:
| I guess you haven't been paying attention. The Marine Corps has
| divested its tanks in preparation for fighting an island-
| hopping campaign against China.
|
| https://www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/2857680/fo...
| euroderf wrote:
| It's pretty amazing that an American armed forces service
| gave up an entire lineup of weaponry. 2021: "The Marine Corps
| had more than 450 tanks prior to the deactivation of the tank
| battalions. To date, MCSC has transferred more than 400 tanks
| to the Army. The remaining tanks in the Marine Corps
| inventory are afloat globally on Maritime Prepositioning
| Ships and are scheduled for transfer to the Army over the
| next few years."
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I saw someone claiming drones are the biggest military invention
| since the stirrup!
|
| The US would do well to start catching up on that technology.
|
| BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the Ukrainian
| drone industry will be the best in the world.
| floatrock wrote:
| The aircraft carrier made the battleship obsolete, and I think
| most war strategists acknowledge that drones and cruise
| missiles have made the aircraft carrier obsolete in a true hot
| war. We haven't seen one of those sink yet, but well, Russia
| controls the historically strategic port of Sevastopol, and yet
| what's left of their Black Sea fleet has retreated to ports
| back behind Stormshadow range. Taiwan plans are definitely
| looking at cruise-missile-vs-airplane-range ratios.
|
| So yes, drones and other unmanned munitions are game changers.
| I just wish the argument wasn't "increase civilian drones so we
| have a rich and vibrant military industrial complex ready for
| when we get to destroy things."
|
| Then again, some of what the article is kinda saying is "if
| there's civilian applications for this, you don't need to have
| a military industrial complex (until you're forced to on a
| wartime footing, at which point you're not starting from
| zero)." Which is basically the strategic-importance argument
| that is keeping Boeing afloat these days...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Russia has exactly one aircraft carrier that nearly sank of
| its own accord. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraf
| t_carrier_Admir...
|
| Taiwan should be building a lot of drones if they intend to
| fight. However, that's not the only possibility; recent
| shifts in US posture may encourage the "voluntary
| reintegration" local political faction, including the
| possibility of handing over TSMC intact.
| floatrock wrote:
| It's not Russia's aircraft carriers I'm concerned about.
|
| Russia's experience with drones vs. her guided missile
| cruisers has more than enough there to translate to more
| capable aircraft carriers.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If I remember rightly, one of the successful attacks was
| a floating "drone" made of a small boat packed with
| explosives. Kind of a hybrid between the torpedo and the
| fireship, and quite hard to defend against at night.
|
| China has (checks wikipedia) three operational carriers,
| one very modern _Fujian_ , the obsolete former training
| ship _Liaoning_ , and _Shandong_ , which appears to be
| halfway between the two, the first locally built carrier.
| During WW2, the US fielded ... 111 aircraft carriers.
| Just a whole different order of magnitude.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Li
| aon... (interesting and varied history!)
| tw04 wrote:
| > During WW2, the US fielded ... 111 aircraft carriers.
| Just a whole different order of magnitude.
|
| And would have absolutely no way to reach that scale
| again. Or the equivalent in drone production, which is
| why it's absolutely preposterous to take a hostile
| attitude towards our closest neighbors and trade and
| potentially put our geographical advantages at risk.
| jdeibele wrote:
| One of things that's a concern is the consolidation of
| industry into fewer and fewer bigger and bigger plants.
| Not only does that mean a bottleneck in one place is far
| worse, it also means that there's not the depth of
| experience available many places. There's a handful of
| production engineers rather than dozens. And there's not
| the same number of plants that can be converted from
| sewing machines to rifles or automobiles to tanks.
|
| I was reading something that said militarily, the US is
| now in the same position that Japan was prior to WWII
| because we've outsourced so much of our production.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| China doesn't need lots of aircraft carriers unless the
| want to invade US.
|
| What they need and they have is enough weapons to destroy
| any US aircraft carrier approaching their coast.
|
| Naval power doesn't mean just aircraft carriers and China
| has 100x shipbuilding capacity US has.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| If China wants Taiwan back the only thing they need to do
| is make sure the US Navy and cargo ships can't reach the
| island.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _drones and cruise missiles have made the aircraft carrier
| obsolete in a true hot war_
|
| The notion of unsinkable carriers is mostly fiction. In WWII
| I think almost every CV America entered the war with (but 3,
| Enterprise, Saratoga and Ranger) was sunk by '44.
