Comment by maxglute | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxglute | Hacker News Reader

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My comment was more specific to the article, i.e. counter "SMALL" UAS / tactical / infantry battlefield scale.

Pacific theater / operation/strategic scale, IMO bigger drones and traditional loitering munitions kind of just blend together. A shaheed is just a poor man's cruise missile. Iran didn't have #s or ability to coordinate / mass #s for any strategic effect. I think Israel has like magazine depth of ~800 interceptors for low tier / subsonic threats and 1000s in stockpile. Iran was (E: *NOT) capable of saturating that.

Depending on relative size / force balance, can still drag on war of attrition after factories turn with sufficient stockpiles. I'm kind of thinking nation state actors, the hedge is really storing a few 10-100,000 loitering munition tier drones in tunnels to ensure some sort of conventional MAD with neighbours. But really that's for... competent / connected nation state actors who has backup ISR, i.e. piggy off US/ eventually PRC global ISR for targeting. I imagine a resourced nation can build out shaheed tier manufacturing underground.

Incidentally, we had news earlier this year that PRC/Polytech is acquiring 1M, as in 1,000,000 loitering drones. Presuming shaheed tier (2000km sky moped) since Polytech has show shaheed clones in past. That's enough to easily saturate all defenses in first island chain even if US+co prepositions every piece of interception hardware ever made or plan to acquire in next 10+ years. That's strategic level shaheed spam.

My main takeaway is cheap loitering munition/drones can reasonable replace potentially short range fires (~2000km), if there's enough of them to casually bleed interceptors, AND if there's survivable theater level kill chain. Last part is really... what separates Ukraine, Iran... maybe Russia's current... hobbyist tier efforts. RU launching 500+ salvos are still trying to evade anti air, with many interceptions because they don't have ISR / killchain to eliminate antiair. It's easy to build a lot of shooters, it's hard to build out the sensors to hit important things. In a highend fight, at least one side (and possibly both) side is going has the ISR and magazine depth to ensure antiair becomes irrelevant and then it will be matter of munitions + concrete attrition math

I'm fully agreeing with your assessment (see my squad-level-airpower comment beside here), however I think there'll probably be cheap-enough counter-measures, like the latest CV-90 variation that has anti-drone munitions and built-in sensors to detect them at close quarters.

I think we're due to a cambrian explosion of drone types and counter-measures in the coming decade, in your mass-drone scenario I think smaller drones will probably be possible to counter with cheap "technical"-like vechicles armed with cheap enough sensors/radars and automatic-/machine- shotguns (there has always been experiments but no pressing use for them in the past).

I think the even broader answer to battlefield level drones is... to establish stupid levels of decisive overmatch where cheap drones can't be effectively operated at scale, i.e... IDF vs Hamas. If one can afford it, to spend much more to shape battlefield to deny cheap drone usage. But there's probably not many that can afford it.

My main uncertainty is how likely performant autonomous drones will proliferate. The skill ceiling to train someone with fingers to fly a drone is lower than developing autonomous targeting software for potentially specific battlefield conditions. Maybe short/medium term will be technically beyond irregular forces skill ceiling and their 2 guys who read AI for dummies. Maybe it will be COTS tier and anyone can pull out the companion app, tap human, male, Caucasian, or passenger jet, airline, engine nacelle.

The problem with Shaheeds and other slow air like them is they're not substantially different to the type of vehicle which would be needed to intercept them.

So a stockpile of Shaheeds can be largely countered by launching something very similar provided you can detect it. You could very much imagine having a vehicle which can simply leave the payload behind for better air speed when used in interception mode.

This is quite different to most conventional missile threats where the time between detection and interception, as well as the performance characteristics, necessitates extremely high performance interceptors.

An analogy would be that you can hit a baseball with a bat, but not a bullet even though they're both just ballistic projectiles.

Interceptors being more expensive is a big problem. The only solution I can think of is ground-based lasers, which cost a few dollars per shot. If they can be protected.

Other than that, you either need the X-factor of intelligence and air superiority, which bypasses the problem by taking out bottlenecks like TELs and supply chains. Or, have more industrial production. If you have neither, you're in trouble.

A mostly independent thing countries can do is have better home-front resiliency, which is a kind of defense in depth against suicide attacks. Taiwan needs this. Get everyone a bomb shelter.

> Interceptors being more expensive is a big problem.

Yes, but they do not have to be. Shaheeds are slow, easy to detect and track and not maneuverable. They could be intercepted by very cheap short range systems.

What makes interceptors expensive are requirements to counter stealthy, maneuverable targets with very high success probability (i.e., when you consider a leaker to be catastrophic). Nether of this applies to current UKR threats. At least not yet.

> Taiwan needs this. Get everyone a bomb shelter.

Ample footage from Ukraine has shown that drones are very effective at getting into shelters, foxholes, and other enclosed spaces. Doesn't even have to be all that powerful of a boom, just enough to rattle everyone's cages enough to take them out of the fight for a little -- the next wave of drones will finish the job.

On paper, shaheed tier drones can be upgraded with better compute to fly much more complex (i.e. close terrain hug) which exponentially drops chance to intercept by forcing defender to increase/scale IADs density/complexity. Analogy cruise missiles -> LO/stealth cruise missiles with more complex compute and flight profiles, they're still subsonic and "easy" targets when detected, but make detection hard because scaling detection = scaling more nodes i.e. Same # of munition requires #^2 sensors to detect. Another analogy is urban tag, instead of slow player screamingly loudly at fast defenders, drone is sneaking to target quietly and defenders suddenly needs more eyes for same catches, perhaps not affordably more.

IMO the _current_ problem with subsonic / shaheeds tier munitions, at least the one's being being used is they seem to have very basic navigation capabilities field by forces that don't have ability to plan better missions. VS defenders being supported by US/NATO with high end ISR that dramatically improve intercept planning/chances. Again, IMO the latter is what makes or breaks, affordable theater level shaheed spam. These are glorified mopeds + smart phones. On paper most countries can have 100,000s of them. But to use them effectively and even _more_ economically, need highend ISR+killchain to employ fraction of munitions (or some other platforms) for initial SEAD / dismantle IADs and eliminate future intercepts. AKA closer to US/PRC tier of C4ISR which will ramp into another gear once mega-constellation based. Which is out of reach for most countries, unless they strategically align to "unlock" "smarter" munitions.

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