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Something very similar to this was pulled of by Ukraine last year

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb

The usual thing that most of us do is not do things that make other folks want to blow our vehicles up. That's how I've avoided getting my stuff blown up, at least.

Everything else is a half measure.

This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM With a software update to track drones. They can hit birds and mortars, they can take out a drone.

Or this: https://www.epirusinc.com/electronic-warfare if you think the C-RAM would get saturated. Whether the weather balloon drones move at night is irrelevant if you stop the last move they need to make.

Militaries have been defending themselves against attacks for as long as they've been around. Drones will change the way they fight a little, but it isn't going to be some magic pill that modern militaries can't adapt to. Hiding an explosive and then blowing it up when your target is nearby? That's almost the same concept as assassinating someone with a car bomb. Putting it in an Amazon box and letting the drone go the final distance changes things a little, but militaries and governments were able to assassinate people remotely before drones.

Swarming attacks with cheap munitions? Saturating an enemy's defenses has been a thing at least since the time of the English Longbow. The longbow regiments would all shoot at the same time, and while you could dodge one arrow it was hard to dodge all of them.

Drones are new and will take some adapting to. If a military refuses to change then it probably will be disadvantaged. But the US military has been buying and testing drones for a while, and is already undergoing the adaptation. As it better understands cheap drones for offense, it necessarily gains a better understanding of what is needed for defense.

To be clear, I'm not advocating for the US attacking Iran. All I'm saying is that the US military is not about to lose the conflict because of this particular tactic.

> Centurion C-RAM

How's that going to work when the drone hugs the ground, only rising a bit to hop over walls? Are you going to flatten everything a mile around every base, and shoot at head height with zero warning?

> Leonidas EWS

How's that going to work when the drone doesn't show up on radar and has fiber-optic controls?

If drones were this easy to counter, we wouldn't be seeing them play such a massive role in the Ukraine war. The whole problem is that drones massively change how a conflict works, and the entire US military is designed for pre-drone warfare. It remains to be seen whether they can adapt quickly enough fast enough for this conflict - the US doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to asymmetrical warfare...

Yes, the US seems to be fighting the last war - both strategically and tactically.

> Are you going to flatten everything a mile around every base, and shoot at head height with zero warning?

Yes. You've obviously never seen a C-RAM in action. They will put 20 mm rounds in any angle that isn't restricted. The rounds go far beyond a mile when fired into the air. Only a few hit the target, dozens/hundreds of rounds just sail off into the distance, and if it hits a village down the road, well that's just too bad. Shooting downward into the dirt is probably a better arrangement because ricochets won't go as far.

> How's that going to work when the drone doesn't show up on radar and has fiber-optic controls?

Tiny drones do show up on radar. Tiny birds show up on radar. Making a quadcopter or similar drone stealthy kills some of the value proposition on making them cheaply, and physically shrinking them lowers the amount of destructive payload they can carry. Fiber optics don't help against a directed energy weapon- the microwaves burn out the electronics; it's not a jammer, it's a heat ray. And if there was a fiber optic line, that means the attacker is close enough to be struck directly rather than some long-distance control or autonomous program.

Before you think you've solved warfare and that a modern military can't possibly defend against your brilliant tactics, learn about what warfare is actually like and how the systems work. A lot of your ideas have already been thought out. A loss of a single helicopter is not really an indictment of the US military's defense; the fact that there's only one of these stories vs. the many that have come out of Ukraine indicate that a US base isn't nearly as vulnerable as the Russians have been. While Ukraine is punching far above its weight, their adversary is hampered by (more) corrupt acquisition processes, poorly trained conscripts, and overall bad decision making.

That first paragraph is a good argument for using this defense in occupied land, less so for domestic bases per the hypothetical. It becomes laughably bad if the target is changed from military to civilian; the defense seems likely to cause as much or more damage.

This is partly why most military bases are not in a city- open space makes it easier to defend. (Another reason is that the dangerous chemicals and loud training make residents hate the base even in peacetime.)

And attacking civilian targets is a violation of the law of armed conflict. It would be a war crime if a country were to use drones (or any weapon) to intentionally attack civilians who are not participating in the fight.

I don't even know why people are still arguing. The US has been bombing Iran for nearly a month now. If drones and drone tactics were a particular weakness, why hasn't the US lost more equipment because of it? Out of 25 losses recorded for the US only one has been because of a drone. The US has lost more due to crashes and friendly fire than enemy drone action. Until drones are more effective than just someone not paying attention then it's hard to make an argument that there is a serious weakness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_an...

