Anduril Builds a Tiny, Reusable Fighter Jet That Blows Up Drones
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Drone warfare right now is small in numbers and small in range, because of limitations around the technology — even so it is having a ton of impact on the ground in Ukraine.
A good analog might be early World War 1: planes were incredible scouts and they were occasionally disruptive to troops, but it wasn't really practical to deploy them in large, coordinated formations, fit them with heavy payloads, or use them out over the oceans. By World War 2 that entire calculus had changed, with horrifying results for all combatants.
Right now an American carrier group might be vulnerable in littoral (shoreline) combat to drones, but retreating even a few dozen miles offshore would be enough distance to dampen the threat — drones just don't have the range and anti-jamming to be useful on the scale of hundreds or thousands of miles.
In 15 years though? 10x the range, the speed, the numbers, and potentially outfit a carrier ship specifically for deploying drones en masse. Play the same scenario out underwater with "drone carrier submarines".
The key question for all American military commanders and defense contractors to answer: how do you shoot down 1,000 drones without losing a ship?
A hangar of 10,000 anti-drone gnats. Barring a breakthrough in high explosives, an anti-drone drone will be lighter and cheaper than an anti-ship drone. We played this game with planes and boats.
THOR Defeats Swarm With Microwave Weapon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q959a82NQo
Also no areal vehicle can go on say 500 missions without maintenance, that price is going to only go up.
I cannot fathom the cost justification.
Source on $500 drones being a threat to modern militaries? (Russia doesn’t have a modern, i.e. manoeuvre-based, military.)
If it’s within an organization’s means to spend $100k (within means being the key part) to be able to destroy 500 dollar drones in a way that increases the ability to win compared to not having it, then purely from the war perspective, it makes sense.
Of course, the entire concept of war is laden with waste and destruction, so it’s almost never in alignment with the economically and environmentally optimized choice.
The largest militaries have access to such an insane amount of money that almost anything that wins better will be purchased, despite the monetary return not justifying the monetary cost.
In life and death situations, a soldier backed by that money isn’t going to care how much money they wasted. Just that they remain alive and the enemy loses.
well, you win by being cost effective. Most modern wars are contests of attrition and logistics and bringing down political will to continue to fight, Ukraine being a good example now, but Afghanistan too of course.
Tactically costs don't always matter, but the overall strategic goal has to be to trade favorably.
> Most modern wars are contests of attrition and logistics and bringing down political will to continue to fight
This second point is very well taken; I would extend it even further -- wars have always been contests of attrition, logistics, and political will, but this has been sharply highlighted in all the major conflicts since the turn of the 20th century.
Is there any reason this would be limited to drones, and not manned aircraft? Or is that just to make the announcement more palatable?
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/30/anduril-unveils-roadrunner...