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Comment by mrep | Hacker News Reader

Check out my edit 2. The Dutch already have an automated minigun. Bullets aren't that expensive relative to those shitty consumer drones which would get torn apart by them.

Also, ukraine doesn't have Trophy or any minigun/shotun defense system that I know of yet.

Having automated miniguns/shotguns near civilian areas definitely creates a challenge but I think our defense budget can handle that.

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These naval CIWSs are massive. ~6 tonnes with a minute of ammunition. They cost tens of millions. All of this is probably acceptable for base defense.

But all high rate fire guns have short operation limits before their barrels melt. About 15 seconds before a 10 minute cool-off, maintenance and reload cycle. It's comically easy to saturate that with waves of decoy drones.

Those CIWS are designed to take out much more hardened targets than shitty drones. I bet you a shotgun shell can easily take out one of those drones.

Upgrade your drone defenses and now your drones cost more...

I don't work in the military so take everything I say with a massive grain of salt but I bet offense and defense scale in cost similarly and NATO + allies have WAY more money than the russians.

And note a big weakness of CIWS in port: what's your backstop? When the wave of drones comes in at low altitude over the city the port is at what happens???

An increasing number of drones being used aren't the shitty consumer ones either. They are still relatively cheap, but their guidance systems and payloads are improving dramatically compared to the start of the war. Saturation attacks are still possible on automated kinetic kill systems, and for a price that is sustainable for the attacker.

> but their guidance systems and payloads are improving dramatically compared to the start of the war

But can they survive a small bullet or a shotgun hit?

The Goalkeeper CIWS costs something like $3000 per second that it is firing. It's not a cheap system!

It could be scaled down to the size of a normal minigun, but even that is about $50 per second.

Meanwhile drone costs keep falling, Ukraine is well below $500 per drone now.

$500 for a drone including its bomb that can incapacitate a military aircraft and can survive multiple bullets?

Also, I don't think you need 30 mm bullets to take out a drone. Those bullets are for much more hardened targets.

All of these weapons fire a 1-2 second burst to make sure they hit the target. Don’t forget that the drones are moving, there’s wind, etc…

Modern CIWS will use radar to track their own outbound bullets and adjust their aim in real time to hit the target.

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