| runsWphotons wrote:
| I will take the other side of that bet.
| lawn wrote:
| > BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the
| Ukrainian drone industry will be the best in the world.
|
| I'd say it already is.
| palata wrote:
| Don't forget China. China is way ahead everybody else when it
| comes to consumer drones and producing them at scale. Like
| way ahead.
| lawn wrote:
| They may have the manufacturing muscles but Ukraine has
| been able to develop and test their drones in live combat
| for years. There's nothing that propels technology forward
| as much as deadly necessity.
| palata wrote:
| > They may have the manufacturing muscles
|
| This sounds like it's dramatically under-estimating the
| Chinese engineers. If you take a drone today, like a DJI
| Mavic. Pretty much every single component of that drone
| is better than what we can do - at scale - in the West.
| It's not like we sent them blueprints and they mass
| produced the drones. Their technology is first class,
| arguably better than the West in the field of robotics.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Maybe shocked if China and even Russia didn't have the
| specs and designs for every Ukrainian drone.
|
| Drone hardware in software are mature. Adoption is more
| matter of observing tactics and human interaction
| clvx wrote:
| I'm just baffled how Russia switched the frontline using fiber
| drones. It's genius and worrisome at the same time.
| tim333 wrote:
| Ukraine has them too. They both buy the fiber tech from
| China.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Rule of Acquisition #34. War is good for business.
| klipt wrote:
| Amazing that disposable drones can get fiber internet while
| residents of Silicon Valley can't!
| euroderf wrote:
| And then you trace back the fibers, glistening in the
| sunlight... your operators had better be mobile.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Unlikely. Ukraine does not have scale, manufacturing base and
| talent for that - right now it's mostly assembling drones from
| Chinese parts with very little innovation on top of that.
| People talked about AI swarms but very little of that
| materialized at the front line. Larger drones require satellite
| connections, advanced materials, etc - Ukraine does not have
| that either. I expect Ukrainian expertise in war drones will
| stagnate and become obsolete very quickly after the war.
| slimjimrick wrote:
| Interesting read
| TheBicPen wrote:
| This reads like a piece of defense propaganda. "Undoing the 1990s
| decision" - should we really return the US defense industry to
| cold-war levels? The world has changed, and the threat of
| outright war with the US is dramatically lower than 4 decades
| ago. Yes, China is an adversary, but to say that it's an
| existential threat to the US the same way the Soviet Union was is
| absurd.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| [deleted]
| ok_dad wrote:
| Claims that other people are propagandizing are ridiculous
| with zero evidence, that's some FUD BS. Make a better
| argument against OP if you're so sure.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > And they (China) are explicitly interested in overturning
| the global order.
|
| - Putin is actively taking Ukrainian territory by force
|
| - Trump is threatening to take Greenland, Canada and the
| Panama canal by (economic) force
|
| - Xi Jinping is threatening to take Taiwanese territory by
| force
|
| Of all three, Jinping seems like the smallest threat to the
| "world order".
|
| If you're talking about economic power, that's a different
| story but I wouldn't call them "adversary" in that context.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Nobody takes Trump's comments seriously. Possibly not even
| Trump.
|
| Putin is in a hot war right now. Xi seems to be actively
| preparing for one. The chance of the US sitting aside a
| military invasion of Taiwan seems very low to me.
| Loughla wrote:
| It's been, what, 10 years of Trump now. If you're not
| taking what he says seriously, you have failed to learn
| anything.
| stickfigure wrote:
| His first term was mostly inconsequential. The second
| term looks different so far - especially for the
| Ukranians - but the Canadians, Mexicans, and
| Greenlanders/Danes aren't preparing for war. To be
| honest, I think the US military would flatly refuse.
| There would be violent revolution in the streets here.
| TheBicPen wrote:
| Say what you will about the current situation, at least there
| is no nuclear arms race. I'd say that's a pretty big
| distinction.
