Why can't we shoot down drones? It's a political, not a technical problem
bowoftheseus.substack.com
bowoftheseus.substack.com
This is somewhat outside my wheelhouse, so I’d be happy to hear from others in this space and how they interpret this post.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240226232950/https://bowofthes...
Some choice quotes:
> We are being inundated by drones because the enemy is on a 30 day acquisition response loop and we are still playing with an acquisition bureaucracy on a 5-10 year timeline.
> In today’s systems, the kill chain is much more monolithic with single systems compressing most of the traditional F2T2EA kill chain. Fifth generation fighters like the F-35 are so loaded with sensors they can basically handle the whole kill chain themselves or between wingmen. Modern missiles and bombs have the ability to be launched untargeted and then engaged once they form a link with a weapons controller (known as network enabled weapons). Loitering munitions like the Israeli Harpy or the Switchblade drone from AeroVironment literally hang out and wait for the enemy to rear his head - then fix, track, target and engage all happen within the same asset. This has led some to suggest that it’s time to simplify the kill chain…
> So bureaucratic inertia continues to force our troops to fight wars using yesterday’s tactics, which are proliferated culturally through TTP (tactics, training & procedures) and doctrine. In the case of CUAS systems for stopping enemy drones, these iterative exercises have literally been underway for years in some cases, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the OODA loop (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) for new technologies and tactics in Ukraine is measured in days, not years.
>> “The OODA loop for introducing new tactics or technologies to the drone battlefield in Ukraine is 30 days.” - Dr. Steven Blank, Stanford National Security Conference, November, 2023
> As always happens, the new enemy gets a vote and decided to sidestep our technical advantage rather than just run straight into it like the last enemy did. The rise in asymmetric warfare tactics and adversaries we saw in the last couple of decades has filled the battlefield with cheap, decentralized systems like drones (UAS), proliferated commercial communications and satcom systems, open source intel (OSINT) and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which has leveled the playing field for actors lacking a military budget equal to the entire GDP of all but 20 countries.
> Our acquisition system has failed to speed up to confront this threat. It was built up around a 10 year fielding cycle during the cold war - embracing the DoD acquisition framework memorialized in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and development tools like the Cohen-Clinger DoD Architectural Framework - where oftentimes the frameworks for thinking about the problem become pursuits onto themselves where the cartography becomes so extensive it covers the terrain its meant to depict (thank you Juan Luis Borges). The lumbering bureaucracy created by these reforms inside the Pentagon has been slow to reform to confront the new reality of an enemy with an acquisition OODA loop of 30 days as mentioned above. Rather than streamlining and removing bureaucratic barriers, much of the defense “innovation theatre” of the past decade has only proliferated lots of new organizations that have their own prurient interests not aligned with putting new systems in the hands of the warfighter.