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0 pointsmarcus_holmes4y ago0 comments

> I'm not sure how this is superior to just shooting a tank with a missile.

armour underneath a tank is usually much lighter, because it's difficult to hit. Missiles have to do fancy armour-penetration stuff to get through the main armour on a tank. If you can get a shaped charge stuck to the underside of a tank, you don't need to do the fancy stuff.

> If you have a single payload, you have just a shitty, slow moving cruise missile.

yes. exactly. Except that for the cost of a single conventional cruise missile, you now have 10,000 shitty slow-moving, intelligent, able-to-do-evasive-maneuvres missiles.

> Al Qaeda was chaining RPGs in the last war together

so it works then? Imagine 10,000 RPG grenades flying by themselves, able to chain-hit a target, with no human operator in sight.

> A drone with a gun can sit in a location for 4 hours waiting for the tank to come, then fire the RPG when the tank comes into position.

The drone is the grenade. It doesn't fire the grenade. It flies to the target, attaches itself, goes bang. Next one flies to the same point, attaches, goes bang. There's thousands of them.

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dragontamer4y ago

> armour underneath a tank is usually much lighter, because it's difficult to hit. Missiles have to do fancy armour-penetration stuff to get through the main armour on a tank. If you can get a shaped charge stuck to the underside of a tank, you don't need to do the fancy stuff.

I'm not even sure if the air-pressures under a tank would allow a drone to fly under there. Let alone the myriad of anti-air defenses a modern tank has.

The M1A1 Abrams tank has not only the main cannon, but also a .50 Caliber M2 Browning and two M240 machine guns. In addition, there's a general expectation that a tank would be surrounded by supporting troops and equipment (and vice versa: the tank supports the troops, as per the theory of Combined Arms)

So a tank, facing a swarm of drones, probably can just fire its two machine guns and take them out. Its not like drones have any armor of any kind. Similarly, anti-personnel rifles from the supporting infantry would probably be effective against those drones.

Once we start considering weapons like air-burst grenades, I'm finding it less-and-less likely that a "10,000 Swarm" makes any sense what-so-ever. The __reason__ we mix tanks-with-infantry is because a singular weapon (ex: air-burst grenade) works only on infantry (tank armor is too thick), while a Tandem-shaped charge RPG only really works on tanks (Personnel are relatively cheap and move in groups. If you kill one, the rest of their buddies gang up and kill you).

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Any scenario where you're just lobbing uniformly made drones into the same area just opens them up to air-burst or machine gun fire.

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EDIT: I had a lot of unnecessary words. Lets just point this out... I'm not sure if you understand how good machine guns are today.

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

We have machine guns that can autonomously aim and shoot-down a group of missiles that travel at 1500 mph (Mach 2). And you think a swarm of 10,000 drones flying at lol 100 mph has a chance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB8d3OaFEco

Depending on the armament: you could have up to 9000 "pellets" per shot that airburst at the expected distance to maximize the chance of hitting the target.

If a missile flying at 1500mph has no chance, why do you think a drone at 100 chance or 200 mph has a chance?

Israel's "Iron Dome" machine guns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGaqBWXM8Ko

These platforms are "portable", for a definition of portable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAw82h-IhdQ

marcus_holmesOP4y ago

I think there's a big difference between a large, hot, predictable missile and a tiny, cold, evasive drone.

Area-effect weapons would have more impact, sure. But that's a lot of area to cover. A bit like flak vs airplanes - you've got to shoot a lot of metal into the air hoping for a bit of shrapnel to hit something vital.

It's the "big and expensive" vs "tiny and very cheap" decision - you don't mind losing 90% of your swarm to take out one tank, because the entire swarm costs less than the tank (added bonus: there's no humans in the swarm).

dragontamer4y ago

> I think there's a big difference between a large, hot, predictable missile and a tiny, cold, evasive drone.

Apparently this hypothetical drone you're talking about has the evasion of a missile, and the stealth capabilities of the latest $Billion stealth aircraft, while 10,000 of them put together costs less than a single M1 Abrams tank.

It can also fly at speeds to evade our aimbot CIWS or aimbot CRAM defensive guns and carries enough of an explosive payload to damage an M1 Abrams.

Color me skeptical. I find it unlikely that you can make such a device for $1000ish.

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0 pointsmarcus_holmes4y ago0 comments

> I'm not sure how this is superior to just shooting a tank with a missile.

> If you have a single payload, you have just a shitty, slow moving cruise missile.

yes. exactly. Except that for the cost of a single conventional cruise missile, you now have 10,000 shitty slow-moving, intelligent, able-to-do-evasive-maneuvres missiles.

> Al Qaeda was chaining RPGs in the last war together

so it works then? Imagine 10,000 RPG grenades flying by themselves, able to chain-hit a target, with no human operator in sight.

> A drone with a gun can sit in a location for 4 hours waiting for the tank to come, then fire the RPG when the tank comes into position.

The drone is the grenade. It doesn't fire the grenade. It flies to the target, attaches itself, goes bang. Next one flies to the same point, attaches, goes bang. There's thousands of them.

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dragontamer4y ago

I'm not even sure if the air-pressures under a tank would allow a drone to fly under there. Let alone the myriad of anti-air defenses a modern tank has.

------------

Any scenario where you're just lobbing uniformly made drones into the same area just opens them up to air-burst or machine gun fire.

-----------

EDIT: I had a lot of unnecessary words. Lets just point this out... I'm not sure if you understand how good machine guns are today.

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

We have machine guns that can autonomously aim and shoot-down a group of missiles that travel at 1500 mph (Mach 2). And you think a swarm of 10,000 drones flying at lol 100 mph has a chance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB8d3OaFEco

Depending on the armament: you could have up to 9000 "pellets" per shot that airburst at the expected distance to maximize the chance of hitting the target.

If a missile flying at 1500mph has no chance, why do you think a drone at 100 chance or 200 mph has a chance?

Israel's "Iron Dome" machine guns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGaqBWXM8Ko

These platforms are "portable", for a definition of portable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAw82h-IhdQ

marcus_holmesOP4y ago

I think there's a big difference between a large, hot, predictable missile and a tiny, cold, evasive drone.

dragontamer4y ago

> I think there's a big difference between a large, hot, predictable missile and a tiny, cold, evasive drone.

It can also fly at speeds to evade our aimbot CIWS or aimbot CRAM defensive guns and carries enough of an explosive payload to damage an M1 Abrams.

Color me skeptical. I find it unlikely that you can make such a device for $1000ish.

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