Doesn't much matter if the battle group runs out of ammo. They've only got a few hundred anti-aircraft missiles between them; hundreds of drones wouldn't be fun to have to deal with.
Imagine a thousand of something like these:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/kamikaze-drones-new-we...
lining the Strait of Hormuz.
I've no doubt a modern warship can shoot down a lot of drones, but at a few thousand bucks a pop, an adversary can field a lot of drones.
EDIT: CIWS shoot 20mm autocannons, which are estimated to be $30 per shot.
Much cheaper until they run out. If (a big if) one drone can disable the ship, it’s all suddenly very worthwhile.
Especially when said gatling gun reloads in just 4 minutes, you're over water with no terrain to hide behind except the horizon, the horizon is 30km out, and the supporting aircraft (E2-Hawkeye) can see 300km out because its the eye-in-the-sky.
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Hoping that the enemy runs out of $30 bullets before you run out of $1000+ drones is... a bad bet I think
A drone flying out to sea doesn't know where the enemy ships are. The horizon is 30km away to 50km, depending on how high the drone is flying. E2 Hawkeyes fly very high, so they see out 300km.
Any reasonable fight will have the E2 Hawkeye spot the mass of drones long before the drones spot the ships. Once we account for how cheap bullets are and how effective they are on an aimbot (be it an F18 fighter or a CIWS on a ship), it seems impossible for a swarm of drones to even think about approaching any ship.
For sure, and the cost was immense. It worked though.
It might not be cost effective but that alone isn’t the full picture. Taking out a ship or carrier or something would be an incredible PR win/loss depending on one’s side and would change everyone’s strategies.
What's the launch platform? How do you program the drones to find its target?
Its not too hard to imagine the drone as a slow-moving missile, with maybe a similar launch platform where drones can be easily programmed with GPS-coordinates and go off on their mission.
But the minute we think about logistics of storing, programming, and deploying this hypothetical weapon... we realize that we're just building a really crappy version of the MLRS (multiple-launch rocket system).
If the prize is a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier it might not be.
More to the point, you're talking about cannons that fire at 4500 rounds per minute, and while this is outside my area of expertise, the fire control computer's strategy is absolutely not going to be to fire a single round and wait to see whether the target disappears. It's going to fire some minimum number of rounds, and it only takes a fraction of a second to burn through $1000 of 20mm ammo.
If it is a feasible option, it's pretty easy to imagine a conflict where keeping the cannons occupied with garbage $1000 decoy targets for a while is a cost-effective strategy. (it seems like the sort of thing you'd do during an attack alongside real anti-ship missiles, though, to improve the effectiveness of those weapons)
The minute we're talking 10,000 cruise missiles vs 1-million drones, the cruise missiles suddenly look easier because its just fewer things to deal with.
EDIT: In particular, we know how to launch hundreds of cruise missiles simultaneously. How do you plan to launch hundreds, or thousands, of drones simultaneously? What kind of launch platform is that? Just thinking about the design of the truck that carries 1,000 drones is already a big headache.
We have trucks that can carry 12 cruise missiles, and launch all 12 of them near simultaneously. A bunch of those trucks lined up on a highway aiming to the ocean is pretty easy to think about.
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We also have boats that can carry 100s of missiles, and launch dozens of them simultaneously. Those are called Missile Destroyers or Missile Cruisers.
If there's no “counter battery” to worry about, maybe. Lining up your trucks on a highway is a great way to get them all destroyed by a single air attack…
And there's no way it's gonna take a million drone to sink a ship. Modern ship defence systems haven't been designed against a huge number of small targets. A hundred armed drones might even be enough to overflow the tracking system. For reference, the Israelian Iron Dome[1] can only track 200 targets[2] and we're talking about a system that has been specifically designed against swarm attacks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome
[2] “per minute” whatever that means https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%...
How do you plan to launch your drones?
A bunch of trucks on a highway is a really good strategy. Especially since these missile-trucks have 2000+km range.
https://blog.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/12722150-0-...
These are the weapons the US Military is worried about. Hypersonic (3000mph), possibly homing (if China is to be believed). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21
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In any case, a drone-launch platform will need a lot of launchers: little programmers that tell the drone its final orders before they fly off. It doesn't matter if its a TOW-like (follow the radio signal based off of this laser-pointer), or homing, or whatever capability you have.
Once you have a bunch of launchers + drones, you then need a way to transport them around, so that you can optimally launch them when needed.
TL;DR: You need MLRS, except for drone launching. That's the only feasible way you're going to effectively manage so many drones.
But even then, that just begs the question: why aren't you just using MLRS to begin with, with standard cruise missiles invented like 40 years ago?
> How do you plan to launch your drones?
Ideally, from scattered units operating with light vehicles (say, a pick-up with a trailer). The key part is being able to launch your attack without being destroyed first. And as I said earlier, I think you're overestimating the number of needed drones by several orders of magnitude.
