Attack of the drones

 One day we have to continue our fisking of Ghost Fleet. I don’t like panning anything, but the book was full of howlers. Fine for fiction, but it was dispiriting to see so many people take it so seriously.

But one thing the book got right was the use of drones in future conflict, including a good scene during the Chinese invasion of Hawaii (page 69).

It now seems that life is catching up with fiction, right on schedule.

The Islamic State used drones regularly as weapons. Sometimes they placed bombs on the drones themselves; other times they would drop mortar shells from the UAVs. Now, however, the remnants of the Islamic State appear to have upped their game and attacked Russian forces en masse. They claim to have destroyed an S-400 missile launcher.

Unsurprisingly, the Russians claim something rather different.

A more neutral take supports the Russian claim that their Pantsir S-2 anti-aircraft cannon was successful in shredding the attack by a small fleet of commercial quadcopters.

All this said, the Islamic State no longer controls meaningful territory and couldn’t be expected to mount much of an attack. But what happens as the drones get better? Like, say, by mounting a small kerosene jet engine on ‘em? Or, more frighteningly, by going the other way and making ‘em smaller and smaller and ever harder to detect?

I’m relatively sanguine about this development. It won’t bring down civilization. But it may revolutionize ground combat. I’m not sure what the defenses against slaughterbots will look like, but I am sure that we’re going to see some dramatic changes in military tactics over the next decade.

Thoughts?

Comments

[Dave K]

Swarming drones are a problem for traditional IAMD systems (operationally and economically). Lasers and HPM are partially a response. I also think there's a space for counter-UAV UAVs. If there's a swarm of UAVs, send another swarm against it and use lasers or HPM as ground-based support.

I'm less worried about traditional drones then ones that can spend most of their time on the ground and launch autonomously when targets are nearby. Those types of drones could be quickly seeded throughout a battlefield (like FASCAMs) and function like hidden mobile mines waiting for targets to come nearby. Those could be very difficult to defend against.