Part of a broader pattern in military technology right now.
All weapon systems that consist of an expensive vehicle and an expensive-to-train crew are being re-evaluated against drones right now.
If you're fighting a highly asymmetric conflict where your enemies can barely touch your expensive toys then it's less of a concern.
If you're fighting near-peer it's a different story.
Efficiency starts to matter in a near-peer conflict.
Near-peer conflicts have more meaningful targets which favors these kinds of expensive weapons platforms.
A drone that can do meaningful damage to a factory 500+ miles from a front line is either an easy target or it starts to look a lot like a missile with all the associated costs from that.
I think it's more complex than that. The US made Switchblade drones which cost tens of thousands of dollars were outperformed with lightly modified FPVs with grenades, which came in under a thousand.
We don't know if they underperfomed so much as weren't cost effective. If the switchblade costing $10k results in a kill 80% of the time, while the $1k drone is 30% of the time, you just get 3 times as many $1k drones, average about the same kill rate, and save 70% to boot. Or spend the same amount and get about 3x the kill rate.
> near-peer
I prefer the Culture term “equiv-tech”
There’s something icky about discussing killing real people like it was fan fiction of a sci-fi franchise.
I guess you don't want to read anything by actual military people, then. Dehumanizing the enemy is a requirement for those folks.
Its not just tech but capability. You can give some random country F35s, that doesn't mean they are useful.
The US Army is cutting back in this area. The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, which was a small attack helicopter, has been cancelled.[1] If it flies low and slow over the enemy, it's going to be shot down. Better to send many drones and lose some of them.
The concept of tactical air superiority is now questionable. The USAF used to boast that American troops have not had to fight under a hostile sky since 1952. That era seems to be over. There are so many portable systems now that can take out an aircraft.
Jam-resistant drones are already a thing. Drones are going to have to be shot down one at a time. This is quite possible but the missiles to do it can cost more than the drones.
[1] https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/02/08/us-army-spent-bil...
Better discussion by Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoKpXvj41A
(there is a saying or word for titles as questions, and the answer is always no)
Perun seems to know his stuff. That said, I’d be curious to know more about his research process, as well as that of other Russia-Ukraine war mappers/vloggers. Determining whether grainy drone footage is current or past alone seems difficult to me as an outsider and fan of their work, though I wish it weren’t necessary and that the war were over.
Perun brings lots of citations and discusses his sources regularly, and always adds caveats. I wouldn't liken his weekly video to those of the daily mappers or telegram video collectors. Very different kinds of content.
I wasn’t meaning to compare them negatively and I don’t really follow other channels on that topic besides maybe Task & Purpose I think it’s called. Not dismissing anything Perun or others have done, just acknowledging that it’s hard to reason about how he goes about gathering the info. I hear him saying he does research, but not the process.
Betteridge's law of headlines.
"Are Betteridge headlines dead?"
"Is this the one weird trick to rule them all?"
That video by Perun is 2 years old, while TFA is from today. Surely there have been additional lessons learned in two years?
Not really, the conclusions are basically the same between both
1. There are no wonder weapons, nor are weapons obsoleted so easily. You cannot look at one in isolation of the larger context. The incidents in one war do not inform the use in all wars or operations.
2. Militaries view these types of things as part of a larger system, the parts of which are combined to create a desired effect. It is situational and Russia C&C is not the same as other countries C&C.
3. War has pro/con evolutions, as the drones progress, so does the anti-drone tech. These same helicopters were allegedly instrumental in preventing Ukraine's counter offensive in Zaporizhzhia, with their standoff anti-tank missiles, popping up above the trees, outside the range of manpads
Whoever can most cost effectively put explosives on target wins.
The future will be annihilation at a distance with cheap standoff weapons followed by swarms of cheap drones loitering over battlefields to clean up.
Standoff weapons stop being cheap when countermeasures come into effect.
We've had ICBMs for some time.
ICBMs are not useful in a conventional conflict.
BTW Russia and the US at least, saw this coming decades ago. Which was the reason behind the intermediate range missile treaty, which was sadly ripped up in the early 2000s.
Don’t those cost 10s of millions each?
Look up what a drone costs.
Yeah. The archetypal “second amendment” weapon… the kind any regular American would need to hold his own was a musket, then a rifle, then lever or auto loader, then an M16. Now it’s a drone. A man or crew out in the country with AR15s are Don Quixote tilting at windmills with the advent of cheap drones.
I think most manned war vehicles are dead now.
We are definitely entering into the era of drone-vs-human warfare.
Drones are cheap and deadly and can be remotely operated, and soon probably operated by AI.
I highly doubt that such a general presumption holds.
As seen in the case of Russia’s super drone being downed by their own this week after presumably loosing control, only relying on unmanned vehicles en mass leads to a single point of failure.
Disrupt or corrupt signals, disrupt the entire force.
The US is the force it is because it can do combined arms like nobody else.
Unique capabilities don’t matter if your opponent saturates them with low tech or combined arms.
Look at last weeks Iran ICBM barrage vs. iron dome and David’s sling.
Sure, unmanned vehicles bring unique capabilities to any field of battle, but combined arms is as much the future as it was the past.
> Look at last weeks Iran ICBM barrage vs. iron dome and David’s sling.
I believe the issue was not overwhelming the defences but rather the defences (Iron Dome and David's sling) were designed for short range and slow rockets from Lebanon or Gaza and not long range fast/high rockets from Iran.
It may be that the cost per Arrow missile (for long range intercepts) is $3M as well, so they didn't fire that many of them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(missile_family)
Iron dome is only used against small rockets, and was never intended to hit ballistic or cruise missiles. Thus it's not a failure since they aren't used for that kind of defense. There are separate anti ballistic systems that were used and shot down many of the rockets.