No, I haven't. My point is whatever launcher mechanism you have for your hypothetical drones has the exact same issue.
> Ideally, from scattered units operating with light vehicles (say, a pick-up with a trailer).
Yes. These are called MLRS when they're rockets or cruise missiles. If you think a cruise missile platform can be "counter-battery fired", then these light pickup trucks you're talking about have the same exact problem.
Not exactly, even it shares some.
First of all they are much less expensive, and you have much more of them, making them harder to destroy. They are actually likely to be cheapy than the cost of the missile used to shoot them, which is never the case with cruise missile platform).
Then you don't need an open field to launch a drone, sending cruse missiles from dense urban area is more of a problem.
And in any case I think you moving goalpost a bit here, since when talking about counter battery, I initially responded to your suggestion to put the MLRS lined up, in plain sight on a highway… Now if you told me you're going to put your MLRS in isolated barns in the countryside, then it's of course the same situation whether it's launching drones or missiles, the number being the only significant difference.
Rocket / Missile launchers are just a tube. The launcher itself isn't expensive, its the programmer and truck platform that costs money.
> and you have much more of them, making them harder to destroy.
The PLARF has plenty of missiles. We can't destroy all of them anymore.
> They are actually likely to be cheapy than the cost of the missile used to shoot them
Drones are so slow you wouldn't use a missile. You'd use a CIWS, a $30 bullet.
Counter-missiles are extremely expensive, because the counter-missile needs to move faster and be more maneuverable than the original missile.
You must have forgotten the missiles in it…
> The PLARF has plenty of missiles. We can't destroy all of them anymore.
I don't know why you keep bringing China in this conversation, really. Drones have the power to make ships almost useless even against small army forces, the Millennium Challenge already proved that cruise missiles were very good against fleets. But deploying them efficiently against the US Navy would be a challenge for most army (but, as I said earlier, not China nor Russia). Drones could give the Houthis Yemeni faction the ability to sink a US carrier, and this isn't a good thing for the US Navy.
> Drones are so slow you wouldn't use a missile. You'd use a CIWS, a $30 bullet.
Their slow speed is actually a feature. It's really easy to make them have a completely unpredictable trajectory. Good luck shooting that with bullets. Also, because they are slow, they can also deploy some sorts of decoy to fool the aiming systems. Shrapnel is going to be extremely effective against them though, so it's completely possible to design dedicated defence mechanism, but hoping that a defence designed to stop ancient weapons against a new one isn't usually a good strategic move.
Read up on the "USS America", a former Aircraft carrier built on 1960s technology and armor. As part of a retirement exercise, the USS America was subject to a number of bombs and explosions to test the armor of the old ship.
So these drones you're talking about... how much explosives can they carry? Do remember: F18 regularly crash-and-burn on a carrier deck, with no real long-term damage to the carrier.
I have my doubts that a small drone carries enough firepower to damage a carrier. There's a reason why these cruise missiles carry 1000lbs of high-explosives (*per missile*), and no one seriously expects just one missile to sink a carrier.
EDIT: A more recent test was the Iranian 2015 public test: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/middleeast/in-mock-...
Iran had to hit a fake aircraft carrier (a big boat they bought and dressed up to look like a carrier), and Iran was basically unable to sink it with just missiles. You need a lot of explosives to kill a boat of that size, let alone an armored / compartmentalized, well-studied, computer-simulated $13 Billion war-version.
> It's really easy to make them have a completely unpredictable trajectory.
Quadcopter motors aren't known for thrust. You know what is known for thrust? Rockets.
Without thrust, you won't have an unpredictable trajectory. Rockets can push 2Gs laterally while traveling at 500mph and still end up on the target that they're aiming at.
You ain't gonna get that kind of behavior from quadcopter drones. You just won't.
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> I don't know why you keep bringing China in this conversation, really.
Because I do think that China's strategy is a good one on face value. I hope that the US strategy is better, but I think the Chinese are making enough moves here that proves that they know what they're doing.
EDIT: When you have a rocket that achieves 2G of thrust and hypersonic speeds, its not too difficult to use that thrust to start erratically dodging CIWS. In fact, that's the expectation: you need that amount of thrust to break the sound barrier anyway, so might as well put that rocket to good use dodging bullets.
Carriers are notoriously difficult to sink. But there's a well known strategy: 1) you destroy the carriers defence, 2) you target the direction (not the propulsion) of the carrier so it cannot flee 3) you send a shit ton of whatever you have to sink it.
Drones are obviously unable to do 3), but they are completely apt for 1 and 2. Small boats controlled remotely (which are drones, as a matter of fact) loaded with TNT would do the job eventually when all defences are lost. And even if 3) never happens because the Navy still manages to prevent those small boats from approaching (this is pretty likely, with air support), CNN looping on live footage of USS Gerald R. Ford stuck sailing in circle in the Gulf of Aden after a drone attack would be pretty humiliating for the US Navy to say the least.