| yimby2001 wrote:
| I think the weakness of this argument is that "domestic American
| drones" will just be using parts, or entire drones, made in China
|
| "Ukraine are producing two-and-a-half drones a day now." What is
| that supposed to mean? A drone has a lot of parts. I can make 2
| 1/2 drones a day if I have the parts.
| danielvf wrote:
| Ukraine announced a two weeks ago that they built 2.5 million
| drones last year. Maybe that number got garbled somewhere?
| lawn wrote:
| Ukraine is producing way more that that: they're up to millions
| per year: https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/03/ukraine-
| produce-millio...
| palata wrote:
| The problem I have with the idea of subsidising small drones as a
| proxy for defense is that they solve very different problems:
| Making a small quadcopter that flies is now entirely solved: you
| take an open source autopilot, put it on some open source
| autopilot board, and that's it.
|
| If you go further than that, successfully producing delivery
| drones means that they need to carry a payload _safely_ to some
| destination, deliver the payload _nicely_ (as in, smoothly leave
| a parcel on the ground), come back and be reusable. The drone
| flies by GPS, but doesn 't really need a radio signal (ideally
| there is no operator, the drone just goes, delivers and comes
| back).
|
| Killer drones are "one-way". They are defined by a lifetime of
| like 25min, ending up violently in a place where the operators
| care about maximising damage. They fly in war zones. Nobody
| really cares if some percentage of the drones falls from the sky
| or doesn't explode upon contact. They need to fly in GPS-denied
| mode, and they probably need a radio for the operator to select
| the target when the times comes. This has to be a military-grade
| radio that works in the presence of jamming to some extent.
|
| Those are very different projects. Feels a bit like saying that
| subsidising personal cars is good for the tank business.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Bomb and kamikaze drones based on civilian drones are already a
| reality though, Ukraine uses to defend itself. Don't know why
| you're talking as if that wasn't possible, when it's happening
| already.
| palata wrote:
| Hmm maybe I'm not being very clear, I didn't want to write a
| 20 pages essay :-). I was saying that I don't think it's a
| particularly efficient way to approach defense.
|
| My point was that Ukraine doesn't buy 2 millions civilian
| drones and use them as killer drones. Ukraine is actually
| producing killer drones.
|
| If you are good at producing civilian drones, it doesn't mean
| that you are good at producing killer drones because the
| specs are pretty different. If you subsidise heavily a
| civilian company making survey drones, for instance, and then
| try to attach a bomb to those and send them in a war zone,
| they won't do much today. In the end you will have subsidised
| work that went into making a drone that can make hundreds or
| thousands of flights during its lifetime, never fall from the
| sky, lands smoothly, doesn't make too much noise, follows
| drone regulations in civilian spaces, etc. But none of that
| work is useful for a killer drone (that has a lifetime of
| 25min in a war zone). On the other hand, your civilian drones
| will not have the ability to lock a target and crash into it,
| fly in GPS-denied environments and a jamming-resistant radio.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Thanks for explaining!
|
| I think the article says that the factories are important
| too, and can be altered to produce these different drones
| much faster than if starting from zero.
|
| And having one's own already verified and certified
| backdoor free electronics, rather than buying from what
| might turn out to be the adversary
| hkpack wrote:
| Ukraine is absolutely buying all the civilian drones it can
| get, especially the larger ones with good optics.
|
| One of the previous defense minister was skeptical of their
| utility too and called them "wedding drones", and now you
| can see very frequently in war footages mentions how they
| are using "wedding drones" in this or that reconnaissance
| or surveillance operation.
|
| You absolutely need tens of thousands of drones in the air
| all the time to support modern warfare.
|
| And drones are being hunted by other drones too, so they
| don't last very long.
|
| "Millitary grade" digital communication and encryption is
| not that important as the scale itself.
| umbra07 wrote:
| Yes, but that is simply because they don't have a better
| choice.
|
| Given the choice between a $200 DJI and a $100 homebuilt
| "killer" drone, you would probably want 2x of the killer
| drones. However, if your bottleneck is your manufacturing
| capabilities instead of your money, then you might be
| forced to use the DJI drones instead of the custom
| killers.
| hkpack wrote:
| It is more complicated than that as the roles are very
| different and you need both. You just cannot substitute
| one for the other.
