Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future
economist.com
economist.com
I've been following this with some trepidation. It's incredible how accessible this technology is. Right now jamming seems to be the best defence, but how long before target recognition works well enough on these low-power chipsets?
A bad actor can send out a swarm of a few dozen; it doesn't matter if your flak cannons take down 80%, the few that get through still do serious damage.
Good luck to the Secret Service and the security detail of various excessively wealthy individuals.
If you haven't seen it yet, go checkout whats on r/CombatFootage, its essentially killbots that follow soldiers around and explode on contact or drop grenades. I think this is a future of warfare which we are not talking about enough. If the Ukraine is able to make these effectively with consumer technology, unfortunately everyone can, including criminals looking to make hits.
I could see this fall out in a few ways:
- Operating personal drones and other small craft will (and should) become restrictive, if not outright prohibited outside of designated areas. All commercial drones outside of these areas will have to have squawk their position and registration.
- Eventually radio jammers will not be effective countermeasures against these weapons. Machine vision, and a simple AI which could be crammed into a SoM (e.g. IoT AI products), lock onto targets and follow them into areas with radio jammers.
- Anyone who needs security protection will probably be spending a lot more time indoors including events.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240208152121/https://www.econo...
Seemingly, our strategy in the WWII was to invest in technology where possible but at the same time throwing many trucks and jeeps and puny Sherman tanks and guns and bandages and bullets and beans at the problem as possible.
Whereas in modern America we seem so much a “wonder weapons” mindset? That seems a poor posture in light of the article, all those expensive weapons will become a burden to protect or just outright destroyed.
I would agree that the military like their new toys, like the f-35 fiasco.
This helps explain at least partially why America is so keen on military tech.
The problem now - that no one wants to talk about - is that the gap between conscript-accessible "consumer" technology and current Pentagon wunderwaffe is growing distressingly thin. So, not surprisingly, people are starting to ask WHY a GPS chip costs as much as a house in Kansas.
Oh, I know, I know. "They got amazing stuff that's just, like, light-years beyond anything but they can't show YOU". Uh huh. Yeah, my dad knows kung fu, too.
For what it's worth, the end of conscription was a mistake. You don't want armed forces composed of 100% full timers, it's bad for your civilization, as a rule. Something like a mandatory youth civil service - say, three years in military, five years otherwise - would be a fantastic thing in today's post-ZIRP transition.
Which is why I believe that people supporting a war should be the ones actually fighting it.
So now we drone strike weddings for the sake of Raytheon and the almighty petrodollar and everyone is happy. Except the students who still have to pay their loans. And the brown people. But I guess you can't please everyone.
A lot more profit in developing and producing very expensive showroom weapons.
In theory, we (the USA) can develop the tech during peace time and ramp up production during war time.
The problem is that during small brushfire wars, some of our less useful politicians decided to spend huge sums to avoid a few civilian casualties and even fewer US casualties. The more correct path would gave been to consider what weapons we would want to mass produce during a war that threatened our survival and take the opportunity to field test those weapons, not $100,000 artillery shells.
1 - better control of the supply chain
2 - more tailored customization