Also, as I said earlier, cruse missiles are awesome against ships, and it is a well know fact nobody discusses. Nowhere in this thread am I arguing that drones are superior to cruise missiles. The question is: can a state with limited cruse missile capability piss the US Navy off with drones, and I'm convinced the answer is a big yes.
The US army would likely not taking a single casualty from a single cruise missile targetting air carrier convoy. But they are much less prepared against few hundred drones swarming upon them.
How many drones do you think it will take to break and/or significantly damage that rudder?
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You're avoiding the hard question. How many lbs of explosive do these drones carry. 100lbs of explosives? 500lbs? 1000lbs? These war machines are measured in the hundreds-and-hundreds of lbs of explosives it takes to deal serious damage.
Its not going to be a cheap drone that can steer / move agile while carrying an explosive payload of that weight.
That's why we use missiles: because rocket engines have a superior thrust-to-weight ratio. Quadcopters cannot carry 100lbs of explosive, let alone 500lbs or 1000lbs. Not cheap quadcopters anyway.
I'm gonna end this discussion here because I've made my points and you look way too determined to fight against straw men than discussing them.
Look, this is the root of this thread.
> I've no doubt a modern warship can shoot down a lot of drones, but at a few thousand bucks a pop, an adversary can field a lot of drones.
"A few thousand bucks a pop" per drone sounds like a quadcopter drone to me. That's not a jet-drone or a rocket-drone.
Now if you are saying that a bunch of Predator drones shooting a bunch of missiles at a carrier can probably disable it... well... sure. I can agree to that. That probably will work. But such a drone will be rather expensive, and you wouldn't want those drones shot down by a CIWS.
Unless we're talking about China or Russia, how are they going to manufacture, move and maintenance those drones once we've pancaked their infrastructure? The adversary will be under non-stop bombardment, all of their relevant infrastructure will be targeted, all major manufacturing, their electrical grid, all transport roads, all rail, all bridges, all ports. How are they getting the toy drones out to deep water if they have no ports? How will they manufacture replacement boats / ships with no manufacturing? And so on.
Sure, if we're talking about war with China or Russia, that's entirely different. Then you're talking about something closer to WW3 (and good luck). Everyone else is trivial to cripple.
That's the thing: "drones" that most people are talking about in these discussions are just really bad Tomahawk cruise missiles or really really bad ICBMs.
I linked an example of such a drone up-thread; $5k. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/kamikaze-drones-new-we...
> how are they going to manufacture, move and maintenance those drones once we've pancaked their infrastructure?
You build the drones before the war, not during.
> And how far can said toy drones fly so as to reach a destroyer in the first place?
Doesn't have to be too far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Hormuz
We're on a thread about Pearl Harbor, after all. Load up thousands of drones on a number of container ships and do a surprise attack with them.
So that's what? 150 CIWS bullets per drone for cost-equivalency? ($30 bucks per CIWS bullet). Seems like a good trade, the CIWS can shoot down 500mph missiles, it will take out the much slower drone with far less ammo and far cheaper.
You also know that warships would be stationed 1000km away, with an E-2 Hawkeye looking over the horizon (300km range radars). So the first thing the drone will see is the E-2 Hawkeye. The drones wont even know where the ships are, and the Carrier is already deploying a mass of fighters at the drone swarm.
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Once the numbers are figured out by the E-2 hawkeye, the Carrier probably will deploy F18, which will use a 20mm Gatling gun to kill all the drones and return home.
The drones won't even see where the ships are in practice. The best they'll ever discover is the E-2 Hawkeye through line of sight. All the ships would be "too low" and hidden away by the horizon itself. The CIWS won't even get a chance to shoot because the drones never even made it to the horizon (ie: 50km) of the ships. All the drones are killed 300km out.
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There's a reason why China is mass-producing Destroyers. Because Destroyers work. Mass drones aren't really a strategy.
Sure. The scary bit of drone swarms is not the individual basis, but the fact that shoot down ten drones and your CIWS is empty.
> There's a reason why China is mass-producing Destroyers.
You don't think they're also playing with drones?
200km/hr drones (or slower) won't be effective against any of the US Naval forces. There's a reason China is spending billions developing 5000km/hr homing "ship-killer" missiles.
If a $5000 drone could even pose a threat against any US Warship, China wouldn't have bothered with 5000km/hr hypersonic speeds or research.
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The goal of China's naval forces is to search for the US Fleet. Once China finds the US Fleet, it shoots the DF-21 ship-killer missile at it, hoping that the Chinese Fleet can stay in the game long enough to provide accurate targeting against the US ships.