Humans have a place in high-end weapon systems until there is a locally running AGI in the system. An actual near-peer war never works the way people expected, and fancy new weapon systems tend to underperform initially. In the absence of an AGI, humans can adapt their behavior in the field faster than tech companies can fix their software and deliver new features.
IFV are not dead, rocket launchers as well. Even tanks are still a key. At the end people are capturing land/city, not drones.
But drones are changing warfare. Drone hunting other drones, drone with self guidance - they are being used in battle right now.
500$ or even less is the cost of FPV drone with night camera capable to carry 2kg bomb. Russia is buying soldiers for up to $25000 to be killed by such cheap drone later.
Shouldn't it be more drone-vs-drone?
> Shouldn't it be more drone-vs-drone?
For the sake of humanity, I wish that was the case, but it won't be. Defensive drones will exist for sure, but generally the targets will be human or infrastructure, not other drones.
You want to destroy the more valuable thing (human) with the less valuable thing (drone). It could get worse than World War 1.
> I think most manned war vehicles are dead now.
IMO, submarines - especially nuclear subs probably have decades of life left at a minimum.
But yeah - everything else is starting to look very vulnerable.
What’s to stop development of unmanned drone SSNs? Including ones that act as motherships for underwater drone swarms to boot.
Fighter jets, gone ?
They will be when there are AI controlled aircraft/drones that can exceed the G-force limits that humans require and can thus out maneuver any human controlled fighter.
Fifth generation fighter jets aren’t built for dog-fighting. They are stealthy, mesh-networked missile and bomb platforms.
Modern fourth generation fighters would be more than sufficient up close. Except that fifth generation fighters hunt in packs and none of them need to be pointed at their target to hit them.
This doesn't seem right to me. The limiting factor here is the ability of an air to air missile to hit a target (and to find the target in the first place). A drone might be more survivable (if it's better at avoiding missiles because of the G-forces etc.,.), but it shouldn't be any better at destroying an enemy jet, right?
That theoretical highly maneuverable drone with a highly advanced sensor suite isn't going to be cheap either. At which point, what's the advantage? You wouldn't be bound by the number of pilots, but if the drones are too expensive it doesn't matter.
> what's the advantage? You wouldn't be bound by the number of pilots
You gave part of the answer right there. Not only would you not be limited by the number of - hard to replace and time-consuming and expensive to train - pilots but you don't run the risk of losing them either.
> but if the drones are too expensive it doesn't matter.
The large expense for fighter aircraft tends not to lie in the actual production costs but in the development costs which are spread over a limited production run. Build more drones and they get less expensive per item. Build enough of them to overwhelm the enemy and you win drone superiority.
Can it out maneuver a missile?
Replaced by MECHS. :)
Yeah, well, the Ukrainian army is on record saying they'd rather have more artillery shells than more drones.
Both work together. The drone finds the target. The artillery then destroys the target.
That means only they need more shells at the moment than drones. Ukraine has capacity to produce enough FPV drones.
They work well together, so give them both.
Artillery shells are not manned vehicles.
But their delivery mechanism may well be.
> may well be
Another way of saying this is "may well not be".
That's another instance of quantity beating quality. It's the same type of thing.
I've been so overexposed to the meme about criticizing gender identity that I've forgotten that attack helicopters are actual military vehicles.
They shouldn't die, just become robotic with optional remote control. Comparing to copters helis have significant advantages and disadvantages too. I.e. different enough to have different roles
I'm surprise the article didn't mention the US military history.
The US Army has not had a evolution of its attack helicopter since the 1970s.
I remember because one of my favorite childhood games was Comanche 3. [1] Control a helicopter, not crash, not get shot down, neutralize enemies, and achieve mission objectives -- it was cutting-edge for 1997.
The Comanche program was scrapped after more than a decade of development. And the Defiant program was just cancelled last year as well.
My understanding is that the latest versions of the Apache and Cobra are very different from their original incarnations, despite looking similar, no?
What about this classic?
I remember quite clearly when it was scrapped, because suddenly it was much easier to find a parking spot.
Between that, F-22, JSF, Hind and A10, we had some great great games that decade. Still miss Fighter Ace on MSN Gaming Zone.
Tornado was another terrific sim. It had the best mission planner and immersion even though its simulation of the ALARM was busted. Digital Integrations? Don't remember if that was the publisher.
VTOL VR is a pretty great VR first mil flight sim. It has f-18, f-35, and apache like vehicles. They recently introduced wind effects and EW. Allegedly the radar cross-sectioning is better than DCIS (actually accounts for orientation towards the radar)
If you haven't already, be sure to checkout MicroProse's [1] "modern" retro flightsim, Tiny Combat Arena.
Sure, it's beta and continuously in development (and likely won't be finished, ever), but still, you can take off in a Harrier and blow up stuff. The graphics are charmingly retro.
--
[1] published by MicroProse, but actually a one-man effort.
A BS article if I ever saw one. Take for example this:
> Moreover, the threat is not the organic air defences of battlegroups or a Soviet Motor-Rifle Regiment or Brigade, but dispersed and well-hidden infantry and special forces units equipped with modern MANPADS missile systems. Furthermore, because the enemy forces are operating over the defenders’ own ground, the defence can be cued and alerted to approaching helicopters, given good data connectivity.
which is exactly what did NOT happen when the Ukrainians counter-attacked on their own territory, in Southern-Ukraine, when the Russian Ka-52s had a field day (actual, several field days) against incoming Ukrainian heavy armour. These Anglo guys still live in the 1980s, they should ask the Ukrainians what they feel about the "demise" of the attack helicopter, that way maybe non-sense like this won't get published anymore.