I think going low-tech and deploy netting around critical things would be the most effective. Sure they are a pain but they'll catch drones before they reach any targets.

Laser turrets near highest-value targets?

It becomes defense in depth though, perimeter defense is no longer enough. Thats kinda new.

Laser takes as much as 10s to disable a single plastic drone at a distance of ~400 meters. The slowest drone flies at 20 m/s.

So realistically a laser drone weapon can eliminate just a couple of drones until a third or a fourth one comes through and destroys your turret.

I would imagine the counter is computer vision defense systems that cover an entire base. And then eventually infrastructure.

And then all drones tracked by satellite so any drone that doesnt show up gets shot down anywhere over a large geographic area.

Using cheaper drones to hunt down expensive drones.

Or of course, just eagles.

Park your aircraft in hangars. And hope you hid your tracks well enough once the generals start eyeing their almost expired bunker busters with a twinkle in their eye

Automatic turret-mounted anti-air shotguns. Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.

I bet you could do aiming and firing in less than 0.1 seconds with nearly 100% accuracy in the 50 meter range which would enable ~10 destroyed drones per unit if the drones are going 150 km/h.

Shotgun pellets are also basically entirely safe when shot into the air as they have low falling velocity enabling usage when shooting over populated areas.

And some Canada Gooses too?

trust the gooses

How long till Canada wires up gooses brains and straps then with bombs for the ultimate biodrones? They already swarm naturally in attack formation!

How many shotguns? How do they reload? What happens when they run out of ammo?

Can they be hacked, or duped into firing at friendly aircraft?

How will they deal with the enemy adapting their drones to have camoflage?

There's no way automatic turret mounted shotguns are the solution to this problem.

It simply isn't economical to produce, install and maintain all of these things, and now you've sunk a massive amount of resources into this infrastructure when the enemy doesn't even really have to launch a real attack.

I suspect they will run out of ammo much after the enemy runs out of drones.

What's their supply chain for being restocked with ammo? Is that supply chain susceptible to drone attacks along any part? Then you still lose eventually.

I don’t think so as shotgun shells are cheaper and smaller than drones.

When drones become cheaper then it’s a problem.

They might reload the same way semi-automatic shotguns reload.

Without writing an essay, I can definitely see automatic turtent mounted shotguns as an effective solution.

Imagine you're playing tower defense.

Now picture an American military base. They're pretty big, right?

Now imagine how many of these shotgun towers you need to secure the paremeter based on the firing range of these weapons, then imagine how many you shotgun towers you need to defend the interior of the base from drones that don't attack from the side but instead come in from the middle because they can fly.

How much ammunition can each of these shotgun towers hold? What happens when it runs out? Does a human have to go over there and refill it? What kind of equipment do they use to do that? How much time does this take and how much fuel does it consume? What is the opportunity cost of this?

Now that's just one military installation. How many does the US have? Are you going to put these shotgun towers outside the homes of high ranking military officers? The roads that they take to go to work?

What's stopping someone from doing this kind of drone attack on the highway to the military installation timed with the morning or evening commute? What's the counter to that?

Automated shotguns are not an economically viable defense to the threats that I described in my previous post.

Great questions, I will reinstall Factorio for research purposes and get right back to you.

> Automatic turret-mounted anti-air shotguns. Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.

Yeah, doable. I went to a clay pigeon range last week (company outing). These are targets that move quite fast. They don't spring out from the same spot and some roll over the ground. I had never handled a gun before. I am 50, with the attendant poor eyesight and lack of twitch reflexes.

And yet, I still nailed 20/25 moving targets. A turret with a shotgun is going to hit much more than that.

Then how come on Ukraine / Russian front drones rule. would not be the case if those were so easy to shoot down

Clay shooting is fun. What happens when all the clays are released at the same time, not one at a time as you shoot? And if you miss one, you die.

Which only protect a small area, so drones just need to target less obvious things. Meanwhile your guns shoot birds and once in a while - an occasional bystander. Attackers are always advantaged since you have to protect _everything_ and they only need to target what's left unprotected. Some drones just drop grenades, I somehow don't see your shotgun hitting either the drone (too high) or a grenade (too fast and small).

> Which only protect a small area

We have these things called wheels. Or you could mount it on a drone.

> Meanwhile your guns shoot birds and once in a while - an occasional bystander

We are discussing protecting military bases or military assets.

> Some drones just drop grenades

That requires flying above the target. See counter-point 1.

Please put in the minimal effort needed to follow through at least a few steps of argument and counter-argument in your head. I assure you I am not putting in as little effort into my arguments as you did.

