With cheap drones appearing to be critical to the future of warfare, is there a chance that the US will develop a domestic drone industry that rivals China's, or has that ship sailed?
Urban radio environments are crowded, not actively hostile.
The issue with high energy jamming (broad frequency band denial) is it makes your jammer a super tempting (and easy) target for a HARM or equivalent, and consumes quite a bit of power. If someone is actively denying such a wide frequency band, any high school level electronics student can design a pretty effective seeker.
And the whole 'radio power drops off as a cube of the distance' thing means the equipment needs to be pretty close to operations, so it's going to get attacked pretty often.
The noise level in a typical urban environment from wifi is already pretty terrible, 'hostile' or not. Way more terrible than a typical remote environment, which is where these drones are being used, unless there are active countermeasures pretty close.
Counter measures, counter-counter measures, etc. But I'm not seeing much mention of effective jamming happening in-theatre right now.
DJI drones fitted with grenade-dropping mechanisms have been used extensively and still see some use, but DIY FPV drones are now the preferred offensive weapon, used in a kamikaze role as a kind of cheap guided missile. They're cheaper, faster and more agile than the DJI drones. A good FPV pilot can hit the weak spots on a moving tank, or fly through a narrow opening to hit troops sheltering in a bunker. They're invariably used with DJI drones in hunter-killer teams, with a DJI drone acting as a spotter for an FPV pilot.
The sound of a DJI drone is known to everyone on the front line and it means exactly one thing - that you need to find hard cover now. If you can hear it, then chances are that it has spotted you, the pilot has passed on your coordinates and a kamikaze drone or an artillery shell is already flying towards you. If you ignore it or take pot shots at it, then you're gambling with your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjsemcB7I9o (subtitles available)
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/02/european-coalition-bids-...
Exactly 0 of those 1,000,000 consumer drones will be flying in US operating areas.
Next thing will be assassinating people with their own phone by causing it to blow up next to their head.
The tool isn't the problem, the problem is that "we" still think killing each other is some sort of solution.
Wishful thinking. Always have, always will. War is even “legal”, think about that, no repercussions for NATO countries.
I don't know if this was an intentional reference or not, but that has definitely already been done (with a rigged phone). Plus the widespread use of phone position data for targeting.
> the problem is that "we" still think killing each other is some sort of solution
The problem is that violence works against everything except more violence.
It’s not like Japan or Germany were going to wave a white flag just because someone finally convinced them they were wrong.
And the components are easy to buy as most if not all have plenty of other use cases.