|
| DJIs with their high zoom ratios and quality stabilised
| cameras just allow for wide area monitoring which killer
| drones relies on.
|
| Video from surveillance drones are usually streamed to a
| teams of analytics far away from front lines for analysis
| of situation change. People analysing the video data is a
| significant chunk of the total personnel in this war.
|
| Without having that, killer drones are not effective,
| since they are very short-lived, have very poor cameras
| and power characteristics. It is very difficult to find
| enemy with self-made drones.
|
| So I argue that you can in fact have a civilian drone
| manufacturing which can be repurposed quickly into a
| cheap mass produced war-time surveillance drone with
| minimal effort.
|
| The same goes for software - both sides use civilian
| service for video streaming and communication which works
| better than anything "military grade".
| palata wrote:
| Hmm, I feel like you get back to "Ukraine needs
| everything it can get". Sure, but that's not my point.
|
| For your wide area monitoring, you don't want your radio
| to be jammed because it makes it useless. So if you think
| about building your equipment, you'd rather build
| jamming-resistant radios, right?
|
| > I argue that you can in fact have a civilian drone
| manufacturing which can be repurposed quickly
|
| It could potentially be repurposed relatively quickly if
| it was well designed. But what tells you it will be? Most
| software is not very well designed, and in the western
| drone industry it's particularly right, in my experience.
| If you subsidise a company to make military drones and
| they write bad software, you will still end up with a
| military drone ("the software is bad but it lasts 25min
| most of the time"). If you subsidise a company to make
| survey drones in the hope that their design will be good
| enough to be quickly ported to military needs...
|
| > both sides use civilian service for video streaming and
| communication which works better than anything "military
| grade".
|
| I highly doubt that. Civilian radios are easily jammed.
| hkpack wrote:
| The reality is very different.
|
| In practice, jamming of wide area is not a solved
| problem. It is easy to jam GPS because its signal is
| already weak, or a cell phone in a city, but it is very
| difficult to jam a drone in the sky which have a line-of
| sight to the antenna or a retranslation drone. Also all
| modern cheap drones have a way to switch frequencies if
| one gets jammed, and jamming all frequencies is also very
| very difficult.
|
| You either need to have a very big powerful machinery -
| which is very easy to detect location of and send a
| HIMARS rocket. Or a huge number of smaller devices, which
| is impractical as you don't have power in trenches.
|
| So in practice, drone jamming is only effective in the
| last 100-200 meters from the target (if it is a vehicle
| with power source) which doesn't really matters for
| surveillance drones as they do their job from the
| distance.
|
| > Civilian radios are easily jammed.
|
| In theory, in practice on the battlefield, when drones
| can switch frequencies on the go - very very difficult
| with the exception of the last hundred meters.
|
| Because of this, modern killer drones now have a
| primitive "AI" to lock on the target on the last meters
| of approach.
| palata wrote:
| Thanks, that's interesting!
| dani__german wrote:
| tell me more about the video streaming and communication
| aspects of this. Just skype (haha), zoom, and text
| messaging/phone calls?
| officeplant wrote:
| There's been images showing both Ukraine and Russia using
| Discord. IIRC including video streaming drone kills. Not
| sure if anyone is piloting over the streams.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're not "based on civilian drones" other than using some
| basic software and electronics and design principals.
| Everything else is built around cheap and short lifetime.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Feels a bit like saying that subsidising personal cars is
| good for the tank business.
|
| Funny you should say that. The US had in 1938 a grand total of
| about 38 tanks. WWII started a few years later, and after
| converting prewar automobile factories to tank factories, the
| USA built more tanks than every other nation combined.
|
| Pretty much the same thing happened for airplanes, as mentioned
| in the article.
|
| US industrial production was literally the arsenal of
| democracy.
|
| It is a LOT easier to convert commercial manufacturing base to
| military purposes than to start from scratch. So, yes,
| subsidizing commercial production to stay in-country is
| definitely good for mil readiness (and ultimately, the tank
| business).
