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Yesterday, a Russian Tu-22M3s bomber was destroyed by a UAV, and another was damaged.
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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Conventional ammo is their answer to a modern drone swarm? I thought Rhein was better than that. Like, cool, you took out eight stationary drones. Now do a half mile wide swarm of eighty thousand coming around the ridge at speed.
Idk man, if I was going to try to shoot down a drone, I'd just use birdshot.
And assuming each of the eighty thousand drones costs $200 each including ordnance, that's a very significant expenditure on an attack. And I'm not even sure if it would be feasibly possible given limited bandwidth to control them.
I don't know mate, that's only 16 million. The price of an F-22 is $150 million. Spending a ninth of a jet to win a war by strategically targeting the capital seems pretty cheap to me. Bring it up to the full cost and you have 750,000 drones. You are going to get overwhelmed by drones no matter how much ammo you have. It is too much.
Oh, if you're talking about drones which can operate over long distances you're talking about $20,000 drones, or more expensive. You'd need satcoms and that isn't cheap or lightweight.
I am talking about small commercial drones that act like suicide bombers. They go one way and can be real cheap. Just deploy somewhat locally.
Not necessarily. A semi truck full of drones could be parked in an isolated area, set up and take off. A single semi could take down a capital. You could realistically either smuggle it in the country or build them there. A lot of parts can even be 3D printed.
More expensive and less useful than you might think.
You ever seen a commercial drone?
They'll work wonderfully at crashing into a window and falling onto the cement.
Plus you'd need to be within a very close radius to control it.
Exactly, that's the point. They crash into things and explode.
If you have 750,000 drones, they don't all need to be that accurate. Some are distractions, others carry explosive payloads. I have built drones. They can be done relatively cheaply. Bigger drones that carry more weight will cost more, sure. However on a military budget it is all just peanuts. You can get more range out of a drone than most people realize if you have the right antennas for it.
You could also have mothership drones that guide short range drones.
They won't cause any damage. They're just a bunch of thin pieces of plastic and a camera.
They are explosive, all they need to do is find a target. Wars tend to fail when the leadership has all been assassinated.
Tech gets cheaper each year and software becomes more advanced. You don't need wireless control when each drone can autonomously navigate to and identify a pre-programmed target.
The block II tomahawk cruise missile had that 40 years ago. That image processing and satellite communications capability is available in modern smartphones.
They move much slower than missiles, there videos where people were able to shut them down with regular weapons (you don't see that with missiles) so why automated system using conventional weapons wouldn't be effective?
It isn't conventional ammunition. Not at all.