That's called A2/AD, Anti-access area denial. This works because the missiles move very, very fast, so the US ships need to kill the enemy Chinese ship within 15 minutes or so (ie: the time it takes for the missile to travel from China to 1000km out and hit a US ship).
It takes 4 minutes to reload a CWIS and the horizon is like 50km out.
How fast are your drones again? Do you really think that a mass of drones will spend 15 minutes flying towards a group of warships and actually survive to make contact?
How many drones? How did they not get picked up by radar and killed 300km out by E2 Hawkeye eye-in-the-sky + F18 fighters?
The state-of-the-art for drones has moved forward immensely in the last few years. F-18s don't always hit enemy fighters, let alone uncrewed much smaller targets able to do extremely high-G maneuvers.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b4/97/05/b497058ef6f0a0af5a30...
Just because some people thought it was a good idea, doesn't mean it was in fact... a good idea.
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Large-masses of suicide explosives work. We just call them cruise missiles. There's a particular strategy: you fly low to the ground so that radar don't pick you up, you fly as fast as possible (500mph / subsonic is one cutoff), and you throw a bunch of sensors onto it to auto-aim / home into the target.
Deciding to go from 500mph down to 200mph (or slower) just so that you can make it work with quadcopter technology has the big issue that you're suddenly easier to shoot down. Our guns / AI systems are designed to shoot down 500mph missiles. Letting your mass of bots get shot down on purpose is... a strikingly odd strategy to say the least.
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Similarly: the armored bicycle might have worked in WW1. But it turns out that the Armored Tank was a better weapon more suited for invading no-man's land.
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The best argument you have against the CIWS is "hope the Aimbot-Gatling Gun runs out of ammo", ignoring the fact that it reloads in 4 minutes and that a typical Cruiser has two of them, and you're facing a fleet not just a single gun.
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And you haven't even told me how the drones know where to go yet. How did the drones find the ships to begin with?
> The state-of-the-art for drones has moved forward immensely in the last few years. F-18s don't always hit enemy fighters, let alone uncrewed much smaller targets able to do extremely high-G maneuvers.
That's not a $5000 drone anymore and you know it.
In any case, no quadcopter drone is going to have the high-G maneuverability of a jet or rocket.
If you make a "rocket drone with an explosive payload", that's just a cruise missile. And yes, I'm aware that cruise missiles are a good idea. They also cost nearly $2 million each.
You didn't. You linked to a drone that could never threaten a destroyer, doesn't do anything like zerg'ing, a drone that could never likely reach a destroyer in the first place, and in the large sizes doesn't cost a few thousand dollars. You linked to a drone that can kill soldiers nearby, that's all; and the slightly bigger version can maybe disable armored vehicles nearby.
> You build the drones before the war, not during.
Which is an admission that you can't stay in the war once it begins. You'll quickly get wiped out. And the toy drones never reach the destroyers, because you have no ports, no transport, no manufacturing, no electricity, no boats, no ships.
> Doesn't have to be too far.
The toy drones you linked to can't threaten a destroyer at meaningful distances (and would be unlikely to severely damage a destroyer in the first place). And if the US is at war with eg Iran, the US is not going to sail its ships right up to Iran's shoreline and invite them to launch hundreds of poorly aimed, weak toy drones at them.
> Which is an admission that you can't stay in the war once it begins. You'll quickly get wiped out.
You can apply that logic to any equipment, and drones are going to be easier to build than a lot of other war waging equipment (eg how long does it take to build a ship?).
There is a long history of unsophisticated groups waging long and successful wars against large, powerful nations. Preparing for the previous war is superpower 101.
Destroyers aren't even anti-air. Cruisers are, since Cruisers have two CWIS per ship while Destoyers only have 1x CWIS.
England's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_45_destroyer are primarily in an anti-air and anti-missile role, even.
While Modern Cruisers were closer to specializing in the air-defense role.
But yes, Destroyers have lots of anti-air on them for sure.
Additionally, ships are usually not alone. The other vessels in the battlegroup will also provide their anti-air capabilities. If they are with an aircraft carrier, then there are also planes to provide air defense.
So the enemy can always deploy more suicide quadcopter drones than missiles.
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Which seems like an insanely bad strategy to me, because of the whole CIWS thing. Sure, you negate the usefulness of missiles by making drones cheaper, but you can't negate the cheapness of a CIWS, or the gatling gun of an F18 Hornet / F35B / F35C.
That's why we still use guns today: because bullets are really, really cheap.
The M1 Abrams has 350mm armor, the biggest, baddest tank of the US Army.
The Arleigh Burke Destroyer doesn't have one armor plate like the M1 Abrams: it has multiple plates wrapping other plates wrapping its hull which wraps Kevlar to protect the people inside.
It turns out that boats can just have much much thicker armor than any tank, because floating is much easier than moving with an engine.