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Comment by robonerd | Hacker News Reader

> Several news sources have reported that a single TB2 drone can be purchased for a million dollars, but Bayraktar, while not giving a precise figure, told me that it costs more. In any event, single-unit figures are misleading; TB2s are sold as a “platform,” along with portable command stations and communications equipment. In 2019, Ukraine bought a fleet of at least six TB2s for a reported sixty-nine million dollars; a similar fleet of Reaper drones costs about six times that.

It seems to me there is still a lot of opportunity in the low end with even smaller and cheaper UAVs with a few kilograms of payload. There have already been numerous instances of COTS UAVs being jerry-rigged to drop mortar shells, and it seems to work pretty well in a lot of scenarios. Particularly for smaller governments dealing with relatively unsophisticated insurgencies.

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You should take a look at the switchblade. The switchblade 300 model has the equivalent of a 40mm grenade as a warhead, 2.7kg weight, endurance of 10 minutes and a range of around 10km all puts it well in that lower end range. Couldn't find any pricing data, but I imagine more COTS approaches could come out pretty cheap.

I'm actually surprised we've got man-portable loitering munitions like the switchblade in use before the widespread adoption of guided mortar rounds. I'd have to imagine it's more cost effective (in terms of kilograms of high explosive on target per dollar) to make some GPS-guided or laser-guided mortars, and either use ground troops or a small UAV to provide targeting data.

I've seen a claim that Switchblade 300 costs less than USD 7k. No idea how accurate this is tho.

This video says $6k as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PcWS1marOA

The most interesting part is that it flies extremely fast so you'll never see it coming. Particularly how it bursts through a windshield before exploding.

> I'd have to imagine it's more cost effective (in terms of kilograms of high explosive on target per dollar) to make some GPS-guided or laser-guided mortars

The problem is scale. No one in the private sector makes or needs mortar rounds, so the DoD doesn't benefit from buying COTS components for them. Whereas you can pretty much just strap a grenade to a quadcopter with a few minor tweaks and you're in business. Which is more or less exactly what the Ukrainians have been doing with their surplus Soviet anti-tank grenades.

The XM395 120mm GPS mortar guidance kit is about $10k per round and was introduced a short time before the switchblade. Switchblades are about $7k and are fairly low yield relatively speaking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM395_Precision_Guided_Mortar_...

I don't even see how the 'switchblade' is useful for anything but special operations strikes on 'key assets' - which is what it was designed for.

It doesn't matter if it's 'price effective per kg' - it can't disable a tank, and might not disable a soft target without a direct it.

The 900 series is the one that might be quite useful.

All of that said, we'll have to see how countermeasures work it may be that they develop rapidly to neutralize drones ...

... and then a rational actor like China takes the 'saturation approach' and launches 100's of them at a single battalion etc..

Oh I dunno, Russian generals in particular may be concerned about the lowly 300 model.

Perhaps it's 10km range, more precise and visual targeting on moving vehicles vs close range and/or fixed position targeting. There is a switchblade 600 with even more range and more payload which can be used anti-armor.

Also, mortars and other artillery are subject to a counter-battery fire.

Wouldn't a COTS drone be relatively easy to jam or have early warning by detecting its control/video links?

I get why Russia is having trouble adapting (logistics, sanctions, brain drain, paper tiger military) but outside of the Russia-Ukraine war, how effective would a COTS drone really be in a different state-vs-state direct conflict?

Some kind of middle ground platform with the largest commercial multicopters as a cost effective base but with some jamming resistant communications would be the sweet spot. Perhaps 5kg payload and a few km range and some autonomy such as being given permission to autonomously drop munitions on specific target signatures in specific areas.

If it can be entirely radio silent within the last mile radius (records video for later transmission, finds targets and attacks without intervention) then jamming would be extremely difficult.

You can bet that countermeasures are already in place or are being developed now. Jamming of commercial drones is doable. However, it is ridiculously hard to jam software controlled radio equipment. Especially military grade hardware. SpaceX demonstrated this recently when they got past Russia's top of the line hardware. The energy requirements balloon to ridiculous levels when you are talking about broad spectrum jammers doing area denial. In addition, such jammers make excellent targets since you know exactly where they are. If drones could be targeted it makes jamming a lot easier, but still difficult.

One thing we can expect is home on signal anti-aircraft batteries and anti-loitering munitions that seek other loitering munitions. I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the last big wars where such COTS drone tactics are successful.

I’m not sure how effective signal jamming would be against COTS quadcopters. It’s relatively easy to provide on-loss-of-signal instructions to the navigation microcontroller. Perhaps it could be a return to set location command or a home in on signal jammer and explode command.

>or a home in on signal jammer and explode command.

Congratulations, you just invented the anti-radiation missile.

The drone space seems to be speed running decades of SAM and combat aviation tech.

You're saying all we need to defeat these drones is lure them into a jammer and destroy them all at once with conventional air burst munitions? If you want to be fancy use a helicopter to make your air defence solution mobile.

>Wouldn't a COTS drone be relatively easy to jam

Have you heared Link 1?

The ukrainians are repurposing small civil drones and old soviet shells to attack russian targets on and behind the lines.

Aerorozvidka:

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-cheap-grenades-expensive-tan...

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