| nradov wrote:
| Military vehicles had much more in common with their civilian
| counterparts in the WWII era. Technologies have almost
| entirely diverged since then. An M4 Sherman tank had a
| gasoline piston engine and steel armor. An M1 Abrams tank has
| a turbine engine, and uranium and ceramic composite armor. To
| convert a factory from one to the other you'll have to rip
| out almost everything and start over.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes, mil tech has diverged, and much of modern
| manufacturing requires highly specialized tooling that
| requires long lead times to get into production.
|
| That is an excellent reason to subsidize maintaining
| convertible or dual-use tech in the civilian arena. e.g.,
| make sure turbines are used in more civilian uses.
| Stockpile tech that is really civilian incompatible such as
| the depleted uranium armor.
|
| Turbines are a good example of how a civilian tech could
| have gone differently. In the 1960s several turbine-powered
| cars were in development for street use and a turbine race
| car qualified and lead most of the 1967 Indianapolis 500
| race. But then the USAC effectively disqualified it [0],
| and civilian development stopped for other reasons. But it
| arguably might have continued had turbine power been
| allowed to race and dominate.
|
| Yet, turbines are used both for aircraft and for natural
| gas power, both stationary and portable, and there are many
| small turbines. So, of course, we would not go to an ICE
| engine builder but to the builders of aircraft and gas
| power plants. There are also manufacturers of small-scale
| turbines that might ramp up.
|
| On the other hand, we can also look at how modern warfare
| has changed over the last three years. multi-million dollar
| tanks are being reliably destroyed by $800 drones. And
| drone tech is highly fungible. Many common computer chips
| and boards can be used to control it, many common
| lightweight motors will work, and composites or lightweight
| metals can make the bodies. All of these technologies are
| highly configurable, so it would be a short lead time to
| make new factories to turn out pretty much whatever shape
| drone we wanted, whether it is flying, rolling, or
| swimming.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STP-Paxton_Turbocar
| nradov wrote:
| There was never any possibility of turbine engines
| becoming widely used for civilian street autos. They are
| less fuel efficient and have slower throttle response
| compared to reciprocating internal combustion engines.
| This is inherent in the technology, not something that
| could have been fixed with further development.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| I have the impression from reading history books that the
| workforce at the time of World War 2 was uniquely specialized
| and widely available. There were many machinists that had
| special knowledge and experience of how to run their lathes,
| presses, etc. This workforce was involved in the assembly
| line of passenger cars, so you had expert machinists involved
| in producing passenger cars which made expertise widely
| available. Because of their knowledge, they could easily
| pivot to an armored vehicle (for example).
|
| In today's world the assembly line itself is derived from
| CAD, robot CNC machines, and the workforce is not
| specialized. The workforce consists of "assemblers" and
| machine operators, moreso than "machinists" or "machine
| designers"
|
| This difference between workforces is a potentially profound
| difference.
| toss1 wrote:
| Good points, although a nit that I'd characterize the
| workforce as more specialized today rather than less.
| Didn't the old-school machinists have more knowledge over
| the full range of production processes, vs a CAD drafter vs
| a Fanuc CNC operator, vs an assembler?
|
| That said, I'd still say having one capability today still
| makes a far shorter path to convert from Civ-to-Mil output.
| I run a carbon-fiber composites shop that does everything
| from design through materials, CAD, CAM, moldmaking,
| forming with multiple technologies, CNC machining, and
| assembly. It would be a straightforward task to setup for
| new Mil products (and not just because we already do some
| Mil work), especially compared to not having it at all.
| klooney wrote:
| > Feels a bit like saying that subsidising personal cars is
| good for the tank business.
|
| I mean, in WWII, a lot of car manufacturers made tanks instead.
| Buick made the Hellcat, Chrysler, Ford and a variety of train
| manufacturers made the Sherman, and on and on. The skills are
| much more transferable than a lot of other fields.
|
| In fact, this is explicitly why the US and others subsidize
| their passenger car industries.
|
| This probably wouldn't work as well today, because most modern
| automakers just do engine design, assembly, and pick some parts
| out of a Bosch catalog, but I bet the more ambitious,
| vertically integrated automakers like BYD or Tesla could do an
| OK job in a pinch.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| For offensive drones in hot military situations I think one key
| area of study is swarming. To inflict real damage and evade
| defenses you need to throw a swarm of drones at the objective.