> Blow up 100 $ drones for the cost of a 0.50 $ shotgun shell.

Then two drones approach from opposite sides at 200 MPH. Your emplacement costs more than $200 and can only fire in one direction at a time.

Or, as we've seen in Ukraine, once your disposable low-cost drones have precisely identified a high-value, high-effectiveness static emplacement, you send in a cruise missile to clear it out, and then the drones continue sweeping forward.

Drones that can move that fast have extremely little cargo capacity for explosive charges and it's not fast enough to simply use the kinetic energy of the drone for much.

> Then two drones approach from opposite sides at 200 MPH.

A drone that can go 300 km/h is way more than 100 $, you are in the thousands of dollar range at that point. Turret wins if it blows up one.

Also, it could probably blow up more than one since at 300 km/h you would get 0.5 seconds to respond and I was arguing 0.1 seconds per target anywhere in a full 360. 0.25 seconds for anywhere on a full 360 would be enough for 2 and that is within human capability.

> you send in a cruise missile to clear it out

Cool, you sent in a hundred thousand dollar cruise missile to blow up a thousand dollar turret. Turret wins. Also you can put wheels on the turret, so it might not even be there.

Now you are probably going to argue about a drone that goes 1000 km/h at which point what you have is a cruise missile which costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. At that point the entire argument about drones being too cheap to cost-effectively stop is moot.

Or you might argue that the drones just go high. 50 m is a ludicrously low flight ceiling. But then your drone can not explode on contact. You could use a drone that drops explosives, but that still requires flying over the target. High flying drones are easier to detect, and you could counter that with flying shotgun drones or turret mounted machine guns which have ranges in the hundreds to thousands of meters and would still only cost a few dollars of ammo per kill.

My main point is that bullets can easily disable a cheap drone and are much cheaper than a cheap drone. You just need a cost-effective way of deploying mass bullets against mass drones. Logical answers are ground deployments around targets or drones with bullets that cost-effectively shoot down drones without bullets.

You will then likely get into a arms race of fighter drones to protect your bomber drones. And scale up your drones until they are not easily bullet-destroyable. But then your drone costs have likely increased to the point where anti-air cannons shooting 100 $ explosive shells are cost-effective. And so on and so forth.

> Cool, you sent in a hundred thousand dollar cruise missile to blow up a thousand dollar turret. Turret wins.

Nope. The calculus is not about individual components, but about overall cost of the entire system and all of its associated support. What was the material, labor, and opportunity cost to install the turret? What was it protecting (which is now presumably destroyed by drones, or captured by the enemy)? You're also still assuming that you're facing off against guerillas fighting an asymmetrical war on a shoestring budget, but that's not the case. Whatever force you're fighting can be trivially bankrolled by a peer power who is happy to bankroll them to make you bleed to death. China will be happy to build plenty of cruise missiles, and plenty more drones.

The argument is literally that it is problematic to send 100 k$ interceptors to stop 1 k$ drones and then you turn about and argue you can end 100 k$ cruise missiles to stop 1 k$ turrets. Your argument is inconsistent with the entire premise.

You have presented no evidence as to the overall cost of this mystical unstoppable drone swarm. In contrast, we do know that shotguns, machine guns, and bullets are cheap, mass-produced, and mass-deployed by the tens of millions.

The key unknown of my proposal is the bulk cost and production of a small automated turret or fighter drone that can economically and flexibly deploy cheap bullet interceptors to asymmetrically defeat expensive drones. However, the operational requirements for such devices are simple and within the range of existing technology.

There is no clear evidence that cheap explosive drone swarms are magically cheaper than cheap fighter drone swarms or cheap ground drone swarms. It could easily go either way and without a rigorous actual analysis you and I are both unqualified to determine what is actually dominant.

Customs inspection. An xray paired with some ai.

But why go through all that when you can just have someone in the country launch it, or drop it off?

Ironically, Ukraine sort of did this to Russia and destroyed several long range strategic nuclear bombers.

> What’s the counter to that?

In the case of the AWS scenario someone driving by who decides to nick it?

Or the courier puts the box down upside down?

Just by the way is a package delivery company going to be willing to deliver a package to an abandoned lot?

Your solar panel equipped, "rest and recharge" idea is interesting.

Mandatory package screenings to detect explosives? I don't know if that's technically feasible at scale, or if that's already implemented (and I'd prefer not to ask that kind of question to Google/ChatGPT)

The counter to this and more such scenarios is letting the world alone

I feel like this was a plot/subplot of either Diamond Age or one of the Gibson novels