Daniel Kokotajlo's Shortform

Daniel Kokotajlo

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I read somewhere recently that there's a fiber optic fpv kamikaze drone with a 40km range. By contrast typical such drones have 10km, maybe 20km ranges.

Either way, it seems clear that EW-resistant drones with 20km+ range are on the horizon. Millions per year will be produced by Ukraine and Russia and maybe some other countries. And I wouldn't be surprised if ranges go up to more than 40km soon.

I wonder if this will cause major problems for Israel. Gaza and Lebanon and Syria are within 20km of some decent-sized israeli cities. Iron Dome wouldn't work against these drones because they'd fly real low to the ground, and plus, each Iron Dome interceptor probably costs at least an OOM more than each drone. Moreover these drones would be more deadly than the usual unguided rockets launched by hezbollah, hamas, etc. because they can be aimed. (they are "smart" weapons.) So e.g. 10 drones getting through defenses would do as much damage as 100 or 1000 rockets getting through defenses.

Drone countermeasures are an idle hope. The only real counter to drones is more drones.

Lasers, shotguns, tank redesign [no holes!], nets, counter-drones, flak etc will all be part of the arsenal surely but thinking drone countermeasures are going to restore the previous generation's war doctrine is as silly as thinking that metallurgy innovations will reverse the gunpowder age.

The ~~future~~ present of warfare is drones, drones, drones.

3Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel1y

It seems nobody outside Ukraine/Russia is actually at the leading edge of where the reality of military technology is. That includes Hamas. Even using the drone doctrine from two years ago would be devastating to the Israelis. Probably they don't have the resources, organization to do so. [Even Ukraine itself is not really there - there are clearly many simple ways drones and drone manufacturing could be improved they haven't had the time and resources to focus on yet. ] Expect terror/resistance groups to start utilizing drones en masse in the next few years.

3Thomas Kwa1y

Good catch. Agree grenade sized munitions won't damage buildings, I think the conversation is drifting between FPVs and other kinds of drones, and also between various settings, so I'll just state my beliefs. * Fiber FPVs with 40km range and 2kg payload (either kamikaze or grenade/mine dropping), which can eventually be countered by a large number of short range guns if they fly at low altitude. It's not clear to me if the 40km range ones need to be larger * Heavy bomber drones can be equipped with fiber (or Starlink for US allies) and carry 15kg+ payload, enough to damage buildings and sensitive industrial equipment. They can do this while flying above the range of small guns and need dedicated antiaircraft guns * Fixed wing can carry even larger payloads with longer range and higher altitude, but are still pretty slow, except for the ones with jet engines * Drones equipped with GPS will know their position to within ~10 meters like the GPS only variant of Excalibur. It seems possible to constrain the payload's horizontal velocity by 1 m/s on average, and the drop time from 1500m is 17 seconds, giving an error of 17 m. The overall error would be sqrt(10^2 + 17^2) = 20 m. If GPS is jammed, it's not obvious they can do the first part, but probably they can still use cameras or something * All of the above are extremely threatening for both organized warfare and terrorism against an opponent without effective cheap air defense. * Even with the next evolution of air defense including radar-acoustic fusion to find threats, the limited reliability of ~all types of existing air defense and large number of drone configurations makes me guess that drones will remain moderately threatening in some form. Given that Hezbollah was previously firing unguided rockets with CEP in the hundreds of meters, some kind of drone that can target with CEP around 20 meters could be more cost effective for them if they cannot procure thousands of cheap guided missiles. If they could