| If you that to be robust against jamming you may also want a
| level of autonomy.
| maximusdrex wrote:
| While I agree with the ultimate conclusion of the article, that
| FAA regulations need to be modernized for commercial use of sUAS
| systems, it completely fails to analyze any of the other relevant
| dynamics facing the American drone industry. There are a plethora
| of American companies building drones for commercial and/or
| defense purposes (I work at one) but this article reads like the
| author knows only about the most publicized one and another
| company they heard about on a podcast. The article would benefit
| from an understanding of the Probably the most major blocker for
| the authors dreams of swarms of millions of American military
| drones is the following: jet engines and rocket motors can be
| produced in the US profitably, the American economy just isn't
| set up to build drones motors, props, etc. in an economically
| efficient manner. Because of this, the cost-optimized drones
| developed for the commercial sector will never be acceptable for
| the us military. Secondly, the author seems to think that self-
| organized systems are a brand new innovation and would trivially
| port to a battlefield environment. However, these techniques rely
| on 5G connectivity and gps, whereas military sUAS systems need
| GPS-denied autonomy and the ability to communicate in a heavily
| jammed environment.
| tim333 wrote:
| >But look, Ukraine are producing two-and-a-half drones a day now.
|
| That seems way off. See the recent euromaidanpress headline:
|
| >Defense News: Ukraine plans 15-km unmanned "kill zone" along
| Russian front as drone production hits 4,000+ daily
| https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/02/defense-news-ukraine-...
|
| Which is kind of interesting strategically. I was thinking
| Ukraine can't really afford to keep losing large numbers of
| soldiers and will probably try switching to drones to hold the
| Russians back. It's probably a technology that favours defenders
| over attackers as the defenders can work from hidden bunkers but
| the attackers have to move above ground.
| throwup238 wrote:
| It's not being talked about much outside of military analyst
| circles but those small drones have significantly changed the
| logistics of modern warfare possibly more than anything in the
| 21st century. Before, with cover and conceal warfare, armies
| had to deliver massive firepower to even have a chance of
| hitting an enemy unit from a another dynamic military, with
| ever more expensive precision munitions to make up for that
| fact. Now a small drone can drop a grenade and do the same
| amount of damage at similar distances between combatants. It
| makes a huge difference when a combat engineer slash drone
| pilot can carry 20kg of drones and small explosives into the
| battlefield as part of a small team instead of manning an
| entire artillery unit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _hitting an enemy unit from a another dynamic military_
|
| Would note that Russia's failure to execute combined-arms
| manoeuvre-based warfare technically makes it a static
| fighting force.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I think it's better to look at it as a spectrum and
| Russia's place on it differs based on time and place. They
| don't have the air superiority to carry out the kinds of
| operations the US could and what seems like a suboptimal
| command structure but they are getting increasingly more
| organized, especially as the war drags on and they
| develop/acquire more adaptions like the Shahed drones or
| glide bomb conversion kits. IMO the biggest thing getting
| in their way is the desperate human wave tactics that
| hamper their ability to grow a veteran core that could
| actually organize the combined arms.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _but they are getting increasingly more organized,
| especially as the war drags on and they develop /acquire
| more adaptions like the Shahed drones or glide bomb
| conversion kits_
|
| I'm not suggesting they aren't a lethal fighting force.
| They're just not a dynamic one. They still rely on static
| tactics, _i.e._ blowing up the enemy, versus dynamic ones
| that rely on manoeuvre.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I don't mean lethality either. It's hard to craft an
| argument here without doing a blog post length comment
| (that I'm hardly qualified to write) but even from the
| last week there's evidence of Russian FPV drone use with
| very mobile forces: https://armyrecognition.com/focus-
| analysis-conflicts/army/co...
|
| I don't know where you draw the line between static and
| dynamic/modern but IMO they're clearly in the latter mode
| at least some of the time, even though it's hard to tell
| which attacks are strategic and which are the result of
| combined arms tactics due to fog of war.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _don't know where you draw the line between static and
| dynamic /modern_
|
| "Biddle identifies what he calls the 'Modern System' of
| combat (though I am going to treat it a bit more broadly
| than he does). In short, it's a set of tactics and
| operational art that emerged out of the First World War
| and were refined in the European theaters (East and West)
| of the Second, to cope with the tremendous potency of
| industrialized firepower which had fundamentally reshaped
| war. Rather than relying on fixed positions for defense
| and dense shock-formations ('shock' here - think
| 'bayonets, grenades and trench-knives'), the modern
| system relies on cover-and-concealment for survivability
| and maneuver in the offense (go around, not through your
| opponent's overwhelming firepower). Adroit use of terrain
| on the tactical level is a key component of the system,
| which in turn requires both extensive training of junior
| officers and NCOs and devolving quite a bit of command
| agency down to them so that they can make local decisions
| (compare to, for instance, linear tactics which leave
| virtually no decision-making to the individual rifleman).
|
| ...
|
| Static-System armies, since - as we'll see - in modern
| warfare, they tend to be a fair bit more fixed and static
| than the modern system armies (note: I'm going to keep
| calling them 'armies' for simplicity, but the modern
| system combined land and air assets), preferring to dig
| in for sieges and trench warfare. So again: static system
| (old, cheap) vs. modern system (new, expensive). And
| remember: this is a difference in doctrine not equipment,
| in how an army expects to fight their battles and how
| they actually do - a difference in how, not in what. It
| is possible to have all of the tools of the modern
| system, and still not have the training or will to do the
| modern system (indeed, Iraq did just this in 1991 and got
| torn apart for it). You can buy tanks and planes, but you
| cannot buy the modern system, you must train it."
|
| Russia's human waves are a trench tactic. Command flows
| entirely top down. They're going straight at the enemy.
| And training is virtually impossible given the
| expendability of their troops.
|
| https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-
| use-ch...
| throwup238 wrote:
| While Brett Devereaux is excellent, he's sharing a
| surface level, black and white definition suited to a
| blog post aimed at laymen, the kind that want to read
| about the siege of Gondor. Biddle's _Military Power:
| Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle_ is a much
| more in depth treatment of the topic that is hardly that
| prescriptive.
|
| Edit: if you are so inclined, _Commanding Military Power:
| Organizing for Victory and Defeat on the Battlefield_ by
| Ryan Grauer, _The Art of Maneuver: Maneuver Warfare
| Theory and Airland Battle_ by Robert Leonhard, and
| _Combined Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century_ by
| Jonathan House would provide a more rounded view of the
| academic debate. The latter is particularly relevant
| because it looks at Russia's tactics in Chechnya.
| esseph wrote:
| Their leadership and training is not pushed to the lower
| levels like in the US military NCO corps. Russian warfare
| is extremely. . bureaucratic.
| tim333 wrote:
| The larger drones are having an effect too. Ukraine as of mid
| feb had taken out about 10% or Russia's refining capacity and
| it's ongoing - the Ufa oil refinery was hit a day or so ago
| which is one of the largest in Russia and 1300 km from
| Ukraine. And of course their naval drones have had quite an
| effect on Russia's warships.
|
| (recent sky new footage of them being sent off
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEwObPT8zE)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I'm surprised no one else noticed that this is a submarine
| article for Anduril and called it out. "Sean's Substack" was
| created 2 days ago (at the time of writing this comment) and has
| just this one article, no history to establish credibility
| either.
|
| The main story is about Manna, an Irish company, but that doesn't
| help the US itself as they aren't made in the US. The article is
| advocating for a similar regulatory regime as Manna (and
| presumably others) have received in Ireland here in the US, and
| then name drops Anduril near the end.
|
| Anduril's current business is to become part of the military
| industrial complex, but if regulations are changed they could
| shift their production towards commercial projects and expand
| their business.
| ecshafer wrote:
| So? It might be a submarine article for Anduril, but their
| point still stands. The FAA regulations on Drones needs to be
| rewritten to allow innovation for both commercial and defense
| purposes.
| moregrist wrote:
| I tend to think that it's not too much to ask a company to
| engage in transparent advocacy as opposed to astroturfing.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| What evidence exists to show FAA regulations are hampering
| innovation?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Do they need to be rewritten? And if they do, is a thought
| piece by someone with no prior connection or history in
| aviation the person to make the case for it?
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